Cultural Mismatch

This article tries to take on Multi national brands coming to India with their own brand culture which is a reflection of there country of origin. This brand culture which is projected via advertising often is not in sync with Indian culture. Here we shall also look at foreign brands which came to India and adjusted itself to the local cultural conditions. Please remember I am referring to the cultural aspect that is not visible so easily.

P.S:This section is heavily influenced by Kapferer’s Brand identity Prism Model .

I think culture has a very subtle aspect to it. It is not something that we can really list; it’s in the background. It is a nuance, an art, a minefield, depending on how we look at it. But it is a very sensitive issue. Maybe we can’t write a rational chapter on it, but we have to know if it fits or not for the sake of your survival.

The culture influences infiltrates into the brand. For example, Mercedes reflects German values. Some brands promote individualism; some brands talk about collectivism. Some brands reflect their country of origin—Coca Cola, for instance, is all about America. When we talk about brand culture, we also talk about how brands help change society. A brand has an internal spirit that echoes its personality, culture and self-image. When an ad agency gets the brief on the brand, then they define its DNA or the genetic code which decides its personality and the way the brand behaves. After getting the DNA right, the brand owner indoctrinates the brand with his own culture and imbues his own value systems in it. Unlike the other dimensions, culture is something that the brand develops over time. It comes from the person who starts the brand. And then it does things that give the brand a particular culture. For instance, Tata is a brand that stands for India. It was created by one person who imbued it with his values which are now being carried on by the third generation. Thus, the culture of a brand goes beyond mere physicality and has to evolve over the years. If we talk about brand management as a job, where we cannot leave anything to chance, I would rather say that even the cultural part has to be imagined. Nike’s ‘Just do it’ surely hasn’t surely just come in without any thought about the brand culture. If we take the instance of a multinational personality like Pillsbury we’ll see that there is a lot of method to the madness. Pillsbury is a food brand that began in the US in 1869. A study conducted in 1996 indicated that the awareness of Pillsbury in India was zero. No one knew about the brand and here it was aspiring to enter the Indian kitchen. Hence it was imperative to develop a culture for Pillsbury in India. Pillsbury in US started as flour, but today, with its baked foods, it is all about moms pleasing their family, it’s all about reunion and warmth and togetherness and how bread is the staff of life. It was found that those values are very true in India because when a mom puts a roti on a table she is putting a bit of herself into the roti. This lead to the decision of not talking about modern milling technology but to celebrate the chakki and tradition. Our brand mascot, the dough boy, bridged the rest of the gap...he existed to help moms and provide cheers in the kitchen. He is the face of brand and is the personification of what the product does. He allows the traditional Indian woman to live up to her traditional image, using modern means. “The Indian market is evolutionary but not revolutionary, and Indian women are not yet ready for revolution in food. If we are talking about food in the context of home, we will have to be extremely sensitive to culture”.

The cultural aspect is even more important in services. For example the Nabil Sultan,the general manager for Emirates Airlines based in India, says, “we look at the brand culture in all our services. We fly to fifty-odd destinations and every time we venture out into a new market, we take a detailed look at its cultural aspects and values in order to get closer to the people. For example, last September after we started flying to Chennai, we found that the city is famous for its traditional dance. So we came up with an ad campaign that featured Bharat Natyam and it was a success. With our forthcoming campaign projecting NRIs who live abroad and parents who go to visit them, we are striving to take our brand closer to the Indian people”.

Here I would like to take a look at brand culture from two perspectives: -

i. How does a local culture influence a brand?

ii. How does a brand impose the said culture on different societies and reflect a specific local culture?

To explain the above two first point I would like to give example of McDonald. At McDonald it is not just the marketing guys or the advertising guys managing the McDonald’s brand. It is as much about the operational guys, back office guys, legal guys and everybody else. At McDonald’s, the whole concept is to be childlike and build a culture that makes everyone smile. Even a 60-year old should be able to discover a youthful spirit when he is with McDonald. The sitting density in the restaurant (two-seaters for college students and six-seaters for families), the menu, the affordability and quality of the product should be at par with the choice of the masses that are been catered to. In the South-East Asian markets, McDonald’s is a family restaurant. But if you go to the US, it is just McDonald’s. Since Indian society is family-oriented, it is positioned as a family restaurant. Survey in India suggested that the people here want McDonald’s to serve something that is not available anywhere else but at the same time is also distinctly Indian in terms of taste. Thus, McDonald’s menu had to be tailored accordingly. The philosophy behind McDonald is quite simple—be global but act local, as Manvendra loves to put it "glocal". Another product which explains the phenomena well is Colgate. Indian consumers do not treat Colgate as an American brand. The product has the advantage of being in the country for the last 60 years. Let me cite the example of brand which was re-engineered , Colgate Dental Cream (CDC). Pepsodent had eaten away into the shares of CDC, and the brand was in dire need of re-engineering. But while doing so, the core identity of CDC should also was to be mentioned. The brand did not fall into the usual trap of making itself more trendy and modern. The brand was modernized but stuck to the values the brand stood for—reliability and reassurance—the values with which Colgate has always identified itself. The then campaign running in India, ‘Meri big super shakti meri big suraksha’, was essentially very Indian. And yet, it was no different in its core essence, in its core emotions from the Colgate that talks in Philippines, Brazil, New York, London or anywhere else. Tropicana Orange juice in India is another case in example. India is a country where we don’t eat too much fruit and don’t drink anything out of a pack, since it is supposed to contain colors and additives. Moreover, Indian consumers prefer to drink sweet juices and Tropicana orange juice is not sweet but slightly sour. Thus, comapny had manifold problems on their hand. FCB-Ulka now draft-FCB, the advertising agency handling the brand decided to carry the taste as the differentiating factor and called it ‘the taste of good health’. The taste of good health isn’t necessarily delicious. Go ahead and enjoy it. This worked wonders, and Tropicana is doing extremely well. This idea suited Indian consumers, who prefer things fresh. Thus, while carving out the strategy for Tropicana, it had to overcome a lot of cultural barriers. Nowhere else in the world is Tropicana marketed as ‘the taste of good health’.

Breakfast cereals are another interesting category especially in India. Here is how one advertising professional defined Indian Culture “There is no such thing as culture in India—cultures are more appropriate. India is more like a continent than a country. North India is as different from South India as France is from Germany. You have to adapt the product to regional preferences, especially in case of food. I think the most remarkable achievement for our country is that we have been able to integrate such diversity. If America is a melting pot where a number of cultures have come in and have formed one khichdi, India is a thali where everyone retains his or her unique identity and everyone contributes to the full meal. So there are all these little katoris, which add their own flavour, which are unique and distinct but still are a part of the same meal. It is critical to recognize that there is a massive regional diversity in India and your products have to be catered and designed for regional preferences.” It is a fact that breakfast habits of Indians die hard. We like hot and savory breakfasts—garam nashta. And Kellogg’s is cold and sweet. Breakfast cereals have a lot to do with the local food habit. , Kellogg’s actually tried to say that parathas are too heavy. It just backfired. Because people just did not want to hear that Indian food was bad. Well Kellogg can keep trying with the kind of marketing budget it has and ofcourse it will succed as our lifestyle is more or less becoming american.

There is a second aspect of Brand culture as well. When I talk about brands coming from a culture I am talking about those brands that take pride in coming from a particular culture and market them without trying to dilute that theme. Singapore girls of Singapore Airlines always remind us that they are from nowhere else but Singapore. Gucci shoes always strive to project its Italian origins. Mercedes signifies the precision of German engineering. Do we have of anything like that from India? Yes. For instance, think of Basmati rice. It reflects India’s 5000-year-long culinary tradition. Brands like on brands like Red Label Tea is very much Indian in its nature. In India tea is more an emotional drink than anything else. Like the mother, who plays a pivotal role in India, tea brings everyone together.The personality of a mother was slapped on Red Label Tea with its ‘Jiyo mere lal’ slogan. Another brand is Amul. Amul was born in the villages of India and it went to create `The taste of India’. It embodies the cultural values that are unique to India, and no festival can really be complete without a little bit of Amul in it.

We tend to adopt all new products after Indianising them a bit. Look at our festivals. Christmas here is really different from what it is in Europe. In fact in Calcutta, it is called Jeshu puja or Jesus puja. And this is, perhaps, true for other countries of the world also. And when we fail to do that we risk the product and moreover the brand extinction. When an international brand comes to India, it has to identify itself with the culture and its people. Pepsi came to India and started talking the lingo of the youth here. In fact, it started coining the lingo of the youth here. ‘Yeh dil mange more’ is about the ideology of the youth in India or anywhere else in the world where every one wants to juice the maximum out of life. Youngsters also identify themselves with Pepsi’s ‘Mera number kab aayega?’. So identification is very important. Brands can’t alienate themselves from the target audience.

I swear next time I wont bore you with such a long read, it just that this time the thought was too tempting.