Ã¢â‚¬â¢ Besides Selling A Product Or Service, What Does Advertising Do To Culture?

Before this month our Executive Director of Strategic Partnerships APAC Greg Fournier, and P&Thou'southward Associate Make Managing director Dominique Touchaud took to the stage at FUTR's Asia Summit in Singapore. They delivered a brilliant presentation on the role of culture in advertising, and how it can define success or failure in marketing campaigns in Asia.

The presentation was delivered to a packed room, and the pair received great feedback from a number of audience members on their theories, insights and examples.

Over the next few paragraphs we've pulled out some of the primal messages and takeaways from their presentation, with a number of ad examples, including one of our all time favourite ads from HSBC.

Why does culture matter?

Civilisation is informed past a social club's customs and traditions. Information technology'due south revealed through a society'due south creative and intellectual achievements, and is maintained by a serial of behavioural codes passed down from generation to generation.

Paying attention to culture in advertising is extremely important for brands that work on a global scale, especially if your brand is working in markets that are culturally different to where they are based. Messages, symbols, rituals and fifty-fifty colours can have significantly dissimilar meanings and messages across cultures.

We'll allow HSBC interruption it down for you…

Caput & Shoulders in State of israel

P&G did a nifty job of leveraging culture in their 2015 entrada for Head & Shoulders that ran in Israel. In the Jewish tradition before Passover, Jews search their homes for whatsoever crumbs of bread which, according to tradition, must be eliminated. By leveraging this insight P&G made the search for flakes of dandruff a new addition to the tradition!

They did this by sponsoring Passover kits, which included Head & Shoulders samples, and made them available for gratuitous. P&G accomplished a seamless brand association which fitted both the cultural moment and the make truth. After this campaign market share for the shampoo grew 35% twelvemonth-on-year. Every bit a result, sales of Head & Shoulders in Israel have remained high every bit consumers recognise the purpose of the product and get familiar with using it as office of their daily routines!

Storks and peaches

The above is a great example of how P&One thousand used cultural knowledge to grow sales. At that place accept still been times when the visitor has got it incorrect. One famous campaign which P&G ran for Pampers in the mid-1970s completely flopped in Nippon as the nappy brand hadn't paid attending to the country'south civilisation. The advertising in question saw a stork fly through the air to evangelize nappies to a mum.

While the prototype of a stork delivering newborn children is understood in the The states and Europe, information technology'due south not a universal thought. Unfortunately for P&G, the idea of storks delivering babies doesn't be in Japan. Instead Japanese folklore tells of newborns arriving courtesy of a giant peach floating downwardly the river, which seems a far safer method than stork-powered air travel. Peaches, not storks, bring the babies in Japan, and consumers responded by ignoring the ad.

Seeing things differently

Assumptions almost unlike cultures vary greatly depending on where in the earth y'all're from. In 1 report a group of people from Japan and Mexico were asked what they thought of Americans. The Japanese said they were relaxed, friendly, spontaneous, uninhibited, emotional and impulsive. The Mexicans said they were hurried, serious, reserved, restrained, composed and methodical. Researching your target market is extremely important before you run an advertisement campaign. Even if you think y'all know almost the market you are targeting.

Another matter to remember when looking at dissimilar cultures is that their perceptions of the world and what they see can vary vastly. This can be seen through the Michigan Fish test (yes, this is an actual thing). Take a look at this image…

How would y'all describe it?

Americans referred to the attributes of the target fish saying they saw; 'three large fish heading left'. The Japanese referred to the background and contextual data as well as the target fish attributes maxim; 'in that location is a pond where you see some seaweed, there are big and pocket-sized bass swimming, and a pocket-size frog and snail are at the bottom. This test shows the broad spectrum of interpretations that are possible when they're shaped by culture.

Culture connections

Unruly recently partnered with Mediacom to carry out inquiry around culture connections to reveal insight into the national psyche that underpins consumer attitudes. We categorised the research into 9 dimensions, split between how people feel and how people act. This inquiry allows us to see the correlation between emotions and civilisation in ad.

If we wait at the 'Identity' dimension every bit an example, it measures the strength of a nation'south self-epitome. 'Fixed' societies have very clear identities rooted in tradition; they see no reason to change or evolve. Examples include Venezuela and Colombia. 'Flexible' countries, however, are always looking to adapt and meliorate. They might have traditional values, but they are interested in moving with the times. Examples include Nippon and Taiwan.

1 Cannes Winner… 3 Territories

Our UnrulyEQ team recently analysed the post-obit P&G Libresse Blood ad which was a winner at this year's Cannes Lions festival, in lodge to observe how it resonated with audiences. Accept a expect at the ad and think about how information technology makes you feel.

https://www.youtube.com/sentinel?v=N-yIBD7cOUg

By looking at the correlation between emotion and civilization the team establish that because the United kingdom has an individualistic culture. One of the overriding emotions when people watched it was of confusion as the ad is based effectually a collective of women battling against their body. For many women in the Uk this is non an issue, and not something that they would necessarily talk about or embrace with others.

However, in collective cultures like India and Singapore, the ad evokes emotions of inspiration and pride as the message and feeling of collectiveness resonates with women from these cultures. How did you feel when watching this ad? Practise you recollect the emotions you felt reverberate the culture you alive in? It's important to remember that even the all-time videos in the world don't always perform well across borders. Although Libresse Blood was a Cannes Gilt Lion winner, it had very dissimilar emotional responses in Uk, India and Singapore.

Emotions are oft informed by civilization and as we know, emotions drive engagement, brand retrieve, and purchase intent. Agreement and quantifying civilization in advertizement helps to define the relevant emotional palette a brand can use with a item audience.

What have nosotros learnt?

The interplay of cultural dimensions in advertizement is hugely circuitous!
Ads can perform very differently even in cultures which are perceived to exist more than or less similar.
Never assume – examine for cultural resonance on an ad-by-ad footing.

We'll leave you lot with an ad from Vicks that was one of our favourites from last year, which really illustrates the emotional and cultural learnings on Republic of india.

Want to know more than almost the link between emotions and civilisation in advert? Click here to go far bear on.