It’s important to understand your target audience with every marketing campaign, but that importance grows even more significant when you are planning a multicultural marketing initiative. Whether you’re working on a multinational project or simply trying to reach different demographics in the same city, learning cultural competence will help you to successfully and tastefully reach your target market.
What Is Cultural Competence?
Cultural competence centers on taking the time to understand the unique quirks, associations, and beliefs that each culture has. This goes beyond a surface-level understanding of what language is most common or the population’s demographics, into the stories that are told generation after generation and how people perceive themselves.
For example, many Western countries see the number 13 as a sign of bad luck, but not all see Friday the 13th as especially ominous. Instead, in many Latin American countries, Tuesday the 13th seems more risky. An ad that refers to scary stories surrounding Friday the 13th might do well in the U.S., but would not resonate the same way with Mexican viewers.
To avoid a marketing flop, or worse, a multicultural marketing fail like Pepsi’s infamous Kendall Jenner ad, it’s important to take your time and build a fleshed-out understanding of the cultures your business operates within. To do so takes thorough research, brainstorming, collaboration, and taking the time to let ideas sit with you for a bit before you take action. It’s not an easy task, but done well, it can drive excellent results.
One of the best ways to build an understanding of effective culturally competent marketing is to learn from those who have done it before. Here are some companies that have built successful marketing campaigns with cultural competence in mind, and why we think they did so well.
McDonald’s: Country-Exclusive Menus
McDonald’s has been a staple for decades, first in the United States and then in many other countries, spreading across every continent except Antarctica. Part of the reason they’ve successfully expanded across so many countries and cultures is because they don’t offer the same menu to each market. Instead, they tweak their menu to match the preferences of each market they enter.
For example, while a beef patty is an essential component for several menu items in the United States, McDonald’s does not sell beef products at their restaurants in India. That is largely because of the popularity of Hinduism, which considers cows to be a holy animal. Instead, they prioritize offering meats other than beef and a wide variety of vegetarian items to cater to the beliefs and dietary preferences of India’s population.
Another staple menu item at many McDonald’s restaurants is their spicy chicken McNugget’s, but if you order those outside of your home country, you may notice they have a very different flavor. That’s because they modify the recipe to match different cuisines’ definitions of spicy by including Thai chilis in Thailand and offering garlic pepper spicy nuggets in Japan.
Other markets get items all their own that do not exist in any variation in other markets, like McSpaghetti, which is sold in the Philippines and one location in Orlando, Florida. Another country-exclusive item is the McVegan, which is permanently available in Sweden and Finland but nowhere else.
Locally-focused menu items like these make up about 30% of McDonald’s total sales, making them an important part of McDonald’s’ marketing strategy and overall cross-cultural success. They’ve successfully translated their menu and marketing into a wide variety of countries without losing their fast service and classic golden arches that make them recognizable, no matter how far you are from home.
Vaseline: See My Skin Ad Campaign
Vaseline focuses on offering skincare products for people of every age and ethnicity. From their classic petroleum jelly to their more modern Radiant X Firm line, their commitment to effective, affordable products is part of what makes them shine. Because of this, they decided to target one aspect of systemic racism in dermatological care with their See My Skin campaign.
Many dermatological issues only become noticeable when skin is visibly changing, such as irritated, bumpy, or flaky skin. This makes image references important both for laypeople as they try to figure out what is happening to their body and for doctors as they try to diagnose and treat various skin conditions. However, less than 10% of image results for 71 common skin conditions featured people with dark skin, causing frustration in consumers about lack of representation and real medical difficulty if they were pursuing treatment.
They created an ad to bring attention to this issue, but they didn’t stop there. They also created a search platform specifically to help laypeople and professionals search for and find images of specific skin conditions on darker skin. This database empowered patients, with 48% of searchers taking action based on their search results.
This culturally informed campaign saw a problem impacting an underesourced group of people, took action to address that problem, then shared their solution with the general public. It was extremely effective and lead to millions of impressions, a 1,430% increase in people seeking dermatological care, and a gold prize at Cannes Lions 2023.
KitKat: Cute Culture Packaging Variations
Now, we get to treat ourselves to a cute example of culturally competent marketing: KitKat leaning into cute culture, also known as kawaii culture. This is one of the things that helped KitKat break into the Japanese market in the early 1970s. Their Japanese packaging centers on vibrant designs, often featuring animated versions of food associated with the flavor or popular characters.
In addition to localized flavors, such as matcha KitKats, they’ve collaborated with popular kawaii brands such as Sanrio, the creators of Hello Kitty. Another popular kawaii collaboration that KitKat has done for Japanese consumers is Rilakkuma, featuring the character on the package and creating a unique limited-edition flavor: hotcakes. The flavor fit perfectly with Rilakkuma’s fun, cozy branding and offered a fun novelty experience for fans of all kinds of KitKats. While these cutesy, pastel packages may not draw much attention in Western markets, they’re extremely popular in Japan, where kawaii has become a beloved aesthetic and cultural phenomenon.
KitKat also leaned into their name’s association with good luck starting in the late 1990s. KitKat sounds similar to the Japanese phrase “kitto katsu,” which is a positive phrase that usually translates to something along the lines of “surely going to win,” though the exact translation can vary. This association helped make KitKats a popular gift for people who are starting new ventures or working on exams in school, as they serve both as a good luck message and a sweet treat.
Drive Success with Culturally Competent Marketing
Building a culturally competent marketing strategy is an important part of seeing success beyond a single demographic, in a single location. By engaging in different subcultures and making sure your brand’s color scheme, design, and product are easy to translate into different areas, you can create even more loyal followers of your brand.
If you want to learn more about how to broaden your company’s horizons by marketing in more countries or to more cultural communities, check out Matcha Design’s course on culturally competent marketing.
