How Cross-Cultural Communication Affects Digital Marketing

As a digital marketer who has grown up with a cross-cultural background, I’ve always noticed that there’re some communication gaps between two cultures in marketing, particularly in the digital marketing field.

Currently, under the “Globalization” environment, not only international brands have to identify strategies distinctly for multiple markets globally, but also some American brands need to address different digital marketing strategies for various ethnic groups communities within the U.S. market by using different languages in community-centered channels, which are all related to cross-cultural communication. Hence, what is “Cross-Cultural Communication?” Moreover, how it can affect brands’ digital marketing strategy?

Let’s take our most well-known brand, “McDonald's” as one example. Last week, when I was checking out what my friends were doing on Instagram in my cozy sunny apartment in the East Bay of Bay Area, California, I received one targeted sponsored ad post from Mcdonalds that written by Chinese for promoting their “buy one get one free” breakfast offer in limited local restaurants. As a native Chinese speaker, when I read the post, I was a little confused that I couldn’t understand why they write copy by using those words while I could get the idea from the post picture. By clicking the comments under the post, I found out there are many comments from people who thought the same as me; native Chinese speaker couldn’t understand what this ad was trying to say. One guest left the comment, “please find someone who knows real Chinese to write your ad.” This case could be a typical problem in cross-cultural communication for global brands. Usually, those global companies find someone who knows the language but not real culture, like this social ad. While they used the word that has no grammar-translation problems, but it was not how they typically say in their daily life. That’s the reason why we should address “Cross-Cultural Communication” when you first start to plan your digital marketing strategy.

While this topic can be an extensive study, today we can start with a basic understanding of what cross-cultural communication is. As one micro part of communication, cross-cultural communication, the practical art of discourse as a field1, intercultural business communication exists within the individuals who are from distinct cultures and backgrounds in the global economic environment. It requires an appropriate response can respect one fundamental aspect of learning, including language, religion, social norms and values, education, and living style2. Communication always involves individuals with their personality traits, attitudes, emotions, and cognitive processes. These psychological factors affect the communication process, often with little awareness by communicators of the underlying causes at work3.

As an excellent human communication, there should be some meanings, motives, message, and movements in relationships. Consumers’ current beliefs tend to bias their interpretation of new information. Even when innovations promise vast improvements, consumers tend to favor ideas that fit their preconceptions and to avoid those that do not. Many consumers discredit the claims of higher efficiency rather than change an inefficient practice or adopt?. Excepting for the awareness and the sensitivity of cross-cultural, one success intercultural communication is also based on an open mind to other views and customs, the avoidance of judgmental attitude and labeling by our cultural standards, the acceptance of the fact that there are no universally valid gestures?.

Human communication is a sign of conscious experience and converse. We should try to find some signs of phenomenology in the other group’s cultures before excellent business communication. For example, high-text culture tends to be more common in Asian than in European and North American, where the small group relies on their shared background to explain the situation rather than words. Lower-Context culture tends to explain things further?. Speaking to the example of “McDonald’s,” they managed to utilize different language for the communications with a specific ethnic community, but they ignored the differences between “high-text culture” and “low-text culture” so that they used some words had no grammar mistakes but not fitting the reading culture of that community.

Overall, nowadays, for people in the digital marketing field, it’s not just technical tricks that are trying to achieve all those metric numbers, but also needs more knowledge of the basic fundament of communications. We are living in a world that has no single-culture market. Cross-Cultural communications play significant roles in our marketing strategy planning. Brands, please do find someone who understands precisely the culture of the consumers for your particular market other than the only language. For digital marketers, let's share how we process the cross-cultural communications in our marketing strategies from the beginning? I am looking forward to your interesting insights.

Reference: 1. Craig, Robert T. (1999). Communication as a field. Communication Theory. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.; International Communication Association. 9 (2): 119–161.

2. Bitzer, Lloyd (1968). The Rhetorical Situation, Philosophy & Rhetoric 1. No.1, January 1968.

3. Craig, R.T. (2009). Traditions of Communication theory. Encyclopedia of Communication Theory, Vol. 2: 960. Sage. ISBN 978–1–4129–5937–7

4. Dennis, Michael L. Soderstrom, E. Jonathan. Koncinski, Walter S. Jr. Cavanaugh, Betty. (1990). Effective Dissemination of Energy-Related Information: Applying Social Psychology and Evaluation Research. American Psychologist.

5. Dumbrava, Gabriela (2010). The Concept of Framing in Cross-Cultural Business Communication. Annals of the University of Petro?ani. Economics. 10(1), 2010, 83–90.

6. Lanigan, Richard L. (1977). The Phenomenology of Human Communication as a Rhetorical Ethic. Communication. 1977:20.