putting things in perspective does not necessarily come naturally to us, the social creatures. how-so-ever ironical it may sound though. so when this gentleman mentioned that he has more than 30 years of experience in marketing alone (i never asked if he has any 'other' experience as well!), all i could muster was 'a-huh!' and sadly, it conveyed a picture of 'unimpressed' me and my poker face was not helping either! all this while i was trying to put those 30 years along with my life's timeline. and then it struck me, this guy was 'studying the market' in Zambia when i was still gorging on Cerelac! (not the Apple flavor though! i never developed a favorable taste for that one!)...and my work experience tells me that i must mention that Zambia is a country in Africa (not South Africa!) and no, it's not same as Zimbabwe...
... he then went on narrating experiences from meetings he attended with businessmen across the world in his career... and he was telling about the products and brands and stores that we've never heard of and had Google not been accessible from our terminals we would've never known... in the later half of this (almost one way) conversation he came to 'culture' and it's important role in the lives of International Marketers... this stuff was keeping all of us attentive... till he asked us to note down the problem points westerners have to face very often while dealing with... umm... Indians...
... "wait! what?" was the initial facial expression of the audience and while i tried hard to suppress my silly smile, i realized it was of no use!! in next nano-second everybody started chuckling!!... "actually it's not just about Indians" he quickly tried to clarify... these issues crop-up in most of the dealings of the South Asian businesses with the EU-US bloc...
...the closing 30 minutes of our interaction were spent on identifying and noting down those issues... few points still linger in my mind... philosophy of "everything is negotiable"; saying "no problem" on every concern; suppress the 'bad news'; not being vocal about issues that affect the business/company/society as whole etc etc... it was not any groundbreaking finding that we made... it was plainly listing down the 'known issues'... and while all this was last weekend, i came across a satirical about Oprah's shocking find that we "Injians" *still* eat with our hands!
...reflecting upon the gyan on importance of understanding the culture of the target country by any marketer *before* entering with an offering, that story makes an excellent example... which btw also reminded me of the statement he made in the first session and i quote "one thing is guranteed in International Marketing and that is failure, it is your job as a Marketing Manager not to make it a routine"...
(originally published in KNOME)
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