Nick Karoglou is Vice President, Head of Communications and Corporate Affairs at ACI Worldwide.
Today’s economy is truly global, and your brand messaging must be, as well. But when your business operates across different continents and cultures, it can be difficult to create consistent messaging that still resonates with all those diverse markets. Too often, brands make the mistake of homogenizing and sanitizing their messaging until it’s so diluted that there is no uniqueness left, neutralizing its power.
It is possible to create core messaging that appeals to different audiences without losing the authentic brand story, but achieving this requires mobilizing regional talent, embracing a global perspective and coming equipped with a lot of empathy.
The Culture-Centric Curse
People have assumed that their group is the “central” or “main” group since prehistoric times. This is evident in how many traditional cultures around the world call themselves something that translates to a version of “the people” or “the first people.” In-group bias is a natural human phenomenon in which the community a person belongs to is viewed as better or more important than others.
We’d like to think we’re more evolved than this today, but sadly, this isn’t the case. This inwardly focused bias shows up in the way many companies plan communications in other countries. Think about your company attempting to market to the Middle East or Asia/Pacific. Depending on how you draw the barriers, there are over 50 different countries and languages included in Asia and the Pacific Islands. Each of those countries has a different economic environment, technical landscape, regulatory system, political climate and culture. For example, Chile is wildly different from Columbia, but in too many corporate communications plans, they’re both lumped into “Latin America” and left with the same strategic and tactical considerations.
A vast amount of global conglomerates are American, so the business language of the world is English. As Americans, that makes us lucky. But we can’t apply American standards and practices of communication to the rest of the globe. For companies to expand into new foreign markets, localized messaging is key. Here are some tips to help you hold onto your brand’s authenticity while creating messaging that resonates with the markets you’re targeting.
1. Maintain a strong connection with your regional teams. Your comms team at home is great for crafting corporate strategies and messaging, but it can overlook the cultural nuances that will make or break your communications plans abroad. I’ve been leading global teams for over a decade, and there is nothing more valuable to a comms department than a regional “boots on the ground” team. Regional teams understand the local culture, regulatory environment and economy intimately. In addition to informing decisions about messaging, regional teams are on the front lines to spot opportunities or emergencies bubbling up that the headquarters team wouldn’t know about.
2. Tell one story to maintain credibility. Credibility is at a premium. With the visibility and immediacy of today’s hyperconnected world, companies that say one thing here and another in a different part of the world will inevitably get caught, which can damage the brand’s reputation. As mentioned above, the corporate comms team and regional teams should be in close contact to make sure the brand message is clear and complementary across markets. Imagine that the brand message is a map, and each culture is looking at that map from a slightly different angle.
3. Understand the problems facing global regions. One market may have more issues with fraud, and another may struggle with regulatory compliance or cross-border payments. Whatever problems the region is facing, your communications plan should take these into account. Your corporate persona isn’t just addressing customers, it’s addressing every stakeholder, including applicable regulators and communities.
4. Connect with local communications and PR agencies. Regional agencies will have connections with the media and understand the communications priorities in foreign markets. These agencies should be running your communications in the regions, as these campaigns can be highly complex, and it’s often ineffective to attempt to run campaigns from across the globe.
5. Dismantle stereotypes. Working in other countries opened my eyes to aspects of culture I never would have understood living in the U.S., and it’s helped me tremendously when working on communications in different countries. If you can hire globally experienced people, do it. Working with in-house employees who understand global cultural differences will go a long way toward unraveling stereotypes and assumptions that can be detrimental to your brand identity and messaging.
Communicating Effectively Takes Empathy
At the core, business and communication are all about relationships. Communicating effectively with stakeholders–no matter where they are–requires the ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes. This takes empathy. Learn about the unique cultures where your company does business–their history, cultural heritage, challenges and political environment–and filter your messaging through those perspectives. Your communications will be more impactful for you, more meaningful for them, and will lead to the compelling and humanized brand messaging your business needs to thrive in today’s market.
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