Cultural Factor in Ad

Cultural factor is one of the most important factor for marketers to consider in branding as it could make or brake a brand. Remember Nike foray into the muslim market with its "Air" brand, which written in such font that it looks like Arabian word for god?

Pepsi capitalize on the idea that Spanish-speaking countries can't seem to pronounce the word Pepsi, instead pronouncing Pecsi (in Argentina) or Pesi (in Spain), in their recent ad campaign. In Spain, as shown in the video above, Fernando Torres where shown to pronounce Pesi instead of Pepsi in a mock-up making of Pepsi commercial. The director insist Torres to correct his pronunciation until he got it right. In the end the angry Torres tore down the letter 'P' from the Pepsi poster.

Purists would say that this would jeopardize the brand's presence, the grand scheme of things, but at least to these countries, they seem to work.

In Argentina, the main message is actually price comparison between Pepsi and Coca Cola, that the price for Pepsi is one peso cheaper and during this economy uncertainties, you save money by drinking Pepsi instead.

For Spain, the cultural behavior of the country has to be considered when you make such marketing decision, say if the country thrive on pandering to the ego or nationalistic sentiment, such ad builds loyalty because it reaches to that emotion that which matters. Would the risk of eviscerating your brand outweighed by the leverage from capitalizing a lucrative behavioral opportunity?

Some ideas are not fundamentally correct but maybe so, it could just work looking at other facts in consideration of course.