Lemon, Chilies & Culture Marketing

As cultural tuning increases the likelihood of effective persuasion, the challenge is how marketers can create effective persuasion and messaging to positively influence the buying behavior

Kumar picks up a ‘thread of fresh lemon and chilies’ from a street vendor near his computer hardware store which he owns. He then hangs the ‘threaded charm’ above the entrance to the store as a talisman. If you happen to walk in the streets of India, on a Saturday, you can’t miss this familiar sight - shops, houses, auto rickshaws and trucks hanging threads of lemon & chilies. No, they are not meant for salad, but are there to ward off the evil eyes.

On the contrary, red Swastika (as depicted above), a symbol of auspiciousness in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism connoting good luck,

One may call it superstitions, blind-belief system or heights of ignorance. Yet, this indicates how strangely culture is rooted deep into the human psyche. To make matters complex there is a high degree of arbitrariness that lends meaning to such abstract symbolism. While there are interesting differences among cultures regarding conceptual associations that constitute meaning, this has emerged as a potent tool to influence the minds for marketers.

In every society, these hidden culture codes or structures make their mark. Hidden, as often, we are not aware of these ‘culture markers’ or pay little attention to them, yet, they shape our behaviour, and our decisions. Such codes deal with strongly held beliefs, and manifest highly, even though those who use them tend to be unaware of them.

While codes vary in scope from the universal to the local, deciphering the same can lead to novel insights to drive audience activated content marketing programs rich in persuasive precision. This is important as by default we humans are meaning-generating and meaning-interpreting animals, besides whatever else we are. What this means is coding text and decoding the phenomena around us, we endlessly, produce and consume interpretations.

Let’s consider, Barbie doll. The name carries a lot of meaning because a Barbie doll has long been an icon in society. What comes to your mind or to your little girl, literally, when you think of Barbie Doll? What does it denotes to you? How would you describe it literally? A trendy toy doll, first marketed in 1959, that was 11.5 inches high, had measurements of 5.25 inches at the bust, 3.0 inches at the waist, and 4.25 inches at the hips.

Although it is a children’s toy, what a Barbie doll could connote or codify to a girl is a woman with a perfect body and exonerating beauty. This is also about a dreamland of princesses, fairies, fashion, shopping, friends, relationships and party-times. For some critics, the great popularity of the doll marks the end of motherhood as a dominant role for little girls, as Barbie spends her time as a "courtesan," buying clothes and having relationships with Ken and other dolls. She does not prepare little girls to be mothers, as earlier dolls did, dolls the girls could treat as babies, imitating their mothers' roles. One can construe that the doll and its variants are symbolic codified content which is designed to engage and influence the young minds, appealing to the inner realm of the psyche.

Forward thinking marketers are adept at successfully tapping cultural awareness, cultural intelligence and cultural sensitivity. As cultural tuning increases the likelihood of effective persuasion, the challenge is how marketers can create effective persuasion and messaging to positively influence the buying behaviour of the customer as an individual.

For content producers and marketers, often the greatest challenge is synergizing their own codes and the codes of the audiences, who often decode them differently from the way the creators intended. The result: aberrant decoding, leading to diluted impact, and messages getting lost in the clutter and noise.

Creating culture markers that are embedded deep in the content can strike immediate chord with the audience. Using these codes and driving greater mindshare based on an evolving mass of covert meanings and associations can increase audience affinity and loyalty. Leveraging the unconscious universe of language and assumptions shared by producers and consumers of messages can help create a targeted brand mix.

The hidden part of the iceberg is a brand’s cultural unconscious made up of associations, similarities and significant differences that opens the doors to the unconscious mind in the individual. Winning the influence warfare calls for a peaceful plunge into the psyche.

The Blogger is Kiran Kumar Yellupula:  The views expressed here are purely personal. Please share your feedback at mediavalue@yahoo.com