10 Proverbs of International Marketing 

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At a glance

International marketing is an art as well as a science. These ten proverbs are a vehicle to share what I have learned in my work in over 50 countries.

Introduction

“Don’t worry, we’ve used this method back home and we know it works. There’s no need to test it here when we’ve got five years of US experience behind us”.

Sometimes you need to be on the receiving end of this kind of attitude to realise what it feels like to impose it on the rest of the world. Many international studies are managed out of the UK, through multinational client companies, global research agencies and bespoke networks.

There are often compromises to be made; sacrificing consistency for expediency, flexibility for budget constraints and sensitivity for ease of analysis.

I will argue that carrying out valuable international research is an art, more than a science. The smart commissioner will appreciate that in the world of international research the brilliance is in sharing insights, not spreading the word.

Globetrotting

So far, I’ve carried out or commissioned market research in dozens of countries in every continent. There are surprising differences and surprising similarities between people. There are a hundred different ways to tackle an international research project, and no magic answer.

What I’ve put together here are a few observations – I’ve called them proverbs – that might help you to avoid some of the pitfalls and enjoy the journey.

Proverbs for the Art of Applied Insight

1. Big Daddy knows best?

Or not. A few years ago I was involved in a project to reintroduce LPG (bottled gas) in Vietnam. They’d had it before but not for thirty or so years. As thoughtful Westerners we thought there could be some – quite understandable – fear of the product. After all a pressurised metal container containing flammable gas is a strange thing to have in your house even if you haven’t had a war in living memory. So we set about doing some customer research in the market square in Saigon. The potential customers amazed us. They’d already bought their LPG cookers – from sailors travelling to other countries who’d bring them back to sell on the black market. They couldn’t believe how long it was taking the gas suppliers to catch up. And they were totally pragmatic about the safety hazards.

A classic example of us believing we were being thoughtful and helpful – while the customers were already three steps ahead. By all means travel with a heedful of relevant experiences and a heartful of wisdom. But don’t expect to know all the answers or you’ll be missing a trick.

2. Expect the unexpected

News travels fast these days. I’ve watched films in small run down cinemas in Latin America months before they’ve arrived in the UK. International brands and characters are copied quickly by local manufacturers hoping to dodge the copyright police. Developing markets have less resistance to new technology– they may have less to throw away in order to adopt it - so they can leapfrog. The discoveries can be completely different to what you’d expected from the comfort of your desk.

3. When to call a spade a shovel

I spent some time on a launch campaign for a broadband service in India. The local ad agency did an excellent job of developing customer understanding and had cut through all the techno-gabble of the initial brief to identify some human drivers for signing up to broadband. One of these was becoming part of the international scene, building networks and contacts and not just getting dumped with obsolete Western technology. Family contact was also very important, as so many Indian families are scattered around the globe but still want to keep in touch.

The final ads featured children at play to demonstrate the benefits of broadband. Some of the children were white and this caused an uproar in the politically correct UK head office. Luckily the Indian market research agency was fast, competent and cost effective. In a matter of days we were able to demonstrate that the desired values of international, state of the art and useful-to-me were demonstrated strongly by the campaign, and especially the ads featuring a white child.

4. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

One of the things that fascinates me about international research is the way customers use products differently. Just because the product manager in the UK has decided what they’re for doesn’t mean the customers will cooperate. They have their own ideas, and discovering those ideas might just unveil a whole new product application that would never have emerged from a brainstorm.

It’s tempting to “put the customer right” when the positioning or use of the product goes against the international strategy. Far better to embrace what they currently think and expand to include the original idea (if that makes economic sense).

Customers will of course do what they want to do – that’s what makes them so interesting. So don’t overestimate how much influence you can have in the short term.

5. Know thyself

As somebody once said to me about driving: “Everybody who goes slower than me is a dithering idiot, and everybody who goes faster is a dangerous lunatic”. Likewise, international marketing and research require a level of self knowledge and open-mindedness if the marketer is to develop useful insights about the customers in other cultures.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve listened to international research debriefs and been disappointed at how poorly the English have come out of it. But this isn’t the World Cup, this is business. If another market is doing something better, then that’s a great opportunity to learn something new. We need to get over any feeling of threat. Be an observer not a patriot.

6. The best is not always the best

I sat watching focus groups in South America. The group were arranging product on the table. My client’s product was among the dozen packets. They put them in groups – “these are rubbish”, “this is a traditional product you can rely on”, “these are good quality products” and so on. They picked up our product “oh well, that’s different isn’t it, that’s in a class of it’s own, you’d have to stand it on top of these other ones, it’s head and shoulders above the rest”. Fantastic news. Especially as the next three groups independently did exactly the same. What more could you want?

“So which one do you use?” asked the moderator. Very few of them picked the “star” product. The moderator asked why they didn’t buy it if they believed it was best. “Oh it’s too good for us,” they explained modestly. “That stuff’s not for the likes of us, we just use the ordinary one.” It wasn’t even the price that was putting them off, it was the quality.

That research was the wake up call which later led to a product positioned for the mainstream, not just the elite. With the result not only of selling well itself – but also increasing sales of the original “star” product as more customers decided they were “allowed” to use it.

7. Blood is messier than water

A popular short cut for research is to use internal sources. Of course employees, distributors, franchisees and front line staff are an excellent source of information – they’re closer to the customer and more likely to know what trends are emerging. They also have vested interest in change, or maintaining the status quo which makes it necessary to consider all of their input in the context of their role in the market. They are unlikely to be totally objective or unbiased in their feedback or the examples they choose to prove their point.

The reason the middle men and women have become so important is often because the supplying company has delegated the customer to them. Market research is a key opportunity to get back in touch with the end user and find out what really makes them tick. Brands have been described as a way of “reaching over the retailer to tap the customer on the shoulder”. By the same token, well structured research is a way to reach over these guys and listen to what the customer is saying.

Often the very process of listening to one group of customers after another is enough to develop new insights into market dynamics and patterns that can usefully be identified to better predict the effect of marketing activities.

8. Travel broadens the mind

At least it can, given half a chance. We all know some professional travellers who shuttle effortlessly from airline lounge to 5 star hotel, seeming hardly to notice which country they’re in; dismissing any scheduled time to see the local market is sightseeing and way beneath them.

An international researcher who’s prepared to get their hands dirty is in a completely different proposition. It’s an easy thing to check out when you’re identifying which company you want to use. Look for somebody who relishes the unexpected, who loves to learn, who is genuinely interested in the country they are visiting. If they value the respondents, they’re much more likely to get useful information from them. They’re also more likely to remember previous visits – with your products or somebody else’s – and make connections that can be enlightening.

You need a researcher who is happy with fuzzy logic, who can live with uncertainty, who is open minded about the customer and flexible about their lost luggage. Trust them to improvise and you may reap unforeseen rewards.

9. There’s more than one way to skin a cat

Local staff in local markets may well have developed their own solutions to problems that have also been faced in other markets. Any solution that works is worthy of attention, and even the most unorthodox approach may contain a gem that can help everybody. And in a different sized market to the UK it may be perfectly feasible to phone every business in the yellow pages – I’ve done it more than once.

The greatest brands are confident enough to consider all ideas – they understand their proposition well enough to know what is flexible and what has to remain solid.

10. Look behind the mask

Lastly, it’s been said before, but just a reminder that behaviour is different. I’ve watched research groups in Brazil and been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm for the concept. “Hmm, not sure they liked it” said the moderator later to the client. “You’ve got to be kidding, they were bowled over”. “No, they just do that anyway, but they weren’t really engaged”. The opposite can happen in Japan or Holland. So you need an interpreter – not just for the language barrier, that’s relatively easy to overcome, but to help you make sense of the cultural differences.

We’re all the same – but different

In conclusion, people’s basic needs are the same everywhere, and in general we shuffle our way up Maslow’s hierarchy in a similar fashion. The differences are in how things are expressed and the market context. Sophisticated advertising may be a wow in London and be totally misunderstood locally. We don’t know best, we only know some stuff, just like the people we are working with locally. A brilliant international project manages to harness the strengths of both. Thinking and acting locally and globally.

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This page last updated 09/08/2005