Culture

Culture is said to be the way of life that a particular group of people follow. This relates to their ordinary everyday behaviour and habits; what their beliefs are, attitudes towards each other as well as their moral and religious beliefs.

Culture affects everything we do. This starts from relationships to how businesses from different cultures interact with each other. There is an understood framework when cultures interact with each other which is why people of the same native understand each other easily. Culture shocks can occur when cross cultural interaction occurs. A culture shock is a feeling of confusion felt by someone visiting a country or place that they do not know.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/culture-shock

The key to successful advertising is trying to convince people that a product is meant for them. By trying to make them feel that buying that certain product, they will receive a benefit which could be a lifestyle improvement, status, financial rise or even to help them generally (convenience). A thing to take note of is when advertising overseas, it is highly important to take note of the different values and views these people have. This makes it crucial that all cross cultural advertising campaigns have to have an understanding of what the culture is about.



Examples Include:
*Language - Here, slogans and company product names need to be focused on as they may seem offensive or confusing for the targeted culture abroad. A prime example of this is the launch of Ford's car, the 'Pinto' in Brazil. After sales had failed to rise, they then realised after research carried out that Brazilians did not want to be seen driving a car meaning 'Tiny male genitals'.



*Communication Style - Business advertising abroad need to understand the way that other cultures communicate and they way in which they do it.

*Colour, Number and Images - Some cultures have lucky colours (e.g. China's lucky colour is red and Japan's unlucky colour is black)and some colours mean importance or provide significance such as green for Islamic people.

It is said that a lot of hotels in the US or UK don't have a room 13 or 13th floor as it is seem as badluck. Also Nippon Ariways in Japan do not have the seat numbers 4 and 9. This is something businesses would need to take note of when it comes to launching a product abroad. This could mean packaging products in those numbers could prevent sales from rising as people will not purchase the product due to superstitious beliefs.

Images can also be sensitive to specific cultures. In Islamic countries, pictures of women in bikinis are highly offensive which could cause rage within the country.

*Cultural Values - Knowing cultural values are really important and must be analysed very carefully. A lot of countries are dominated by one main religion which means anything to offend them will not succeed in sales. Some countries are family orientated such as Japan and some Eastern European Countries; and some believe in the safety of animals and are against the capturing of stray dogs for example. Romania is one of these countries. Dogs roam freely around the streets and the locals love them. Therefore, releasing an advert which have anything to do with dogs and animal cruelty would not go down well. Countries where teamwork is valued; using the word 'I' would be seen as a negative.

http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/cultural-services/articles/cross-cultural-advertising.html



This advert is trying to show that Cadburys is a Fairtrade product. Sadly, it was accused of racism and received 29 complaints where African people felt it was demeaning.

Extract from a Brand Republic Article:

A spokesman for the ASA said: "Although the council acknowledges that Cadbury had used stereotypes in their ads, they felt that the stereotypes were not harmful or offensive."

The ad was created by Fallon, in collaboration with Ghanaian creatives, to celebrate the fact that Dairy Milk now only uses Fair Trade chocolate.

At the time the ad was released, Cadbury's marketing director, Phil Rumbol, said: "Music has always been a big part of Glass and a Half Full Productions and we were inspired by Ghana’s love of music so it seemed the perfect way to capture the spirit of the country was through a track.

http://www.brandrepublic.com/Discipline/Media/News/966122/Cadbury-Dairy-Milk-ad-cleared-racism/

Me, personally, I didn't think it was racist at all; but there are always people out there who see something out of nothing which is why it is important for businesses to be extra careful when it comes to advertising abroad or advertising about something abroad. This Cadbury's advert is a prime example.

This advert below on the other hand had doen really well incorporating culture with Hotels.



Obviously, with the stereotypes of Japanese and European; they had shown each of the dancers in a way in which they looked gifted. Just as the ballerina's foot goes down the word 'Precision' was said. This automatically shows the viewer the in-depth talent and precision these dancers have. It is as if these countries have all these features within them (making them seem unique and special) which in a way would compliment anyone from those countries.