Transcultural Marketing
I’d like a coffee please
Aug 17th
Photo taken in Poland – April 2007
Here’s something I’ve been meaning to blog about for while. Coffee!
Making my way to the office kitchen, eyes half-open, I reach out for an individual dose of Nescafé instant coffee. And every morning somebody asks me whether I’d like some milk. I politely refuse, and whoever is in the kitchen looks at me as if I come from planet Mars.
Well I am certainly not from Mars but I am French – and the French do not put milk in their coffee! And they prefer fresh cafetière coffee to instant coffee.
During my recent Italian More >
Adverts from Poland
Apr 25th
I just thought I would share with you a few adverts I saw whilst on holiday in Poland (more about this on my travel blog shortly!)
Poland is a country of contradiction – on the one hand, thousands of pounds are being spent on advertising, but on the other hand, the average Pole earns around £200 per month! But what amazed me even more, is the size the adverts over there – they are absolutely GIGANTIC and very interesting graphically speaking.
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A Pespi can on Lodz’s main commercial artery, Piotrkowska – I also also saw this Pespi can in Krakow and Warsaw
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An inflatable dog advertising Velvet More >
Thought of the day
Apr 5th
You can take the girl out of the country but you cannot take the country out of the girl…
Lost in multi-culturalism?
Mar 7th
An American businesswoman comes away from a meeting delighted; she finally got her Japanese supplier to agree to a price. A few days later, she receives questions about price. It’s almost as if she imagined the meeting. “What‘s going on here?” she asks. “We agreed on the price already, didn‘t we?” [1]
The businesswoman recalls all the Um-hmms and Yesses she heard in the meeting. “They agreed to the price, they said yes,” she mutters to herself. “They even nodded and smiled.” Welcome to the world of intercultural business communication.
This American Businesswoman is not the first or last to feel More >
That sweet enemy (je t’aime, moi non plus)
Feb 26th
It’s a well known fact that the Brits despise the ‘frogs’, while the French despise ‘les roast beefs’.
Napoleon once likened the English Channel to a mere “ditch that will be crossed when someone has the boldness to try it.” In 1994, it was permanently breached by the Channel Tunnel — a monument to Anglo-French collaboration that brought London and Paris into day-trip proximity by train. One wonders what Napoleon would have made of that.
French advertising is all about language, culture and themes, right? I found this little gem in the Gare du Nord during my Parisian trip a couple of weeks More >
Going Underground… in Paris!
Feb 14th
I spent the last few days in Paris on business and found the French ad, ’la musique vous parle’ (music talks to you) for the Nokia music phone – I blogged about the UK ad last month.
Although there are lots of advertisements on the Parisian Metro, it’s easy to ignore this tsunami of information. The Metro, unlike the Tube is reliable so you don’t have to spend ages staring at the walls waiting for the Metro to turn up
On a more serious note, the achitecture of the metro makes it harder to place eye-catching ads, and the ads are sometimes far too large to take a More >
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