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Culture: An indispensable factor to be considered for branding

Culture is the cumulative concept that encompasses knowledge, belief, customs, practices and
any other habits acquired by people as members of society. A culture operates primarily by
setting loose boundaries for individual behavior. Culture, in effect, provides the framework
within which individuals and households function. A major consequence of culture is its impact
on consumption patterns of individuals and institutions. Depending on the underlying cultural
philosophy consumers tend to follow certain consumption patterns. Successful brands have
been able to adopt their branding strategies in line with this dominant cultural philosophy and
weave their brands into the cultural fiber.

One of the underlying premises of branding is its ability to reduce customers’ search cost and
perceived risk by standardization of images, messages, communications, attributes and
features. As such brands generally strive to maintain their defining brand identity, brand
personality, brand images and brand elements across markets. This standardization which
forms the fundamental building block of a brand itself poses the first challenge in cross cultural
situations. Many a times, brands will need to adopt their offerings to different cultures and this
violates the standardization principle. Therefore deftly handling the standardization and
adoption issue becomes extremely crucial.

One of the biggest implications of globalization for brands seeking to expand to foreign shores
is the task of balancing standardization with customization. When some of the world’s biggest
brands expand beyond their home markets, they are tempted to repeat their tried and tested
formula in the new market as well. In fact this has been the path followed by many brands. The
assumption in such a case is that customers would be too eager to consume the great brand
because of its authenticity, heritage and associations. But this tendency is gradually changing as
global companies are learning about the unique needs of the customers in different markets
along with the pressures of lifestyle, economic and cultural conditions.

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Building successful local brands globally:

Understanding the culture of the country and making the brands to adapt to the culture is no
mean task. However, the companies which have done this successfully have reaped rich
benefits. Some of such brands and their success stories are discussed in the report.

Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL):

Unilever is a classic example of a global brand which has pioneered serving the locals with
products that address the local sensitivities. Unilever’s Indian subsidiary Hindustan Level
Limited (HLL) has been the leader in recognizing the tremendous opportunity lying at the
bottom of the pyramid – customer base that aspires to consume products but in smaller
quantities and at lesser prices. HLL literally invented the shampoo sachets – small plastic
packets of shampoo for as less as INR 1 (USD0.022). This became such a rage among the rural
consumers that many other brands started offering products such as detergent, coffee and tea
powder, coconut oil and tooth paste in sachets. Even though the unit price was higher, rural
consumers were able to afford to purchase the smaller quantity at their convenience.

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HUL’s LUX: The legacy of beauty:

LUX has always been positioned as the brand of

superstars. HUL was one of the first companies to realize
that nothing sells in India as much as bollywood. Thus Lux soap was first launched in 1929, with
Leela Chitnis as its brand ambassadors. Between 1930 and 2000 the brand has been endorsed
by leading female stars including Madhubala, Nargis, Sharmila Tagore, Juhi Chawla, Madhuri
Dixit and many others. Over the years it has been positioned as the epitome fo glamour. The
product has been positioned on the basis of ‘reference groups’ by using the celebrity popular at
that time. The communication strongly makes the common woman aspire to be like the
timeless beauties of silver screen. However, with the rising class of metro sexual men in India,
Lux did not hesitate to take Shah Rukh Khan as the brand ambassador.

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Mc Donalds’ happy meal makes the people happy across the globe:

Mc Donalds has always tried to adopt to the culture of the country that it entered in rather than
changing it. This is evident from the highly diversified menu they offer across the globe. The list
includes ‘Chicken Maharaja Mac’ in India, ‘Mc Homard’ in Canada, Koroko Burger in Japan,
‘Mc Pollo’ in Chile amongst others.

India is the only country in the world where beef is not offered at all.
India is the world's vegetarian paradise. Nearly all of the one billion people living here eat meat
only occasionally, or not at all. Beef never shows up on the menu. India is home to the Hindu
religion, which preaches non-violence. Believers fear the karmic consequences of harming other
creatures.

Some learn the lessons a hard way

Disneyland’s Euro journey

Disneyland launched Euro Disney and maintained its standard tried and tested formula with the
assumption that customers would seek the authentic Disney experience. But shortly into the
launch, Euro Disney was declared a failure. Of the many reasons that were attributed to Euro
Disney’s failure, the one that stood out clearly was Euro Disney’s lack of localizing the brand
experience. Euro Disney followed the brand policies to the word – English-only instructions, no
wine consumption on park grounds, high ticket prices, and standardized merchandise and food
items. This resulted in wide spread dissatisfaction among the customers. But Euro Disney was
just following the golden rule of branding – consistency in its brand elements.

Small is big for Honda

During 1950s Honda entered the US market with their large bikes as a direct
competition to ‘Harley-Davidson’, ‘Triumph’ and ‘Norton’ which were very well
established at that point of time. These motorcycles were majorly used by

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policemen and army men. The others who rode these bikes were not considered
to be of ‘good character’. This was significant challenge which the Japanese
company faced. The bikers had a negative image altogether, as they typically
wore black jackets and went around with names like ‘Hell’s Angels’ or ‘Satan’s
Slaves’ imprinted on their vehicles. Thus Honda’s 300 cc bikes could not make
their presence felt in the US.

However, Honda later realized what US actually required. People preferred small
bikes for personal short distance transportation. At that time Japan was already
into producing light weight two wheelers at a very large scale. And thus Honda
introduced a small 49cc bike called the ‘Super Cub’ in 1958 and this marked the
rapid growth of the Japanese company in the US market.

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Cross cultural blunders:

At times the language differences contribute to the failure of the brands which are successful
elsewhere. Few such instances are discussed below.

 ‘finger licking good’ is the slogan of KFC, but when they entered the Chinese market the
slogan became “eat your fingers off” to their horror.

 Microsoft Corp used photoshop effect in its commercial which turned out to be a
disaster. The photo concerned appeared in its original form on the Microsoft website in
the US and showed an Asian, an African American and a Causcasion woman. A Polish
version with the same advertisement replaced the African American man with a
Causcasion face. In the photoshop editing the person forgot to change the skin color of
hands and hence leaving the man with two different colors of skin. However, Microsoft
later apologized for its mistakes.

Conclusions:

1. Cultural differences impact branding: Cultural differences are indeed a major factor that has
an impact on the success or failure of a brand. As brands enter different cultures, it becomes
imperative for them to carefully tread the standardization-customization continuum wherein
they not only manage to retain the inherent brand identity which is the very reason for their
acceptance across markets, but also adopt the brand elements (images, advertising, channels,
and others) to appeal to the local tastes and preference of customers.

   2. Weave the brand into the cultural fiber: The increasing popularity of the Internet offers
brands a very powerful tool to involve customers and bring the brands closer to the local
culture by providing them a platform to interact with the brand in their (customer’s) terms.
Creation of online discussion groups, and online brand communities is a firm step towards co-

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creating brand value with the customers. By weaving the brand essence into the societal fiber,
brands can leverage cultural differences to their advantage.

   3. Understand the consumption patterns: Individualistic and collectivistic cultures tend to be

the two ends of a continuum. Individualistic cultures support customers to make consumption
decisions based on their personal choice, at an individual level. On the other hand, collectivistic
cultures support customers to make consumption decisions on a group level (family, extended
family, network of friends and even community).

These differences hold the key to many a branding strategy when entering new markets. Even
though globalization and integrated markets offer brands a very lucrative deal in terms of
untapped market potential, greater number of customers, and broader reach, it also poses
certain challenges such as cultural differences and the resulting consumption patterns. To
maximize the opportunities brands should be sensitive to the cultural subtleties and adopt
accordingly. Cultural differences can be morphed from a challenge to an opportunity when
brands learn from the many best practices in the industry and adopt their branding strategies
to adequately reflect the consumer preferences

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