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It's Not All Rocket
Science
By Michael Alan Hamlin
June 24, 2002
Marketing and brand development is
not rocket science, or so says Kevin Lane Keller (whose father is
a rocket scientist) of the Amos Tuck School of Business at Darmouth
College. He says, "Branding is not rocket science. It is just
as much an art as a science." That's an important observation
in the context of localization versus globalization in advertising.
Asian advertising "is not different, it's just culturally oriented,"
according to Don E. Schultz of Northwestern University.
For Schultz, Western advertising
is logical, process oriented, and "horribly dull and boring."
On the other hand, Asian advertising, he argues, is holistic. "Many
Asians believe everything is connected to everything else. From
feng shui to Zen, the view is that of the whole, not of the individual
pieces. How things and the world fit together. How they relate.
How they are seamless and consistent. And that I think, is reflected
in the Asian approach to advertising and promotion."
While Schultz shortly thereafter
comes dangerously close to falling from the precipice of Asian advertising
mythology ("the western world has 'contracts,' Asians have
'guanxi."), there is no arguing that Asian advertising is inherently
more esthetically pleasing than western advertising. What we don't
know, though, is whether that makes any difference.
Take your typical western multinational
that has invested millions of dollars researching and developing
a global brand to provide a powerful, globally consistent image,
uniformity of marketing practices, lower production and distribution
costs, lower marketing costs, and even faster dissemination of new
ideas quickly through the organization. Just how far is localization
allowed to go?
In most cases, not much. Paul Temporal
in his latest book, Advanced Brand Management, provides the example
of Jim Beam. Jim Beam abandoned its old "American Cowboy"
positioning when research showed that "more than 70 percent
of the brand's target consumers enjoy consuming bourbon with their
friends." In its place, the company made its brand sociable,
associating friendship with the product. Temporal evokes a self-serving
generalization from Thomas Maas, vice president of Global Brand
Management, to rationalize adaptation, rather than adoption, of
the global brand to local Asian markets. "Global positioning
should allow local adaptation to meet huge cultural differences
in different markets, while brand pillars should be maintained on
a global basis for the franchise."
Okay, well let's see how the case
of Jim Beam, meant to illustrate this need, turns out. First, Jim
Beam's Catherine Hu, according to Temporal, seemed just fine adopting
- rather than adapting - the global brand into the Asian market.
In fact, she says, "It's our key to differentiate from competitors
and be relevant to today's Asian consumers' changing lifestyle."
Hu is the company's international marketing manager.
However, "research found that
Asian consumers expect to see a deeper and stronger friendship depiction
in order to be convinced and stimulated for purchase," Temporal
explains. He then presents four advertisements to demonstrate how
the global brand was adapted to local cultures. In the first, intended
for the local market, a group of young men are sitting around (with
pretty goofy grins at a small cocktail table in what seems to be
a stripper club. At least that seems evident from the shapely pair
of legs atop an adjoining table. The caption is "Who says men
don't like dancing."
The European version of this advertisement
pictures another group of laughing young men staring at the back
of an attractive young woman in a low-cut blouse, also laughing,
as she walks toward the camera. The caption is "They know what
you're going to say even before you say it." Presumably, this
refers to the laughing young men, I tend to think, however, that
it is much more likely that it is the woman knows what the men are
going to say, even though they are probably not friends. In fact,
no one needs to be friends with these guys to know EXACTLY what
they are thinking and saying. So far, the Jim Beam western idea
of friendship is men sitting around leering at beautiful young women.
Well, young men do tend to do this (regardless of what they are
drinking).
So how is this advertisement sensitively
adapted to Asian sensibilities? In the first of two "Far East"-labeled
advertisements - you guessed it - a SMALLER group of young men is
seen leering at an attractive woman's legs while smiling. The faces
are Asian. Perhaps this is what is meant by deeper and stronger
friendship: one less person and all local complexions. The caption
is "Real friends share the same taste in art." I see.
Real friends must be really boring as a group, too.
But not as boring as the next "Far
East" advertisement. In this version we're back to four men,
all dressed in tuxes, presumably at a wedding because a bride, not
smiling, is standing in the background looking at them. The men
definitely are not leering at the woman, apparently the bride of
one of the men. In fact, they are ignoring her. The caption is:
"Real friendship lasts." Despite marriage, obviously.
This last advertisement clearly has
been sanitized in as boorish a manner as is imaginable due to some
local sensitivity, true. But I'm pretty sure that among the age
demographic depicted in the advertisement, ignoring your new bride
is culturally unacceptable (And it's clear that Jim Beam has written
off women completely. In fact, if my Asian wife saw this ad I would
probably never be allowed to bring another bottle into the home.).
As for the others, the argument that Jim Beam's local marketing
executives and agencies spent a lot of time thinking carefully about
adapting these advertisements - regardless of the research that
suggested they do so - is simply laughable.
And that's the whole point. There's
no science, or art, involved here.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing
director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on
Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian
Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001). He can be reached
at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
Copyright © 2002 Michael Alan
Hamlin. All Rights Reserved.
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