Leveraging Cultural Holidays for your Localisation Strategy
Holidays celebrated around the world have a substantial impact on the local population, including their spending behaviour, both online and offline. If businesses understand which festivals to focus on and which to ignore, they can easily benefit from the holiday season .Therefore, it is essential to have an effective localized holiday marketing strategy so that a business can leverage the holidays efficiently.
Relevance
The relevance of different holidays varies significantly in different countries. For instance, in China, the most popular holiday of the year is not Christmas but the Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival. It is a seven days long holiday break and is celebrated by exchanging gifts and traditional greetings.
Meanwhile, in Japan, Christmas is a children’s holiday celebrated with gifts and decorations, and has no religious overtones, unlike many western countries. Golden Week, on the other hand, covers many holidays during the same week.
Accurate Translation
Another important aspect of holiday marketing is an accurate translation. Let us consider the example of the origin of Valentine’s Day in Japan. It is a western holiday, but around the 1950s, chocolate companies started searching for an alternate market. However, a mistranslation caused the Japanese locals to believe that it was a custom or tradition for women to gift chocolates to men as a friendly gesture. Interestingly, they were supposed to gift chocolates to men whom they considered friends like coworkers thus gifts were given out of obligation in a platonic way. Though this mix up worked out well for the chocolate companies, one can imagine that things could have gone wrong due to this mistranslation.
SUCCESSFUL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS :
If you are a business trying to optimize sales in the holiday season, these four localized holiday marketing campaigns led by global companies might give some valuable insights: -
- Kansha Festival hosted in the Philippines by Subaru.
Japan celebrates Labor Thanksgiving Day every year on November 23 to celebrate “manufacturing” and as a way of thanking workers and labourers in all industries. Many labour unions celebrate it as well and discuss labour rights and minimum wage.
In 2012, Subaru organized the Kansha Festival, a customer appreciation event for Subaru car owners and prospective customers looking for buying cars on the Japanese Labor Thanksgiving Day. It helped bridge the gap between Subaru and its international clients in the Philippines and it soon became an awaited and annual event .
2. Ito-Yokado’s Thanksgiving Specific Ads
A Japanese restaurant chain Ito-Yokado started releasing Labor Thanksgiving specific ads. In one of the advertisements, it portrayed kids planning to give a surprise to their dad, the bread earner of the family. But soon realize that the most hardworking member was their mom. Then the family plans to take her to dinner in Ito-Yokado. It was based on a holiday-specific theme.
3. Alibaba’s Singles Day in China
Singles Day celebrating “singlehood” falls on November 11. It was invented by the Chinese retail giant Alibaba and is now celebrated every year. On this day, Alibaba and other retail giants give great deals and discounts on everything. It is open for bachelors, bachelorettes, or anyone with an income. New companies trying to break in Chinese markets should consider Singles Day.
4. Lufthansa’s Diwali offer in India
Diwali, the “festival of lights,” is celebrated in India. It signifies the victory of light over darkness as a sign of good over evil. It is common for people to travel to their native place to celebrate this festival with their families. Focusing on the same, Lufthansa released a ticket giveaway as a promotion for Diwali. They released a short ad about a grandfather travelling to see his granddaughter. It was aimed at creating brand engagement through storytelling.
By Simran Arora
Team Loc-N-Apps
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