What's The Difference?
By: Shannon Assion  - President and Chief Creative Director of Action Promotions & Communications

As an experienced field marketer, I know there can be a difference in sub-culture and ideals that seem like only 1 city block separates them.  You have to be knowledgeable about the demographics of the area, their incomes, behaviors, politics sure not everyone in that region is exactly the same but you get a general idea of the people in the area.

Yet, as an Experiential Marketer we are told that XM principles are 'universal', but I am whole heartedly not convinced of that fact.  Yes most human behavior is similar, but not always.  Take humor for example:  one recent study out of the University of Michigan proved that Westerners (Americans in this case) and East Asians viewed cartoons very differently.

The East Asians focused in on the background of the pictures while the Americans in the study almost totally ignored the happenings in the background, and only looked at the backgrounds well after they made note of the foreground.

There has been a wave of research studies begun to delve into the effects of Culture on information & neural processing, this area has largely been skimmed over, not considering at all that the bulk of the psychological and cognitive research taking place in Western Countries.

Recently a colleague said to me, "the reason men buy toothpaste is universally the same" suggesting, although; not coming right out in saying it -- he meant that all men want white teeth to attract a mate.  I didn't want to get into a great long discussion on anthropologic and cultural psychology, so I just left the issue alone.

Consider the ideas of beauty, in Western culture:   sure it's a pretty standard ideal, yet in other cultures the ideal can vary widely from people who alter their appearances for the sake of cultural beauty, stretching their necks with rings, inserting ever larger disks into their lower lips and one tribe that I know of that has a fattening ceremony upon the engagement of a young women.

These tribal women are sequestered for weeks and fed fat laden milk, gorged upon milk until they get nauseated, then soon after, resumed the ingestion of yet more gallons of milk.  The fiancé can call off the wedding if the girl has not gained enough weight by the wedding day.

I'm a Canadian girl and was taught about the Inuit people of our Arctic regions, and know they do not value their teeth, the way us in the bottom 5% of Canada do; only recently as dental health begun to be taught in those regions of the North.  Obviously their worn down stub teeth must not be a major concern to Inuit when thinking of attracting a mate.

Some things that do attract us are fairly universal like the false lordosis (female animals raise their posterior to show their readiness to mate) created by high heels.  Sure a man from a remote culture may think she's insane for wearing such crazy things on their feet, but you can still be sure the high heeled women will still be considered unknowingly more attractive and sought after by men of almost any culture.

Take as another example of cultural difference the difference in Japanese and North American emoticons.  : )   vs.   ^^  They are both smileys, but in Japanese culture people look to the eyes to see the related emotion whereas we look to their mouths.

I think as XM pioneers we need to be very cognizant that most of the research we read on psychology or anthropology, and hope to use in our XM campaigns, that they have mostly been done in America or Europe and are biased to our cultures, not 'universal' at all!

Sure as countries in South Asia and other places are opened up to more influence from the West they may adopt some of our traits. But XM and Neuromarketing in India say, needs to be created with Indian culture in mind.  Who knows, we may start to adopt their traits since there are far more Chinese and Indians then there are Westerners, so keep an open and critical mind when you read research you hope to utilize in campaigns.  Go forth and create great campaigns with the RIGHT information for the right people.