Cross-Cultural Marketing

At OgilvyCULTURE, cross-cultural marketing is a discipline where we explore distinct cultures and help brands cross-connect in a meaningful, personal way.

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Ogilvy Cross-Cultural Practice…Almost A Year Later

We launched Ogilvy’s Cross-Cultural Practice nine months ago at the Industry’s first Cross-Cultural Conference. This week we are presenting at the annual 4As (www.aaaa.org) Conference in Los Angeles, California.

It’s a conference where the Advertising Industry best minds and brands come together for shared learning. We are very humble and honored to be present on the main stage. We are going to share how we believe our approach to the “New General Market” is a Competitive Edge.

Before we launched the Cross-Cultural Practice at Ogilvy, we debated about whether or not to share our journey in real time or curate the content before sharing. Needless to say you can see based on my last posting, we decided to curate the content first. We chose this route because we knew mistakes were going to be made.

The Cross-Cultural Practice is a start-up, in the “proof of concept” stage and we still have a long way to go. If you asked our clients and internally at Ogilvy they’d say the Cross-Cultural Practice, they would say we are fine tuning the model, it’s a work in progress and we are headed in the right direction. As part of our lead up to the first year anniversary of the Cross-Cultural Practice, we will start sharing parts of our journey and how we’ve done over the last few months.

To kick things off, John Seifert our Chairman and CEO of North America, Donna Pedro, Chief Diversity Officer and Jeffrey Bowman @jeffreylbowman , North American Cross-Cultural Practice Lead led a conversation about the model and journey at the 4As (@4As) Transformation Conference (www.transformationla.com ). In simple terms our model is captured within three pillars.

Pillar One: The Inside – Outside Strategy. In order to service the “New General Market” your talent mix has to be reflective of the “New General Market.” Pillar Two: The Cross-Cultural Model. It is a point of view or our value proposition for how we service clients and deliver great work. Last, the Third Pillar: Partners. As we evolve, the only way to scale our model is by collaborating with the audience experts. Collaborating with multicultural media, research and technology partners is the only path to scaling our model and getting it right for clients and consumers.

Have a peek at what we spoke about.

http://www.slideshare.net/OgilvyCULTURE/4ass-transformation-conference-competitive-edge-panel?from=share_email 

It is not the entire presentation from the #transformLA Conference. Being @4As #transformLA Conference is a testament of how far we’ve come as an agency. We will continue to share more about our journey. Follow us on Twitter @OgilvyCULTURE and @jeffreylbowman for additional updates.

Cross-Cultural Practice Launch Press Release

OgilvyCULTURE LAUCHES CROSS-CULTURAL MARKETING PRACTICE

 

OgilvyCULTURE Prepares Clients For “The New General Market”

NEW YORK, NY, July 18, 2011 – To help its clients and employees prepare for the “new general market” Ogilvy & Mather has launched OgilvyCULTURE, a new strategic services practice focused on providing insights, strategy, and consulting services to clients as part of a multi-disciplinary communications offering.

 

Since announcing the development of this practice last November, OgilvyCULTURE has been tapped by such clients as Kodak, IKEA and British Airways to develop strategic initiatives and communications programs that enable clients to communicate across different cultures with more informed targeting, ideas and execution.

 

“Our job as an agency is to help our clients anticipate and prepare for new ways to market to an ever changing consumer population,” noted John Seifert, Chairman and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather North America.  “OgilvyCULTURE is one of a number of new practices that we have created to deliver marketing solutions that meet growing client needs at a time of great change and innovation.”

 

The practice is being led by marketing strategist Jeffrey Bowman, who explained that “Cross cultural marketing is a discipline where we explore values and beliefs of distinct cultures to help translate how brands form connecting tissueswith these groups to cross-connect in a meaningful, personal way.”

 

To better understand this important new marketplace OgilvyCULTURE will host the first-ever Cross Cultural Marketing Conference on July 18th.  Speakers will discuss the evolving consumer landscape and share insights on how media, demographics, consumer behavior and other trends offer new ways for marketers to reach a broader audience.  OgilvyCULTURE will also unveil the findings of its “Cross Cultural Report.”

 

OgilvyCULTURE aligns a number of new capabilities the agency has developed as part of its commitment to building a diverse and inclusive workforce which has led to a series of strategic partnerships. OgilvyCULTURE includes broad representation from Ogilvy’s Professional Networks which include Black Diaspora, LatinRed, RedLotus, OgilvyPride, Doonya, Young Professionals, Working Parents, Women’s Leadership, and Administrative Professionals groups. The practice offers a full range of services including marketing strategy, creative strategy, digital strategy, CRM and analytics.

 

 

About Ogilvy & Mather

Ogilvy & Mather is one of the largest marketing communications companies in the world. Through its specialty units, the company provides a comprehensive range of marketing services including: advertising; public relations and public affairs; shopper and retail marketing; healthcare communications; direct, digital, promotion, relationship marketing and digital production. Ogilvy & Mather services Fortune Global 500 companies as well as local businesses through its network of more than 450 offices in 120 countries. It is a WPP company (NASDAQ: WPPGY).  For more information, visit www.ogilvy.com.

 

Six Months Ago…

Six months ago we started with a poster and tripod positioned throughout the building.  It was our first step in building awareness internally around the inside-outside strategy and seeding OgilvyCULTURE within Ogilvy & Mather.

Circa November 2010

After hours upon hours of internal education and select key client engagements, we are now moving to phase two of our inside-outside strategy. 

This week we shared details internally about the industry’s first cross-cultural conference.  It will be a conference for our current clients, prospective clients and partners.  Industry and subject matter experts will share their thoughts on the following topics: 

The Cross-Cultural Report:  Analysis, Case Studies & Implications 

 The US General Market: The Change is Now   

 Using Media to Connect Across Cultures 

 Inside the Mind of the Transformative B2B Marketer  

 Redefining Consumer Marketing 

“The Browning Effect” on Technology 

Using Sports & Entertainment to Connect With The Cross-Cultural Audience       

Partner Fair

It’s been an exciting week as you can imagine.  There’s been a lot of hard work and energy internally over the last few months.  Our intent is to share our point of view on cross-cultural marketing with clients .  More details to come and really look forward to the next six months.

JLB

    

Beginning In April…

OgilvyCULTURE has been in “the Culture Lab” since January asking provocative questions from consumers, customers, industry experts, academics and clients about the “new general” market.  The interviews have been phenomenal and extremely revealing!  There is this buzz for change in the advertising model as well as how clients go to market.

When we announced the practice in November we got the traditional industry questions like “what clients do you have?”; “do you have any case studies?”; and “will you be competing against multicultural shops?”  All great questions but our approach was always about moving the conversation forward and put the lense on the changing American and Global landscape.  We understood cross-cultural marketing was a relative new approach in the US and time would reveal the true meaning.

Beginning in April we will start releasing some of our findings from being in the “Culture Lab.”  In addition some of our topic will coincide with the US Census as well as how brands/clients should think about Census implications for their brands.

In kicking off this discussion in April, we’d like to share a few discoveries about cross-cultural marketing:

1.  Clients are grasping to understand cross-cultural marketing

In most cases, clients today allocate and distribute resources either as general market or multicultural.  In most cases consumers are researched in the same way with grabbing insights either as general market or multicultural.  When they look at the marketplace and how consumers consume, often times it is evaluated as who buys products as general market or hispanic or black or asian or LGBT.

When we apply our cross-cultural methedology to discecting their business and consumer insights, it is a total model and market shift for clients.  They immediately ask, “who else is doing this?”  We chuckle!  The reality is not a lot of marketers and advertisers.  This is a total shift in the client’s approach because there is a new market of consumers who are now the ” new general market”.  So data is not always readily available and clients today do not spend their marketing resources within the cross-cultural budget line item.

As we move forward, we will use our tools to apply the insights and build a cross-cultural communications platform.  More to come on this in coming months.

2.  Agencies do not understand cross-cultural marketing

There is a lot of back and forth on this topic.  Our view is it’s hard to be a cross-cultural provider if you currently service “a general market” or “a multicultural market”.  We are finding even at Ogilvy it’s hard to initially get everyone to champion the cross-cultural approach.  Clients sometimes make it easy because we will get a “Hispanic Market” ask or a “General Market” ask or a “LGBT Market” ask.  These are all great, however we are beginning to ask if we can fulfill a “cross-cultural” ask to really understand the client’s brand situation and ambition.

As we move forward, we will share our own Agency challenges and how we are overcoming them in the months ahead.

3.  Consumers/Customers are already cross-cultural

Okay, this is an easy share and not too revealing. Here are two links that speak to how consumers/customers landscape has changed.  The top 25 cities in the US is already +51% “the new general market”.  Link #1 is more reflective of our youth and link 2 is a tool for helping map the make-up of the US. Change is here and it is here to stay.

Link #1:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/us/30mixed.html

Link #2:  http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer?view=raceethnicity

Last, we will have more on these topics starting in April and by June our intent is to really get beyond the question of “what is cross-cultural?” and get into how this is the approach to move brands forward and be relevant to this new general market.

Jeffrey L. Bowman

Delivering A Cross-Cultural Discipline

If you pull the search term for “Cross-Cultural” within Advertising Age, you will get the following : http://adage.com/results?endeca=1&return=endeca&search_offset=0&search_order_by=score&search_phrase=cross-cultural 

The conversations in the trades range from “Advertising Agencies Having to Play Nice” in November 2010 to the question of “Is Cross-Cultural Marketing an Industry Breakthrough or Threat to Ethnic Shops?” in January 2011. 

We think the term cross-cultural marketing is fairly new, however the discipline of how you land on communicating cross-culturally will be a breakthrough in itself.  Unlike the 1990’s when Agencies were going back and forth as to whether or not “General Market Shops” should play in “Multicultural Shops” space, there is quite a bit of a difference in the US market.  The market which consumes the very content Agencies create is very different in the US now and will continue to dramatically shift in the years to come.

What’s even more fascinating is how consumers and customers are redefining the marketplace like this NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/us/30mixed.html?_r=2&emc=eta1 .  This article illustrates if you apply an old advertising service model to the “new general market”, it may not be successful.

A Cross-Cultural marketing and advertising discipline in most Agencies today does not exist.  It’s our belief the term does not mean blending, one creative or one execution for the masses.  A disciplined approach lands you on a business ambition, a cultural truth, a relevant customer experience, a creative idea(s) across multiple platforms and ulimately build a brand.

In November 2010 when we launched OgilvyCULTURE, we established three pillars for building the practice:  1)  Internal Education, 2) External/Partner Education and 3) Client Development in delivering cross-cultural solutions. 

Over the next few months we will continue to share our point of view as we build the practice discipline internally and externally with clients.

Jeffrey Bowman

2011 Conferences & Festivals: The New General Market Discussion & Implications

Every January, festivals and conferences kick off the year setting the business and cultural agenda for the coming months.  What may be different this year versus previous years is the conversation about the changing US demographics, the impact it will have on US businesses and the cultural landscape for years to come.

These macro shifts are relevant across industries like film and entertainment and at conferences like the Sundance Film Festival (http://www.sundance.org/festival/ ),  the technology space at conferences like CES (http://www.cesweb.org ) , the food & beverage space at the National Restaurant Association  (http://www.restaurant.org/), the retail space like the National Retail Federation (http://www.nrf.com/ ) and the fashion space like the Magic Show (http://www.magiconline.com/ ).  This week, global leaders across multiple industries will discuss cultural, social and economic shifts at the World Economic Forum ( http://www.weforum.org/ ). 

We can go on and on about industry news generated at these conferences and festivals at the start of the year.  OgilvyCULTURE will look to assess and understand how businesses respond to the US demographic and cultural shifts on the horizon.

Recently OgilvyCULTURE (www.ogilvyculture.com) was invited by The Blackhouse Foundation (http://www.theblackhouse.org/) to participate on a panel at The Sundance Institute’s, Sundance Film Festival (http://www.sundance.org/festival/ ) in Park City, Utah.  The Blackhouse Foundation’s mission is to raise awareness of black filmmakers and increase film submissions of diverse filmmakers in what’s perceived historically to be a “general market” festival.  The Blackhouse Foundation/Sundance Foundation partnership we believe is a great cross-cultural model in the film & entertainment industry. 

We happily accepted  the invitation to discuss the following topic:  Trending &The Times: The early numbers from the 2010 U.S. Census are in and all signs point to a shifting demographic landscape.  Which Way Forward for Film & Entertainment?  Given this was a macro trends conversation, we thought this was a topic relevant to not only to a film and entertainment festival but also to a technology conference, a retail conference, a food & beverage conference, etc.  I think it also helped we’d just finished exploring a similar trend topic for a prospective client in the film & entertainment industry.  We felt we had something to contribute.

We shared the panel with distinguished Film & Entertainment Industry experts: 

  •  Susan Lewis, Producer, Alicia Keys Worldwide (She heads Alicia Keys Film Company and is the former VP of Development at MTV Films)

 

  • Franklin Leonard, VP-Creative Affairs, Overbrook Entertainment (He is a McKinsey management consultant turned studio development executive, most recently at Universal Pictures and Appian Way Leonardo Dicaprio.  He also is the founder of the BLACKLIST.)

 

  • Brian Newman,CEO, Springboard Media (Former CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute, he was executive director of IMAGE Film & Video Center, producer of the Atlanta Film Festival and Out on Film.)

 

The experience was outstanding!  Below is a sample of key trends and demographic shifts we discussed (Source:  US Census & Mintel):

OVERALL U.S. DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFTS

  1. 2010 estimates 308M people in the US
  2. Combined, Hispanics, Blacks and Asians account for more than 50%  of the population in the top 10 US cities
  3. Hispanics today account for more than 50 % in the top US states (California & Texas)
  4. More than 50% of all US Blacks live across 11 Southern States
  5. 1 in 5 school aged US children are Hispanic
  6. Multiracial Americans were the fastest growing group, with a 33% increase since 2000

 

FILM DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFTS

  1. Hispanics Are More Likely to Go to the Movies than any other audience
  2. Hispanic and Black moviegoers show higher frequency of attendance
  3. Lobby and pre-show commercials more likely reach under-45s and blacks
  4. Black and Hispanic respondents more likely to look for larger screens, fun ambience, and wider selection of concessions
  5. Black and Hispanic respondents are more likely to pay attention to movie ads on radio, television, and outdoors
  6. Targeted Marketing is a proven successful approach to the “New General Market”

FILM INDUSTRY TRENDS

  1. Declining admissions trend reversed by recession
  2. Cinema experiences see competition from internet and home theater
  3. Hollywood studios continue to dominate and seek low-risk hits
  4. Studios get more creative as marketing budgets are cut
  5. Generally speaking, moviegoing remains a largely impromptu activity
  6. Make moviegoers commit earlier to purchasing tickets with promotional offers
  7. Traditional TV and radio ads still the best way to reach moviegoers
  8. Industry moving toward dual audience segmentation
  9. Use social networking sites to facilitate a collective action
  10. Movies Should Be An Experience with pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase activities for the movie going audience

 Last, OgilvyCULTURE recently conducted primary research to better understand the differences within General Market and Black Moviegoers.  It was an internal survey; however the findings were pretty consistent with other secondary research sources. 

OgilvyCULTURE’s  General Market and Black Moviegoers Survey:    http://www.slideshare.net/OgilvyCULTURE/ogilvycultures-moviegoing-primary-research-ummary

Thanks to the Blackouse Foundation for inviting OgilvyCULTURE.  It was a great time with festival attendees and panelists. 

If you have any questions or comments about the information above, please feel free to contact me at jeffrey.bowman@ogilvy.comor DM me @ogilvyculture

 

Source ogilvyculture.com

The First Day of 2011…

This being the first day of 2011, I was determined to write this post and officially kick-off the New Year. It’s good to go back and reflect on questions people asked as well as observations from the previous year.

With about 45 days in the cross-cultural space, our intent for OgilvyCULTURE is to be the bridge between multicultural advertising and general market advertising.  In 2010 we got two questions repeatedly from key partners and advocates in the advertising/media space.

Question #1 - What is the difference between multicultural and cross-cultural?

I answered this question from many conversations in the past 30 days.  I’ve learned to first start with making sure everyone understands who we are targeting with the new cross-cultural practice.  In most cases our target clients buy advertising services from either a general market shop and/or a multicultural shop in the US. 

The model of how agencies service clients and how clients purchase this service is based on how the industry was formed beginning in the 1950’s.  It is based on multiple agencies to service a market based primarily on ethnicity. We believe there is a different way of servicing clients as well as further developing the advertising model that is more reflective of today’s audience. 

Our view is that originally multicultural advertising as a discipline was first developed based on how an insight was relevant to a specific ethnicity.  Whereas, our approach to cross-cultural advertising as a discipline looks for a cultural truth that goes across ethnicities and cultures. 

A significant cultural insight is not defined by ethnicity.  A cultural insight when truly harnessed can drive a brand movement in a very impactful way across multiple ethnicities and cultures. 

Question #2 - What is cross-cultural marketing & advertising?

Put simply cross-cultural marketing & advertising takes a cultural insight, examines how relevant and/or significant the insight and determines if it is relevant across multiple cultures.  In the US today the industry looks at the origin of an insight defined by general market or multicultural (Hispanic, Black, Asian and/or LGBT).  More often than not, the “general market” insight gets priority versus the “multicultural” insight.  This is not to say it is right or wrong but is it the best approach given the changing US demographic landscape.

It is our aspiration in 2011 that cross-cultural marketing & advertising will be the bridge between what we know today as general market & multicultural advertising.  We will use the next several months to share examples with our clients and partners on what are good examples of cross-cultural advertising. The general market as we once knew it does not exist anymore.

Happy New Year!

OgilvyCULTURE at 2010 ADCOLOR AWARDS

Every year the world of Advertising comes to Miami for the annual AdCOLOR Awards (www.adcolor.org).  It is filled with a Who’s Who of Advertising.  Established in 2005, the event’s purpose is to celebrate the accomplishments of diverse role models and industry leaders.  It is meant to serve as a catalyst for the next generation of leaders in marketing, advertising, and media.  The host for the event is Soledad O’Brien and this year they will Honor Queen Latifah.  Follow us at www.twitter.com/ogilvyculture to learn about the event as it unfolds.

Source adcolor.org

Why OgilvyCULTURE?

OgilvyCULTURE is one of the first cross-cultural strategic communications practice within a major Agency (www.ogilvy.com).  Our ambition is to help our clients navigate through the middle of a “cultural cross-road”.  Very similar to other parts of the world, the US population can be culturally divided into two different spectrums.  If you are 65 or older, then you are more likely to have a set of values and beliefs with a group of people that are unique to your culture and likely to have limited shared values and beliefs across other cultures.  Whereas, if you are 65 and younger, then you are likely to have many shared values and beliefs that are more likely to “cross-connect” with other cultures.

There is a shift happening where Americans are ”cross-connecting” more and more.  We think the US is on the brink of a historical transformation.   What even makes this shift more fascinating is the velocity of the change along with the role communications is playing with expediting the cultural cross-connection in the US as well as globally. As this shift happens, we will help our clients reevaluate their target consumer/customer, product positioning, advertising message, marketing spend and channel plans. 

At OgilvyCULTURE, we are embedding a cross-cultural marketing discipline within the Agency for the purpose of exploring values and beliefs of distinct cultures and helping our clients translate how their brands form connecting tissues that cross-connect in a meaningful, personal way.  Over the next few months, we will be sharing our model, case studies and tools for navigating through this dynamic shift.  I am sure there will be interesting conversations and knowledge sharing. 

What makes us think we can deliver?  We’ve got great cross-cultural talent, a global Ogilvy partner network and last, we have external partners who believe in our new approach to cross-cultural marketing. 

We welcome you to come back, ask questions and share your thoughts about cross-cultural marketing as well as your interpretation.  You can also follow us on Twitter for additional updates or visit our website.

- Jeffrey Bowman

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