What is culturally competent content marketing?
- Laura Dorwart
- Nov 3, 2023
- 6 min read
Updated: Nov 6, 2023
For many of us, Coca-Cola’s classic red and white branding instantly conjures up nostalgic memories of childhood summertime treats. But the brand’s legendary marketing hasn’t always been blunder-free. When the product was first introduced in China in the 1920s, its phonetic translation into Cantonese was the decidedly less desirable “bite the wax tadpole.”
It was sorted eventually – reworked into a phrase that sounded more like “can mouth, can happy” – but not before “bite the wax tadpole” earned notoriety as one of the biggest (and funniest) translation mishaps in marketing history. The mistake carries a valuable lesson: cultural competency is a must for advertisers, especially in international markets.
Cultural competency is typically defined as the ability to communicate effectively with people from different backgrounds and identities. It’s often used in fields like education and outreach. But culturally competent content marketing is a worthy goal for creatives as well.
Cultural competency isn’t just about being sensitive or politically correct. It’s about developing a deeper awareness of your target market and possibly breaking into new, untapped ones. Cultural competency also builds brand credibility and relevance, especially among forward-thinking audiences (people like you, reading this).
In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the key principles of culturally competent content marketing and why it matters, both in terms of building an ethical brand identity and reaching a broader audience. It's not just what you say, but how it's heard across diverse audiences. Learn how to speak your brand's truth, universally.
Defining culturally competent content marketing
Sometimes called “cross-cultural marketing” or “multicultural competence in marketing,” culturally competent content marketing involves both:
awareness of the different perspectives, experiences, values and needs that diverse consumer groups bring to the table, and
effective communication across those differences.
It’s important to note that cultural competency requires a combination of knowledge and empathy (ah, a common theme!). Even with good intentions, your brand’s message might come across differently than you intend if you don’t have a solid understanding of the cultural differences at play. Armed with understanding and a willingness to listen, you can breathe new life into your next campaign – whether that's across copywriting, design, video production, or social media engagement.
Now, let’s dig into 5 ways you can develop a more culturally competent content marketing strategy for your brand or team.
1. Market research matters
The first step of culturally competent content marketing is, simply, to do your homework. Make sure you understand your target market as deeply as possible with thorough inclusive market research.
You can start by asking questions about market demographics and different aspects of diversity, such as:
Race
Gender
Ethnicity
Age
Disability
Mental health
Nationality
Language
Sexuality
Religion
Size/body type
But diversity doesn’t end with demographics. It’s just the beginning. You can also ask questions like the below about how people in your target market live, think, work and play:
Family: How many people in this market are married, single or divorced? Do many people live with a significant other? What is the average family size?
Cultural norms and habits: What types of body language and gestures are considered appropriate or inappropriate? How do people typically dress in different settings? How are holidays, weddings and other major events celebrated? What are the most common foods, gifts and everyday purchases?
Cultural values and beliefs: Are people more likely to embrace an individualist or collectivist mindset? What do people tend to believe about relationships, money and lifestyles? How honour those beliefs whilst challenging outdated norms?
Living situation: Do most people live in small apartments or large houses? Are intergenerational homes common?
Environment: Do most people live in rural, urban or suburban environments? How does the climate shape lifestyle choices?
The answers to these questions can inform not only what to avoid in your copywriting and imagery, but also what to include to make your messaging and branding more relatable. For example, someone in Hong Kong may not be particularly offended by images of people in sprawling suburban homes, but they’ll be more likely to see themselves using your products in a dense urban area or compact apartment.
2. Work with local translators
“Bite the wax tadpole” may be the most famous example of corporate translation gone wrong, but it’s far from the only one. Here are a few other notable global marketing fails:
In Germany, Clairol sold a curling iron called “Mist Stick.” The problem is, “mist” is German slang for “manure.”
Unaware of the unflattering American idiom, a Swedish company proudly tried to sell their vacuum with the slogan, “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.”
Procter & Gamble’s Pampers diapers didn’t take off at first in Japan, where parents were downright disturbed by the images of baby-carrying storks on the packages (Japanese folklore holds that, rather than birds, giant peaches float down rivers to deliver newborns).
At Yellow Door Studio, our bilingual (and trilingual) translators have a deep understanding of what it means to “transcreate”. Writers who have a deep understanding of both the source language and the target language know that word-for-word translation just doesn’t cut it. It’s crucial to be familiar with local slang, idioms, imagery, fables and customs. After all, one market’s mist is another’s manure.
3. Tap into underserved markets
One of the many benefits of culturally competent marketing is tapping into potential markets that often get left behind.
For example: people with disabilities are underrepresented in advertising but represent the third-largest market segment (after Latinos and African-Americans) and hold around $490 billion of purchasing power in the U.S. alone. Pottery Barn’s newly released line of accessible furniture and home goods was sparked in part by a recognition of the growing market for disability-friendly products.
Plus, people notice when brands walk the talk on equity and inclusion. It's understandable that today's consumers want to spend their money on companies that share their values. A recent study conducted by FleishmanHillard found that a whopping 94% of APAC consumers could name at least one action item they thought companies should take to demonstrate their commitment to DE&I.
4. Question your assumptions
We all make assumptions about others – it’s human nature. However, challenging those assumptions and underlying biases can benefit you in many ways, including making you a more effective marketing leader.
Not sure what a particular group of users wants? Ask them!
Recent research by Saatchi & Saatchi exposed the vast gap between how mothers think of themselves and how they are represented in today’s advertising:
One global survey discovered that over half of mums didn’t believe today’s advertisers were speaking to them – despite the fact that around 70% of millennial women make the major financial decisions in their household.
While many advertisers present motherhood as endlessly stressful, about 60% of UK-based mums said they have more fun with their kids than with anyone else.
Just 23% of mothers said they felt comfortable being referred to as “mum” by anyone outside of their family, although many marketing campaigns use the term freely to speak directly from brand to customer.
Questioning common advertising tropes, stereotypes and clichés takes some creativity, but it pays off. Many of the assumptions we make about others are surface-level. Your brand can stand head and shoulders above the rest by going a bit deeper.
5. Ask for and incorporate feedback
Your customers’ trust is more important than ever. According to recent findings from Adobe’s Future of Marketing Research Series, around 71% of UK consumers say they’re willing to cut all ties with a brand they love if their trust is broken.
That trend is even more important among younger customers. In fact, 74% of Gen Z-ers and 67% of millennials said they’d stopped buying from a particular company in the previous year because of broken trust. That trust may be broken when a company doesn’t share their values, doesn’t listen to their needs or isn’t transparent about why they’re asking for certain information. One surefire way to build a stronger relationship with your customers is to listen to them and incorporate their feedback.
From conducting one-on-one or small-group interviews to releasing surveys of targeted users, you can improve the user experience for every corner of your customer base – especially people who might often be unintentionally excluded – with the help of user experience (UX) research. Large-scale market research is key to creating a culturally competent content marketing strategy, but getting direct feedback from your existing users is an equally effective way to build brand loyalty and trust.
At Yellow Door Studio, our multilingual team helps brands authentically engage global audiences. Our specialists in English, Cantonese and Mandarin seamlessly adapt messaging and branding across cultures. Whether you’re looking for strategy, branding, market research, copywriting, translation, transcreation, design or video, our door’s wide open. Come say hey.
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