WorldMarketer

Anyone working in the multicultural marketing space has seen how the Hispanic market has grown and developed over even the last 20 years. As Felipe Korzenny, author of the Marketing Trends in a New Multicultural Society blog and founder of the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication, points out in a recent post, marketers need to continue to keep their eye on the ball.

Because another change within the Hispanic audience is impacting how and how successfully we reach this audience. Once a population driven largely by immigration, the US Bureau of the Census point out that U.S. Hispanic market is today increasingly the product of U.S. births.

This is a significant change. While the older segment of the Hispanic population is 53 percent foreign born, among those under 18 years of age more than 90 percent are now born in the U.S. These numbers would suggest it’s time for multicultural marketers to learn how to speak to this emerging constituency.

The reality is that this growing U.S.-born audience will have a different relationship with the U.S. and U. S. products. Our job will be to determine what that relationship is and then filter that understanding through a respectful appreciation of their Hispanic roots. Only then can we hope to grow with them.

Darren Megarry

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For most companies, and you may be one of them, audiences are only growing more culturally diverse. The smart ones, the forward-thinking ones, always have an eye peeled for ways to meet these mounting translation and localization needs that don’t break the bank.

This can be a very difficult balance to maintain. But with increased demands often comes innovative strategies. Here’s something we routinely recommend at viaLanguage as one tool for meeting multicultural marketing needs, while keeping costs down: Combine your content management system with an online client portal.

The upside of such a move can be significant. Not only can this help you organize your translation efforts and track individual projects, it can also simplify the way you manage your content and billings. Experience has taught us that this streamlining of process can save up to 30 percent on future translations.

How? Well, for a long time, most content has been distributed on a range of different channels (e.g., software, help files, websites, hard copy), each with its own source formats. Conversion required all kinds of re-engineering, re-writing, and desktop publishing. This took time and drove costs up.

Moving to a portal helps you simplify that process to find new efficiencies. In the meantime, to see how a portal might work for you, take a look at our Online Language System.

Darren Megarry

viaLanguage

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Poise yourself for another tectonic marketing shift in 2010: the rise to prominence of mobile advertising. Though small at present, analysts such as Morgan Stanley have taken a distinctly optimistic stance on mobile computing’s growing impact.

JiWire, leading mobile audience media company, has identified five important trends to look at when addressing your marketing efforts:

1. On-the-go lifestyles—The dramatic growth of portable, personal devices (e.g., laptops, smartphones, Kindles, netbooks, etc.) is transforming the media and advertising market.
2. Increased connectedness—Digital, mobile, and digital-out-of-home channels are converging, and keeping these channels separate for ad-buying purposes will become increasingly irrelevant. Audience segmentation will figure big.
3. It’s about the audience—Mobile advertising is mimicking what happened online. With mobile marketing, it will become less about the device and more about the audience. And that is nowhere more true than with multicultural audiences.
4. Location, location, location—Location-based advertising is fast becoming more mainstream as it provides marketers a source of new and very relevant information about its audience.
5. The engagement metric—Brands will need to focus on getting their audience to engage with their products as part of the advertising experience. Cost per engagement will become a more important success metric.

We’re not there yet. For example, it remains difficult to place ads across multiple devices or OSs. But it’s coming. And chances are good that your international audiences will be waiting on the other line to hear from you.

Darren Megarry
viaLanguage

http://www.marketingvox.com/5-signs-of-mobile-advertisings-coming-dominance-046137/

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After the Super Bowl and all the hype around the event and the ads, it’s hard to imagine anything to top it. But 2010 year will be marked by two monumental sporting extravaganzas that could very well make it seem just a quaint distraction. I’m talking of course about the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, and the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

Given the decidedly international makeup of the fans of both events, it will be interesting to see how multicultural marketers create, contextualize, and deliver their messages. In the category of “think big,” consider one tactic Anheuser-Busch is poised to use.

All signs point to the beer titan unveiling a World Cup-themed Big Brother-like reality show for the event. AB is seeking a fan of each of the 32 competing teams to represent their country in South Africa, where they will be welcomed, so the ad reads, by “luxurious accommodations, thrilling excursions, and the opportunity to have the kind of access few fans ever have.”

The World Cup is seen as a crucial marketing platform for the company, which seeks to achieve the kind of global reach Coca-Cola enjoys. It’s too early to say if we’re likely to see Ghanaians or Brazilians cracking open a Bud, but letting a fan native from those countries do the selling could score big.

Darren Megarry
viaLanguage

http://adage.com/globalnews/article?article_id=141984

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People have been dreaming about the great China market since the days of Marco Polo. But few other places seem to pose the cultural challenges that marketing to China involves. In a recent post on the AdAge blog, P.T. Black suggests rectifying some China misunderstandings is a good start. Here’s a quick cheat sheet:

1. China is America in the 1950s.
This, says Black, is an oversimplification that ignores China’s size, complexity, and global reach.
2. China’s public data are unreliable.
Improvements in publicly available information for things like urban demographics are making this a non-issue.
3. China’s Internet is like that in the rest of the world.
Google for one knows this isn’t true. To truly reach this audience requires learning the unique tools the Chinese use.
4. Chinese consumers are split between urban and rural.
What really matters, Black points out, is your audience’s access to a cultural center like Beijing or Chengdu.
5. China’s regional differences are as big as Europe’s.
While climate makes for distinctions, Chinese have more in common than do European nations.
6. China is rapidly Westernizing.
Modernizing, definitely, but a good case can be made that it’s actually ushering in a renewed focus on Chinese culture and that of North Asia neighbors such as Japan.
7. Chinese youth are divided into tribes.
True to a degree, Black concedes, but the divisions and brand differentiations can be hard to discern.

If you’ve got your eye on the China market, do your multicultural marketing a favor and ensure it’s founded on the real China.

Darren Megarry
viaLanguage

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If you’re still clinging to the idea that it’s business as usual out there when it comes to marketing, Christine Huang and Ozioma Egwuonwu of the AdAge blog make a great case that you might want to rethink that. Specifically, we’re talking about the role culture increasingly plays in who we reach out to and how we do the reaching. Below are exhibits A through F.

Simply consider the numbers. By 2042, non-Hispanic whites are expected to relinquish their position as the dominant ethnic group in the U.S. As a result, Huang and Egwuonwu call your ability to think outside traditional segmentation models and practices a “business imperative.”

That means that what we now call multicultural marketing is likely to become, simply, marketing. As Huang and Egwuonwu point out, the day may even come when a CCO, or Chief Cultural Officer, will become a necessity for companies.

One way this emerging cultural quotient is already manifesting itself is in the mainstream adoption of niche cultural branding. Think about our growing familiarity and acceptance of ingredients, foods, and products associated with other cultures. Items like kombucha, acai, shea butter, maté, and bubble tea are just a few examples.

Sought out and delivered by established global brands, these cross-cultural connections will cease to seem unusual or alien and will serve to enhance growth and promote greater choice. While culture has always been important to marketing, it has become in this era of globalization a bona fide necessity.

Darren Megarry
viaLanguage

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Do you sell beauty products? Do you sell them in Spain? Well, depending on what kind of products we’re talking about, you could find yourself on the wrong side of the law thanks to a possible government ban on advertising certain products and services before 10 p.m.

The legislation is a response to the growing number of eating disorders in Spain, while also seeking to bolster the mental health of young women fed a steady diet of “advertisements for things that encourage the cult of the body and have a negative impact on self-image.” The lower chamber of Spain’s parliament has already passed the law, and the upper chamber is expected to ratify it soon, though it’s not clear when it would go into effect.

If put into law, it would mean ads for diet products, some beauty treatments, and plastic surgery would be treated as more dangerous for young people than alcohol, which can advertise beginning at 9 p.m. It would also impact the bottom line of the beauty and hygiene segment, which is the third-biggest TV spender in Spain.

Part of developing an effective multicultural marketing campaign is understanding the challenges you are likely to face communicating with that particular audience. Sometimes they are cultural; other times they can be political. In either case, failure to consider such issues can render your proposed effort ineffective, and maybe even illegal.

Darren Megarry
viaLanguage

http://adage.com/globalnews/article?article_id=141610

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As we regularly explore on this blog, getting access to quality, up-to-date localized content can be a challenge, not to mention costly. At viaLanguage, we are always looking for ways to smooth the process so as to help our clients better meet the needs of those they serve.

So, we were excited this week to take a great step in that direction with the announcement of a new partnership with Prolifiq. Devoted to helping sales professionals use digital content in their communications, Prolifiq will work with viaLanguage to do the following

1. Reduce the time for translated content to reach the hands of global sales professionals.
2. Provide critical measurements of how localized assets accelerate the sales cycle.

A feature of that partnership will include combining our Online Language System (OLS) with Prolifiq’s Content Performance Index (CPI), which provides companies with the data to know which translated content resonates with local sales teams and customers. This will speed turnaround time and help us deliver skilled translations for each solution needed.

Our set of online translation and localization services is designed to meet the needs of today’s accelerated, cross-cultural business environment, and the way we look at it working with Prolifiq is a perfect complement to that goal.

To learn more about the partnership with Prolifiq, take a look at our Feb. 8 announcement.  You can learn more about Prolifiq at their website: www.prolifiq.net.

Darren Meggary

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As Chinese New Year approaches (Feb. 14 in case you didn’t know), Home Depot Canada is preparing to roll out its first multicultural campaign targeting its Cantonese-speaking market. Focused on the large Cantonese population in Richmond, B.C., the initiative is doing a lot of things right.

According to Peg Hunter, vice president of marketing and communications for The Home Depot Canada, “By reaching out to a group of consumers that we haven’t directly communicated with before, and doing so in their native language, we hope to build strong relationships with the local Cantonese-speaking community while giving them the confidence to invest in their most important asset—their homes.”

The campaign includes print, TV, in-store signage, radio, and in-store events like do-it-yourself workshops. But the real key is Home Depot’s awareness of and sensitivity to Chinese culture, and specifically the traditions underlying Chinese New Year. This has led to incorporating traditional Chinese artwork, commercials in Cantonese, and free traditional Cantonese swag like personalized Fei Chun banners with messages of good luck and Lai See red envelopes.

Multicultural marketing has become a necessity for virtually any company looking to remain competitive. The crucial piece, thoughtfully demonstrated by Home Depot, is to create the campaign inside an understanding of the culture rather than adapting it to “fit” that audience.

Darren Megarry
viaLanguage

http://multiculturalmarketing.com/

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Twitter. It’s an expression of the pace of the modern world that this microblogging tool, only a couple of short years ago a run-of-the-mill verb (to utter a succession of small, tremulous sounds) has become a globally recognized communication vehicle.

Recently, with the devastating earthquake in Haiti Twitter again found its way into the headlines as the tool became a means for connecting with those outside the country. But Haiti didn’t even crack the top 20 Twitter countries as recently identified by Sysomos.

The top 5 as revealed by that survey include:

• United States
• UK
• Brazil
• Canada
• Australia

The study also found something rather unexpected for many communication practitioners: Very few Tweeters care very much about identifying their geographical location. Almost no one uses the Twitter feature designed to do just that. A mere 0.23 percent of Tweets are tagged with geo-location reference points.

That news is both exciting and confounding. On the one hand, your Twitter communications are welcomed across borders. The complication is it can be exceedingly hard to know how to effectively speak to a single targeted audience.

Darren Megarry
viaLanguage

http://www.adpulp.com/archives/2010/01/today_in_twitte_98.php

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