A year ago, the UK Guardian newspapers ran a short article deconstructing a British TV advertisement for Strongbow beer. Watch the advert below, and then read the article. The BNP is the British National Party, a neo-fascist political party.
Archive for the 'Culture' Category Page 2 of 2
Economists use the term network good to refer to a product or service where one user’s utility depends, at least partly, on the utility received by other users. A fax machine is an example, since being the sole owner of fax is of little value to anyone; only when others in your business network also own fax machines does owning one provide value to you. Thus, a rational consumer would determine his or her preferences for such a good only AFTER learning the preferences of others. This runs counter to the standard model of decisions in economic decision theory, where consumers come to a purchase decision with their preferences pre-installed; for network goods, the preferences of rational consumers are formed instead in the course of the decision process itself, not determined beforehand. Preferences are emergent phenomena, in the jargon of complex systems.
What I find interesting as a marketer is that ALL products and services have a network-good component. Even so-called commodities, such as natural resources or telecommunications bandwidth, can be subject to fashion and peer-group pressure in their demand. You can’t get fired for buying IBM, was the old saying. Sellers of so-called commodities such as coal or bauxite know that the buyers make their decisions, at least in part, on the basis of what other large buyers are deciding. Lest any mainstream economist reading this disparage such consumer behaviour, note that in an environment of great uncertainty or instability, it can be perfectly rational to follow the crowd when making purchase decisions, since a group may have access to information that any one buyer does not know. If you are buying coal from Australia for your steel plant in Japan, and you learn that your competitors are switching to buying coal from Brazil, then there could be good reasons for this; as they are your competitors, it may be difficult for you to discover what these good reasons are, and so imitation may be your most rational strategic response.
For any product and service with a network component, even the humblest, there are deep implications for marketing strategies and tactics. For example, advertising may not merely provide information to potential consumers about the product and its features. It can also assist potential consumers to infer the likely preferences of other consumers, and so to determine their own preferences. If an advertisement appeals to people like me, or people to whom I aspire to be like, then I can infer from this that those other people are likely to prefer the product being advertized, and thus I can determine my own preferences for it. Similarly, if the advertisement appeals to people I don’t aspire to be like, then I can infer from this that I won’t be subject to peer pressure or fashion trends, and can determine my preferences accordingly.
For several decades, the prevailing social paradigm to describe modern, western society has been that of The Information Society, and so, for example, advertising has been seen by many people primarily as a form of information transmission. But, in my opinion, we in the west are entering an era where a different prevailing paradigm is appropriate, perhaps best called The Joint-Action Society; advertising then is also assisting consumers to co-ordinate their preferences and their decisions. I’ll talk more about the Joint-Action Society in a future post.
Following the US presidential election primary campaigns from afar, I have been struck, as have many people, by the great oratory of Senator Barack Obama. For those of us with experience in non-governmental sectors or in foreign-aid circles, his style of speaking is very familiar — it is the voice of a community organizer, creating self-awareness and encouraging group action, and doing so superbly! (As an aside, since the nuclear briefcase and the bully pulpit are pretty much the only real powers of a US President, character, judgment and oratory would seem to me far more important as criteria for assessment of presidential candidates than the details of their proposed legislative programs.)
In reading some of the commentary on Senator Obama’s important speech this week in Philadelphia on race, I came across this post by psychologist Drew Westen. In speaking about race relations and a US national conversation on race, Westen says:
“We can’t solve problems we can’t talk about . . .”
It is hard to emphasize just how deeply and profoundly American this view is. There are many cultures in which the majority of the population would take the precisely-opposite view — that we cannot solve problems we DO talk about, that solutions to difficult social or even personal problems can only be found by working in the background, behind the scenes, in the corridors of power rather than in public forums, where it is possible for solutions to be found and agreements reached without any loss of face. England, despite sharing a common language and a common political history with the USA, is one such culture, as are those of North and East Asia. Even when people suspect that open discussion may be needed to solve a difficult problem, they may still prefer to keep shtum, since the pain of enduring the problem may be far less than the pain of admitting its existence or of discussing it openly.
What is the relevance of this to business, I hear you cry out (or not, depending on your culture)? I have worked on multi-national business ventures where this particular cultural difference threatened to overwhelm any other profession-disciplinary, corporate or personal differences. In one case, a consortium of companies from the USA, Britain and Korea worked together on a joint venture where the Americans always tried to surface any problem and discuss it openly in the weekly project meetings. Both the Brits and the Koreans recoiled from this approach, and the two would often caucus together before project meetings to try to pre-empt any difficult discussions. I don’t know if the Americans on the project ever knew of the corridor-caucusing of their two partners, or why so many difficult matters were sent for “off-line” resolution, only to disappear or else be magically resolved, apparently without any discussion.
There are many wonderful qualities of American culture, and, in my opinion, openness and transparency are among these. But not everyone thinks so, and it would behoove us all in an age of global interactions and inter-dependence to recognize this.
POSTSCRIPT (Added 2008-03-21): It is also worth noting that some cultures may discuss problems publicly but only in elliptical or indirect terms. Shona culture (found in Zimbabwe and Mozambique), for example, has a highly-sophisticated use of metaphors, parables, multiple-meaning-layers, and even songs, as a means of somewhat open discussion of sensitive topics. The use of such sophisticated linguistic devices means that a speaker can intend that an utterance be understood differently by different audiences.
I was witness to a conversation this week between Japanese and Mexican colleagues who reminisced about their common experiences as teenagers in the 1990s, on opposite sides of the world, playing the same Nintendo games. I was reminded of a conversation I had once in a shebeen (a bar) in rural Zimbabwe in about 1985 with a black Zimbabwean mathematician about the many American TV series we had both seen growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, again in different hemispheres and neither of us in North America – Superman, Bonanza, The Mickey Mouse Club, etc. But it was not only American culture on our TV screens across the former British empire — we had both also seen the Japanese historical action series, The Samurai.
Apparently, Swedish furniture retailer IKEA has systematically applied Danish names to doormats and carpets, while keeping Swedish names for more expensive items of furniture. If this pattern of naming is systematic as claimed, then it is hard to see how it could be accidental or inadvertant. If the pattern was accidental, we should expect IKEA to issue a hasty apology for any unintended offence caused, to Danes or to others. Instead, IKEA went on the offensive, with a spokesperson saying:
“these critics appear to greatly underestimate the importance of floor coverings. They are fundamental elements of furnishing. We draw worldwide attention to Danish place names with our products.”
Whatever the perceived justification, insulting your customers can never be great marketing. One of the features of colonialism is a lack of appreciation for the feelings of the colonized. Hundreds of years of condescension are manifest in those three sentences. Danes have every right to be offended.
UPDATE (20081317): Spiegel Online have now retracted their original news story (the retraction is at the same address as was the article), although it is not clear from this retraction that either the original allegation against IKEA or the quoted response from an IKEA spokesperson are inaccurate.
. . . ladies and gentlemen. Our guest speaker has been unavoidably delayed. While we await his arrival, please watch this short video. It’s a re-creation of the titles to the movie “Star Wars”, as if done by legendary 60s designer Saul Bass: