Cross posted from The Buzz Bin
If you’ve ever worked on a branding project, you know that one of the keys to brand success is maintaining consistency across all communication channels. Your logo should appear in the same color, shape, format and font everywhere it is used, and all your communication materials – from your letterhead and annual report to your Facebook and Twitter pages – should employ the imagery, typography, key messages and tone of voice you’ve developed for your brand.
Most established brands (McDonald’s, Delta Airlines and Skype, for example) have a set of brand guidelines that document all these rules and help the individuals charged with representing the brand maintain its integrity.
Why the focus on consistency? Because, with enough repetition, your brand’s identity will begin to embed itself in the minds of consumers. However, if you frequently change the look and feel of your brand, those powerful visual and psychological cues will be lost, and your ability to forge an emotional connection with consumers will suffer.
Now, I am a person who likes to play by the rules, but, even for me, this issue of brand consistency begs the unavoidable question: If you want your brand to speak to consumers across a variety of cultures, do the same rules of consistency still apply?
Not exactly. According to Nigel Hollis, executive vice president and chief global analyst at Millward Brown Inc., the combination of product design, positioning and communication strategy that makes a brand successful in one country may have to be adjusted to build a connection with consumers in new markets.
And it’s not just a matter of converting your tagline from English to French or from Spanish to Chinese. As a French major, I learned that effectively translating something from one language to another is never as simple as consulting the dictionary. Accurate translation requires a solid understanding of both languages and both cultures involved. Without this deeper understanding, you’re likely to 1) end up with something like the descriptions on this “Chinglish” menu, and 2) lose the respect of your target audience faster than you can say “Bonjour,” “Nihau” or “Shalom.”
Brands are successful when they win consumers’ hearts as well as their minds, and in order to win someone’s heart, you must approach him or her in a way that is both comfortable and relevant.
Not surprisingly, Coke seems to have made as much headway as any global company in “translating” its brand across a variety of cultures. The company has done much more than just translating the text on its website from English to French, Japanese, German, etc.– it has built a separate website for each country that expresses the Coca Cola brand in terms relative to each unique culture. (Check out Coke Japan, Coke Sweden and Coke Russia for a few examples.)
If you compare the Coca Cola USA home page to the Coca Cola France home page, you’ll see that the two not only look different, they also act different.
The French version takes a more energetic, colorful approach while the American version evokes calm and simplicity. The former also features slightly different product messaging (Coca Cola light in place of Diet Coke) and highlights different brand engagement elements, such as co-promotions with Xbox 360 and mobile telecom provider Orange.
By partnering with a brand that has already staked a claim in the hearts of Frenchies–Orange – Coke is giving itself a leg up in becoming more approachable and meaningful to its target audience in France. The brand has taken a similar approach to reach Hispanic consumers in the U.S. Reinaldo Padua, assistant vice president of Hispanic marketing for Coca Cola North America, told Marketing News they have been able to increase sales among Hispanic immigrants by bundling beverages with popular food products like tortillas.
If you think about it, all brands – even local ones – live at the intersection of two different cultures: one of those buying the brand and that of the group responsible for its marketing. We marketers would do ourselves a favor by approaching brand strategy as an exercise in cross-cultural communication. Those of us who cultivate an understanding of our target audience’s needs, values and cultural norms will be better prepared to facilitate a connection between brand and consumer, and to prevent our brand promise from getting lost in translation.
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