Thoughts On Marketing to Different Cultures

Written By: Rodolfo Otamendi

When it comes to marketing, the public’s background matters. This is especially the case when coming up with advertising intended to target specific cultural groups.

When advertising to a cultural group, knowing its characteristic traits, such as preferred language, music, food, and clothing preferences, can go a long way. Including some of these things in advertising and marketing campaigns can definitely draw cultures in. However, that doesn’t always quite cut it. Going in depth into a culture’s background, values, and opinions can steer advertising into a complete success. Here’s an example:

A few years ago, T-Mobile intended to widen their consumer base and decided to target more Hispanics. After doing some research, they discovered that many Hispanic immigrants did not opt for a T-Mobile phone contract because they often got rejected after having their credit history examined. However, this was not necessarily because of a bad credit history, but because of a lack of credit history. Being in the country for a short period of time, they did not have good credit built up and often were rejected while trying to build their credit. T-Mobile quickly came up with PagoFlex, a plan that worked on monthly payments and no contract. Of course, that’s a normal thing today, but what made them stand out at the moment was their marketing strategy, in which they often emphasized the fact that they cared about the consumer’s history, rather than their credit.
Obviously, this appealed to immigrants of different groups, as they felt understood and sympathized.

Another key factor when it comes to trying to target more consumers is the placement of the ads. Every sub-culture in the United States tends to have a pretty clear geographic pattern. Keeping this in mind when marketing can save everyone a lot of time, effort, and money.

Last, but not least, a good marketer should keep the following in mind: Sometimes dividing and conquering works best. Keyword: Sometimes. Doing a variety of small, unique campaigns to target different groups can ultimately cover more ground that a huge general campaign. Trust us.