‘Consumer behaviour is shaped by cultural influence’

Marketing has been for a long time an understanding of a particular set of people and targeting them based on their cultures and behaviours. Cultural marketing has been adopted by brands as they wish to connect with their audience on an emotional level. During Pitch CMO Summit, Rajeev Jain, Vice President - Corporate Marketing, DS Group spoke to the audience about the many facets of cultural marketing and how brands have over the years used it to their strength, and may have sometimes faltered as well.

In the session called, ‘Cultural Marketing For Building Successful Brands’ Jain used many examples of his own company and other brands to explain the depth at which cultural marketing is extremely essential.

Speaking about the time when Saudi Arabia just introduced a law to allow women to drive and other brands didn’t speak on that, Coca-Cola came up with an advertisement focusing on the new found freedom of women and catered to the audience there. Jain said, “So interestingly if you're saying that Saudi Arabia, which is a more conservative country, that driving by females were not allowed. One fine day, they decided that women should also drive. While most of the brands kept their silence, assuming that it might backfire, Coca-Cola took the bold step. They launched a campaign aligned with the new evolved culture of the particular country. They were able to dole out a 22% higher score while measuring the love for the brand. So that is the beauty of studying culture, and aligning your brand proposition and communication authority.”

Jain also spoke about the Indian audience and why they are different from the West. “We see that for individualism, the USA has a high score and India has a very low score. Reason being we Indians, we believe in family cultures, family values, we take decisions in consultation with a family, we have respect for them and we celebrate with families. So that's why in India, the individualism is very low. In the USA, it is self-motivation, self-happiness and self-celebration. So that's why it's very important for a marketing person to understand the different cultural dimensions of the different countries.”

About cultural marketing, Jain explained, “Marketing is all about consumers and consumer behavior is shaped up by cultural influence. At times, companies study the culture, develop consumer insight and brand proposition and sometimes they miss also. Sometimes the companies launch products with certain assumptions and hypotheses. At times the brand gets success and sometimes not. That's all because we don't study the consumer properly.”

To summarize, he said, “Study of culture of the target audience is extremely important. Bias is in human nature. Combination of experience and emotion creates an imprint. Culture keeps evolving. Companies may make blunders if they don’t study the consumer properly, particularly when they cross borders. Indians love a little of Indian taste in their ads with which they have grown up. This is our learning. This is our hypothesis.”