One billion people will have access to the Web by year’s end—and more than 70 percent of them will speak a language other than English. Think what this exponential leap in multi-cultural commerce is doing (and, more importantly, going to do) to world trade! And what that will mean for your organization.

The thrust of the current wave of U.S. globalism has been oriented toward off-shore production for manufacturing and retail supply chains. The next stage is already underway, the leveraging of these earlier investments for the sake of servicing the domestic markets in which they’re located. As this trend grows, a key question facing companies is whether they’re marketing effort is ready for multi-nationalism.

The ‘wild card’ these days, of course, is the Internet as it cuts ever more heavily into traditional channels. Correspondingly, it’s appropriate take an audit of their online initiatives. How closely are those campaigns tailored to the intended audiences, from both a language and cultural perspective? Do they take into account rules that may make it mandatory to provide information in multiple languages? Are they optimizing resources?

Moving beyond translation

Successful multicultural communication is more than just translating existing material from English. Rather, it must embrace the social nuance of separate markets. That entails culturally sensitive imagery, appropriate inter-personal communications dynamics, and the right jargon or slang.

This is easier said than done. Even in the United States, marketers too often treat as a low priority the nearly one-third of their audience (approximately 99 million people) that belongs to an ethnic group (the largest being Hispanics, African-Americans and Asian-Americans). Even when they try, they often miss the mark with messages that the supposed targets feel are “not for them.”

The challenge of constructing the right message in non-native cultures becomes even more complicated. But given the tremendous buying power of the non-English-speakers who currently drive nearly 70 percent of the world’s economy, smart world traders know they have to come up with solutions.

Why multicultural marketing?

To repeat, translation is merely one step in multicultural marketing. To be effective, there’s an action agenda which needs to be undertaken.

Good multicultural communication has to include the following components:

• Market Research: Starting with the end in mind, you have to understand your audience. Who are they? What are the relevant demographic issues? What are the specific ethnic-oriented issues to be sensitive to? Where do the unsuspected potential pitfalls lie?
• Cultural Adaptation: To deliver the message effectively, it is necessary to employ culturally appropriate communication techniques. A culture’s communication dynamics can be categorized in such terms as humor, grammar, analogies, active or passive voice, and symbolism.
• Localization: Texts transposed from one language to another involve not just translation but also unique locale-specific references and examples.
• Internationalization: Not everything is unique and a one-of-a-kind. There are elements that can be ‘internationalized’ and easily adapted to various languages and regions. Examples include allowing for multi-byte languages, input of international data such as times, measurement and currency and different sorting orders specific to other countries.
• Globalization: This term suggests the totality of the multicultural effort. ‘Localization’ needs to be integrated throughout a company—into marketing, sales and customer support—as an equal corollary to ‘Internationalized’ management processes and products.

An evolving marketplace

As global markets continue to expand along national and cultural lines, successful organizations have little choice but to add some degree of multicultural marketing to their strategy if they expect their messaging to be effective. Those who choose to do nothing to appeal to diverse cultures—or those who make a half-hearted attempt—could be looking at missed opportunities, damaged brands, poor relationships with existing customers, severe threats from competitors or even compliance issues.

However, marketers who learn how to “talk” to different groups usually report receiving higher response rates for marketing campaigns almost immediately. Again, take the U.S. as an example. A campaign aimed at the Hispanic community should know that nearly half the targets live in the western United States, in general they are younger than Anglos (median age is 26), and their households are larger. Moreover, this audience tends to be direct buyers by media, with direct mail and online purchases comprising well over 60 percent of total purchases. Younger Asian Americans, on the other hand, generally respond better to technology-based marketing, such as e-mail campaigns, blogs or Web-based advertising.

Such differences are writ large when it comes to transnational marketing. To build multicultural discipline into your marketing approach, begin by asking in each specific market what is the best way to communicate with this audience in order to build trust and loyalty.

This question is critical. One must go beyond raw census information to uncover socioeconomic and cultural information about their prospects. Even within single language groups there are significant differences in vocabulary, usage, and vernacular.

It may seem like an insignificant difference, but consider, for example, a word as simple as “insect.” It can have radically different meanings, depending on the audience. At the very least, a mix-up in translation could prove embarrassing. At the worst, it could irreparably damage an organization’s credibility with a particular group. Pepsico learned this the hard way when it advertised Pepsi in Taiwan with the ad “Come Alive with Pepsi.” The company had no idea that it would be translated into Chinese as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.”

Along these same lines, marketers will want to consider differences between generations within a culture. Successive generations use language and invoke images and social logic differently than do their elders. These variations must be taken into account.

Given such myriad factors to consider, it’s easy to wonder that any organizations succeed as multicultural marketers, but there are certainly some companies to emulate. For example, when Ford recently added the 2005 F-150 Lobo Edition to its line-up in Latin markets, the company was careful to ensure that “Lobo,” which means “wolf” in Spanish, would be properly received by multiple audiences. Moreover, the company launched the vehicle in conjunction with festive ethnic holidays and incorporated well-known local entertainers into the campaign.

Another success story is DAKINE, an industry leader in action board sports accessories for snowboarders, surfers, kiteboarders and windsurfers. As the popularity of their products expanded internationally, the company realized the importance of not only communicating key product information in the native language of the countries they serve, but also applying the appropriate cultural context, while preserving the consistency and integrity of the brand.

They came face-to-face with the need to simultaneously translate technical product information while blending its company story with the cultures of France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Japan. Specifically, DAKINE needed a way to convey its dynamic brand and product advantages and ensure they would not be “lost in translation.”

This proved to be critical in helping the company avoid cultural errors and keep the DAKINE brand consistent in its campaigns. For instance, translating the English word “girl” into German becomes “Mädchen” but, while technically correct, Mädchen is perceived as much less “hip” than just using the English word “girl.” That sort of oversight may seem minor, but for companies that are serious about maintaining the integrity of their brand, it’s a mistake that can potentially water-down the attributes that they’ve spent years building into the brand.

Multicultural marketing online

As more and more consumers move online, organizations should be taking a particularly close look at their Web initiatives. John Yunker, chief analyst at Byte Level Research, a consultancy specializing in Web globalization strategies, is already noticing increased activity. “I’m seeing a clear trend in terms of companies investing greater resources into Web globalization as a competitive advantage. Companies increasingly view Web globalization not as a luxury, but as a necessity.”

Web marketing adds a new layer of complexity to multicultural efforts, requiring multiple initiatives. Here’s what successful companies are doing well:

• They provide Web sites in multiple languages and for multiple countries, with easy access directly from the main page
• Each individual Web site contains images and content specific to the country and/or ethnic group at which it is targeted
• Individual Web sites map to the same look, feel and tone as the main corporate Web site—preserving the brand
• Despite wealth of content included in the Web site, each site loads quickly and is easy to navigate

Pulling it all together

Those organizations that see their multicultural approach to marketing as a strategic differentiator are already ahead. The tools are available, there are established best practices, and the talent pools and established methodologies in place. Technology is helping bring it all together into a single integrated effort. WT

Sidebar:
Cultural Adaptation

Sometimes it’s the seemingly little things that can come back to haunt your efforts. Although you’ve got an accurate translation, and you’ve done your homework on the localization side, there are some final pitfalls to be avoided. Cultural adaptation will help avoid a group of potential obstacles that can interfere with making a strong connection with your audience. A proper focus on cultural adaptation will help you avoid time spent on reworking and, more importantly, will keep you from wasting your efforts and losing credibility with your audience.

Content should be assessed for the following areas, which typically cause problems:

• Culturally inappropriate or confusing analogies, metaphors, puns, idioms and slang
• Cultural references that are inappropriate or could lose meaning (e.g., gender-specific roles, humor, ethnic, geographical, or historic references)
• Names and slogans that are culturally inappropriate
• Confusing graphics or icons
• Grammar issues (e.g., ambiguous use of direct and indirect objects, gerunds, nouns, adjectives, relative pronouns, questions in negative form, etc.)