Why is Culture Important for Brands?

In today’s marketplace, brands must embrace culture to thrive. It is an integral part of a sound brand strategy. Also, consumers most frequently understand a brand explicitly on their cultural values.

Whereas some entrepreneurs adjust to the trend, not many grasp the importance of a brand’s cultural symbolism. That could lead to a disconnection between the customer and the brand.

This article will offer a brief understanding of the relevance in embracing culture for your brand strategy.

Let us start by understanding culture in general terms and then reviewing how culture is vital for brands.

Understanding Culture

“Culture is a word for the ‘way of life’ of groups of people, meaning the way they do things. Different groups may have different cultures. A culture is passed on to the next generation by learning, whereas genetics are passed on by heredity. Culture is seen in people’s writing, religion, music, clothes, cooking and in what they do,” according to Simple.Wikipedia.

The Impact of Culture on Brands

By embracing culture, brands can become more influential. For instance, “Diversity is continually developed in Nike’s organizational culture. The company believes that this feature of the corporate culture leads to a dynamic workforce. Diversity promotes Nike’s creativity, innovation, brand image, and consequently, competitive advantage,” as Panmore Institute revealed. 

There are potent possibilities for building consumer affinity when brands are connected to culture. This conduct encourages consumers to convey common values and beliefs. But for a brand to be distinct from the competition, culture must be uniquely articulated.

Relationship Between Culture and Brand

Studies have shown that brands are symbolic, with cultural value. Therefore, communicating your message through a set of core values is essential. This will determine how consumers view brands as icons. In this way, entrepreneurs must learn to identify critical cultural touchpoints and appeal to those factors through their products and services.

As noted, the most successful brands integrate aspects of the culture into their core message and/or connect their brand to recent events or moments that reflect what they want to stand for,” according to Forbes.

Your brand will become more critical to your target audience as it gets more enriched with culture. It is a reality that people will search for brands that reflect their culture — sometimes it is done involuntarily. But culture allows you to communicate to your audience what is relevant so that it relates to their needs and desires. 

Therefore, brands should facilitate what is vital to our culture and communicate that importance through their message and brand promise to elevate the brand.

How Culture Impact Brands’ Marketing Tactics?

Brands are like platforms where consumers use variables such as ethnic identities or group identities to relate and express their relationships to cultural values. With this perspective, entrepreneurs can interact more profoundly with consumers by crafting powerful marketing campaign for their brand strategies.  

But when designing products or services, brands need to consider the implications that may arise.

For instance, according to Dr. Carlos Torrelli, globalization increases the positive and negative interactions between customers and a brand from outside cultures. Typically, when culture is fused, products can produce a deviant reaction, due to apprehension of cultural pollution, among other considerations. So, not all consumers will embrace your offer.  Having this information at hand, will help you tap into different groups to efficiently conduct your marketing activities.

Let us look at a few advantages and disadvantages of cultural integration.

Advantages of Integrating Culture into Your Brand Strategy

Three advantages are:

1. Entrepreneurs have the golden opportunity to harness culturally influential brand equity, converting equity to other products by brand extensions. 
2. Culture can encourage brand ambassadors that can build huge commitments through emotionally attached individuals that share core values and beliefs. This is necessary to draw more leads and potentially raise sales.
3. The adoption of brand culture will allow brands to be differentiated and, when successfully adopted, make your brand stand out from the competition.

Disadvantages of Integrating Culture into Your Brand Strategy

Three disadvantages are:

1. Given that brands can transcend their boundaries by accessing other cultural territories that might not be recognized, equity leveraging can also have pitfalls.
2. The preconceived idea of one culture can differ from another and this can result in a negative reaction because of the approaches, norms, or common beliefs of the different cultures. Even so, the place of production for a commodity might not be acceptable by some, because of the behavior of a particular culture.
3. Challenges can be encountered when brands attempt to adapt to the culture of a foreign market. Brands would need to adapt to the new ethos, value, and culture to step out of the traditional culture. If the value structure is different, this can pose a problem for brands, as they might not be accepted.

Culture provides brands with a foundation for providing meaningful customer experience to target markets. But it can also lead to a brand’s success or failure. Therefore, entrepreneurs must strategically study cultures to assess their discipline to adapt and succeed before entering a new market.

Conclusion

Culture and brands, when integrated, can build robust brand strategies for entrepreneurs; achieve competitiveness and customer confidence that propels companies to rise beyond competition and dominate the market. 

Despite the immense benefits of positive brand culture, tapping into the right culture is crucial to its sustainability.

But are you incorporating culture into your brand strategy? If not, then now is the best time to act! So, are you eager to learn more about how you can fuse your tactics with culture?

Let us further look at how much culture matters in branding, so you can integrate it into your brand strategy.

Please share your thoughts!