Successful cross-cultural marketing
requires today’s organizations to be socially and culturally competent entities
with vast understanding of people, language, ethnicity, race, and other
demographic and sociocultural challenges characterizing institutions and
society. Companies must seek to bridge the gaps between people and their race,
culture, and other differences. This means hiring diverse value creators,
valuing social justice and equality, and keeping the focus on creating and
delivering superior value and satisfaction to all stakeholders regardless of
human social and physical characteristics. Business is all about acquiring,
growing, and retaining customers and catering to their differences as valuable
segments with unique and diverse needs.
Organizations should accept that all
instances of communication and interaction with stakeholders represent and
affect marketing as these serve to affect perception of customer value via Service,
Quality, Image, and Price (Weinstein’s SQIP Diamond). As business organizations
witness events like those in Charlottesville unfold, they must consider how
America’s current ethnic and racial challenges affect marketing communications
efforts and act in ways to become more ethically and socially responsible
marketers helping to address society’s causes and problems. Racial and ethnic
blunders in marketing communications are not new and have been influenced by
the types of events characteristic of Charlottesville, as well as deeper
historical and social-cultural prejudices we have been unable to overcome for
centuries.
While much of the blunders involving high
profile issues of race and ethnicity seem to occur with the type of marketing
communication known as advertising, they are not limited to that element of the
marketing communications mix. Here are some examples of marketing communications
blunders involving race and ethnicity:
1.
In
April 2002, Abercrombie & Fitch debuted a line of T-shirts using Asian
caricatures portraying Asian American oppression from the past as forced and
indentured laborers, mocked the Buddha, and depicting various stereotypes of
Asians. As a result of public outrage, the company had to recall the series of
T-shirts.
2.
In
August 2012, two models for Abercrombie & Fitch in South Korea took photos
of themselves posing with what is known as “Asian squinty eyes” to mock Asian
physical appearance, and this almost drove the company out of the market.
3.
In
August 2017, Google fired a software engineer, James Damore, after he wrote
what is regarded as an “anti-diversity” memo [“Google’s Ideological Echo
Chamber”] questioning Google’s diversity efforts, and in which, he argued that
the comparatively lower percentage of women in technical positions was a result
of biological differences instead of discrimination.
Long before Abercrombie & Fitch’s
sociocultural-ethnic and racially insensitive marketing, many big brand
companies experienced the negative consequences of not understanding how differences
in culture, ethnicity, race language, and other factors affect marketing and
reception to brands. Here are several examples:
1.
Pepsi’s
1960s “Come Alive! You’re in the Pepsi Generation” campaign which in the
Chinese market translated to suggest that Pepsi brought customers ancestors
back to life, something both offensive and impossible to Chinese customers.
2.
In
the 1980s, when KFC debuted in China, the company’s popular slogan
“finger-lickin’ good” was translated as “Eat your fingers off”.
3.
In
1992, Fiat, an Italian car manufacturer wanting to target modern independent
working women in Spain designed a direct-mail marketing campaign for its Cinquecento
hatchback by mailing out “love letters” on pink papers without indicating that
it was a promotional creative advertisement. As a result, this led to panic
among thousands of women with many refusing to leave their homes.
While we have made significant progress in
some areas as far as race and ethnicity issues are concerned, there is still
much to be done in terms of companies being more assertive and responsible
players in addressing today’s social pains. Unfortunately, there are still
companies that are feature racially insensitive marketing communications. For
example, Colgate is still advertising and selling “Black People Toothpaste” (Hei Ren Yao Gao) in Asia, and we still
see ethnic and racial undertones in movies and television advertisements.
Marketers must be knowledgeable and aware
of issues of race, culture, and ethnicity in both past and present contexts and
as a result, become more socially and culturally sensitive in their
interactions with customers and other stakeholders. Cross-cultural marketing
practices are important and companies and their leaders and managers need to invest
in responsible and respectful marketing communications. Events such as
Charlottesville can be used to educate employees on racial, ethnic, and
cultural awareness as they act as value creators and providers for their
companies. Moreover, companies expressing and showing solidarity on social
justice and equality is a major reputation or image-building strategy that can
lend support to such cause.
Image source:
Melaniemilletics.com, 2017
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Donovan A.
McFarlane, M.I.B., M.B.A., Ed.D., is an educator in the fields of Business
and Political Science. He can be reached at drd.a.mcfarlane@gmail.com
