Multicultural Marketing Needs to “Think Globally” (KFC Pulls Ad in Australia after US Backlash)

There’s a catch phrase in the environmental movement that says “Think Globally.   Act Locally.”  Global advertisers might be well served by doing  the reverse. Of course companies selling internationally need to localize their messages to appeal to regional and national markets.  But they must also think globally.  You have to assume that any ad, no…

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Poetry, Toungue Tennis, and other Tricks for Multicultural Name Pronunciation

  As someone married to an “Eugenio” (Brazilian Portuguese ay-oh-ZHEN-ee-oh) I was delighted to find the website Hearnames.com, which offers audio pronunciation by native speakers of hundreds of names in 44 language categories.  Dale Carnegie taught millions how to Win Friends and Influence People with ideas like “Remember that a person’s name is to that…

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Selling Cigarettes to Women: “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby.” NOT

I definitely smoked Virginia Slims when I smoked 30 years ago. But who wouldn’t want to be that tall, thin, confident, brave, free-spirited, adventurous woman who didn’t take sh— from anybody.  Sign me up! Without even inviting me to a focus group tobacco companies have taken note, creating advertising targeted at women in third world…

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Intercultural Talk with Tim “I Speak Geek” Frick, author, Return on Engagement

Note to self–in USAmerican culture you’re not supposed to tell men you love them in a business setting–but with Tim Frick, owner of Mightybytes and author of the forthcoming book (out June 7 from Focal Press) Return on Engagement, I can’t seem to help myself. For full disclosure, Tim and Mightybytes designed this blog, and…

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“Pleading ignorance should no longer be an excuse for cultural stereotyping”

This line is actually the closing for an editorial in the Greenbay Pressgazette last week about a radio station that pulled a song it had played regularly for weeks, when listeners raised questions and the Menominee tribe said it would pull its advertising: WIXX (101.1FM) rightly decided to stop airing a peculiar 1950s ballad about a love-struck…

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Bat Mitzvah’s and Adopted Babies from Korea: How We Learn and Pass-on Culture

Between a Bat Mitzvah (Jewish coming of age ceremony, Bat for girl, Bar for boy) on Saturday and a conversation at lunch yesterday that exposed multiple unconsicous assumptions of mine, I seem to have race, bias, and interculturalism on the brain, and in particular the idea of how culture is passed-on from one generation to the…

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Capturing the Moment that Launched my Intercultural Revolution

I’m often asked “what got you started in your interest in intercultural communications?”  Sometimes I say it was born inside of me, referencing the names of my pet black and gold fish at age 10, Martin Luther Fish and Golda My-Fish respectively (what 10 year old names their fish that?).  Other times I refer to…

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