Great brands that intend to go global should think and act like great houseguest, says Tarek Miknas
Today’s news has reminded me of September 28, 2000. Ariel Sharon appeared at the Al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City with more than 1,000 Israeli police. In a blatant attempt to provoke Palestinians, he repeated a phrase that was broadcast during the 1967 Six Day War when Israeli Occupation Forces seized East Jerusalem. “The Temple Mount is in our hands,” Sharon shouted.
Palestinians reacted almost immediately to the threat to Al Aqsa, the third holiest site in Islam. And the second Intifada was set on course.
Not good houseguests.
It’s not the politics as much as it’s the role of how brands speak and act in markets outside their own that interests me.
At the time, I was living in New York, working only a few blocks away from the United Nations headquarters where the Palestinians had one day to represent themselves and the Israeli sympathisers would follow the next day.
I went to both. Day one was the Palestinian day. It was shocking. People carried each other on shoulders, burning American flags with Keffiyeh-covered faces, exposing just their eyes, chanting ‘down down USA’ repetitively. A scene as it would be scripted in a bad Hollywood movie. They looked scary, they sounded scary and they were terribly disorganised and chaotic. I got back to the agency, only to be asked. “Why do your people hate us?”
Not good houseguests.
Day two. The street was blocked for Israel’s supporters. First, school buses arrived by the dozen. Kids everywhere. People were directed toward a great big stage where they were entertained with Klezmer music in between high-profile speakers who articulated, in perfect American English, their cause. When their time was up, the kids got back onto their school buses, a team disassembled the stage, packed up and went home.
That weekend, on prime time, Schindler’s List played uninterrupted for three hours and 15 minutes – on a network channel accessible to everyone.
Good houseguests. And probably a good public relations agency with tight media relations.
But however they did it, the point is that they clearly understand what it means to be a global brand.
Today, every local action has a global reaction and implication. This sort of event today, although local in execution, would be content that spreads globally in moments. And that’s why the basic principle of brands being houseguests in their host markets has never mattered more.
According to the 2015 McCann Truth about Global brands, the more globalised the world the more people are frightened of the flattening of culture: of sameness. And we, as in the Middle East and North Africa region, over index in this thinking in a big way. Some 41 per cent of Middle East respondents are afraid that globalisation will take away from their local cultures.
However, with that said, we still love, respect and trust global brands more than anyone in any other part of the world. In fact, we contribute to the 85 per cent of people around the world who believe that global brands can make the world a better place and with the 81 per cent of people who feel that brands have the ability to make greater positive change than governments.
Again, at a time when every local action has a global reaction, the time when a brand could pilot into a market and replicate a vacuum-packed experience or communications strategy is over.
Today it’s our job, as brands, to earn our way into people’s lives. Earn our way into local cultures, avoid manipulating existing values and accept finding a comfortable spot to co-exist with our hosts – without giving up what or who we represent. To thoughtfully spread a brand, an idea or a movement in a multi-market capacity, while actively enriching the receiving culture.
Typically, this would mean to identify a common universal truth. And to be flexible enough to recalibrate your expression and your values to resonate locally.
Take the example of Ikea in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Its catalogue photoshop-ed out a woman, leaving a child brushing his teeth alone surrounded by Ikea products for sale. Nobody thought anything of it in Saudi but the image was spread across global social platforms forcing Ikea to publicly apologise for publishing an image that is in contradiction to the values of where the brand is rooted – Sweden.
There’s a Hindi saying, ‘Atithi devo bhavo’ it means: ‘Guests are forms of God.’ So, if you’re in India and your host serves you a glass of water, drink it. If you’re ‘coming round for dinner’ in England, bring enough booze to cover you and then some. And if you’re in Germany and your client has set up a meeting, do yourself a favour and be early. Although life leads us abroad into personal territory where ‘best behaviour’ is not so clear to us, even the most etiquette-averse among us knows that there are rules you have to follow when you step into someone’s home.
Great global brands or great brands that intend to go global think and act like great houseguests. They are interesting, respectful. They clean up after themselves and they have great stories to share at the dinner table.
(Tarek Miknas is CEO of FP7/MENA)