Local Marketing in a Global World

Global marketing is a tricky feat. For years we’ve been trying to figure out “glocalization” or the concept of global marketing on a local level. While there are hundreds of case studies where local translations have gone wrong and missed the point culturally, we’re now seeing the reverse issue where local campaigns are receiving global backlash.

Last week there was outrage against Burger King’s Texican Whopper, "the taste of Texas with a little spicy Mexican." The commercial featured a tall cowboy with a short and round Mexican wrestler clad in an outfit resembling the Mexican flag. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwpNQWrD8PY&feature=player_embedded)

While this commercial might have been successful on the local level (I’m not sure locally what the impact was), what marketers did not expect was that the commercial would be heard about in Latin America. Almost immediately there was an uproar from Mexico and other Latin American countries. The Mexican ambassador to Spain, Jorge Zemeno, immediately publicly denounced the commercial.

What marketers and anthropologists alike are learning from case studies such as this, is that as consumers become more interconnected through social media and global brands, the reach of our work grows larger and larger. So how do we balance both sides of the global/local equation making sure that our campaigns are locally relevant but globally sensitive?

Crispen Porter in Europe created this commercial. I’d bet that had they consulted with their U.S. or Latin American counter parts, they probably would have been forewarned on the cultural sensitivities they might upset with this content. It’s a clear sign that Crispen Porter, a leader in ad creativity, is not a single global brand, but rather a collection of regional brands sharing the same name.

Sure, having anthropologists or other cross-cultural experts working with your teams is helpful, but co-operation is the name of the game in this global world. As global marketing brands, we must unify the delta between our regional affiliates. While this gets complicated in terms of P&Ls and they way each country’s office is run, brands that don’t form strong partnerships between their global offices are going to face blunders like this.

In the very least, when creating campaigns with references to other cultures, contact someone with some local expertise or run the concept by your colleagues in that country – hopefully they can tell you if you are going to hit a soft spot or not.