MediaCom launches global culture study with pioneer Geert Hofstede | M&M Global

MediaCom launches global culture study with pioneer Geert Hofstede

MediaCom is partnering with renowned Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede to launch a new study entitled ‘Cultural Connections’, investigating how different cultures and countries respond to content and media.

Together with cross-cultural research centre The Hofstede Centre and Lightspeed GMI, part of Kantar Worldwide, the GroupM agency will survey 60,000 consumers across 52 countries, with the aim of forging insights to help brands improve the effectiveness of their marketing around the world.

Former IBM employee Dr Hofstede first published his widely-cited cross-cultural analysis in 1980, and MediaCom claims this latest project represents the most significant since that original publication, especially given the rise of digital media channels.

MediaCom hopes the partnership will offer multinational advertisers exclusive insights on how different cultures and countries respond in different ways to content and media, particularly at a time when many brands are wrestling with how to balance global and local marketing pressures.

The report will focus on areas such as how to identify market clusters, where similar creative and content approaches are likely to work, and how to leverage cultural understanding to guide the use of brand spokespeople in different markets.

The first set of data is expected to be published in May, and will subsequently be incorporated into MediaCom’s planning processes.

“Brands are increasingly looking to move messages and strategies from one market to another,” said Pinaki Dutt, global head of Applied Connected Intelligence at MediaCom.

“The problem is that what works in one place doesn’t always translate and the issue is not often language, but culture. The new Cultural Connections study will give us the tools to predict those successes and direct the process from the start of message development, identifying how they need to be changed to make them more effective in our clients’ key markets.”

Professor Michael Minkov, leading the academic side of the project for The Hofstede Centre, added: “This project will help us develop a better, more up-to-date understanding of the influence of culture on communication and management practice.

“The study of cultural impact has become precise and powerful, and the new data from this project will further enhance our ability to develop practical applications for businesses operating in an increasingly global environment.”

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