Why Do You Need to Localise the Way You Communicate Change in Asia Pacific?
Introduction
Asia Pacific is made up of 53 countries with 4.4 billion people speaking in 2,200 languages and is the birthplace of the world’s 10 mainstream religions. It’s clear that it is a hugely diverse region culturally. The truth is, people’s local culture and language differ from country to country and in some cases even from state to state within the same country.
Although you don’t have to cater to all the cultural complexities of this vast region, you have to at least try to communicate the change in one mainstream yet a tailor-made way for each country.
A pan-Asian change communication campaign that assumes that the meticulously prepared content in English and the hi-resolution photos of foreigners would create change across Asia Pacific will never be able to deliver true, mass and sustainable transformation.
There are three main reasons why the change should be communicated in a localised way in each country and market. Firstly, its to offer better clarity and understanding, secondly to relate more closely to the local target audience and thirdly to touch the hearts and minds in an emotional way.
To Offer Better Clarity and Understanding
With the exception of Australia, English is not a native language in Asia Pacific. It is often a language that is taught and learnt in schools but may or may not be used in daily lives after that.
As a result, you can expect that even university graduates in most Asia Pacific countries to be limited with regards to their proficiency levels in business English. Office staff will communicate in English within the walls of their international offices but will switch to their native tongues once they step out into the real world, their world. (As for your plant staff, you can be 100% sure that they will be proficient in their native languages only.)
In most cases, English is a “work language” used for meetings, emails and conversations with non-native colleagues and is not a “living” language” used with families and friends and in birthdays, wedding and festivals.
For most non-English native speakers, it’s a laborious task to read something in English. Firstly they might not understand some words or the full meaning of those words. Secondly, they might not read the full text of a brochure or an FAQ prepared in English because it just takes too much effort.
For example, when offering employee newsletters in English and in Mandarin, I have often noticed that the local employees prefer to read the company news in their own local languages. I am not surprised. It’s simply much easier to speak and write in your own local language than a foreign language because it’s just faster and clearer.
And that’s exactly why a change communication campaign should be delivered in local languages because it’s easier to read and faster to understand.
To Relate More Closely to the Local Audience
There is a high chance that the change communication coming out of your HQ has a global perspective or a European-centric background. This is not going to strike a chord with your plant workers or your office staff in Asia Pacific.
You have to bring the change home in local terms. You need to explain the change and its impacts using local business contexts, using local union and local labour issues. What does it mean for your local business, its bottom-line and its future in your country? What does it mean for the local people, in their day-to-day lives? What should they start doing differently in their local plants and offices?
If you do not explain to your local target audience in a very direct way the change and its implications, it will be hard to secure supportive behaviours and mindsets. Using local contexts and examples offer your target audience a chance to see the change in local terms and more importantly find the connection between the change and themselves.
To Touch the Minds and Hearts Emotionally
You want to touch the minds and hearts of your target audience with your change communication. And doing that in familiar local ways is the best way to achieve that in the fastest and shortest amount of time.
Local Styles. There is more to localising change messages than just with text translation. Ancient folklore, traditional anecdotes, historical symbolism, local pop and fashion trends can all add a strong local flavour to your change communication campaign.
Imagine a change communication campaign that needs a series of teasers via posters or screen savers before the change is fully announced or launched. And if for example, your HQ uses food or sports as a theme for its teasers, you know that this immediately opens you up the possibility and opportunity for you to use your own local food and sports themes in your country.
In one of my former German companies, the global HQ decided to use a boxing theme to launch a new service concept for its automotive workshop service partners worldwide. The concept was brilliant and came complete with key visuals showing boxers pulling various types of punches and blocks in boxing rings. The campaign came with a ring-bound information folder and other supporting promotional materials such as posters, flyers and coupons. And it called better service standard aspirations as round 1, round 2, round 3 etc as they do in real boxing matches. So a workshop service partner could offer the basic service standards to his customers and that was called round 1. And if he wished to offer a higher level of standard and if he achieves that, that would be called round 2 etc.
When the time came to launch this service concept in Asia, I had a discussion with my local head if we could localise this concept for Asia using a martial arts theme, which is more popular than boxing. He was thrilled to hear of the idea and we had a joint discussion with the global marketing head and it decided. We launched the new service concept to our workshop partners in Southeast Asia using a martial arts theme. The customers related very easily to the concept and loved its creative approach. We called the improved service standard aspirations as the white belt, yellow belt, green belts etc. as they do in the martial arts world. Our North American colleagues followed suit and adopted a baseball theme to launch the same service concept in the United States.
Local Images. The truth is that many people do not read anything in full unless they are really interested. Most people take a two-second glance to look at an image and its accompanying headlines before deciding to read further. And you stand to lose that two seconds opportunity if you filled up that important “shelf-space” with an image that does not connect with the local audience.
Instead of using images of foreign colleagues in foreign locations, use images of your own local colleagues in your familiar plants and offices. Of course, you need an interesting creative angle to grab attention but it should be local (we will look into this creative angle in another section of the book). Use images of your local landmarks, local plants and offices and local colleagues in local business attires.
Local Colours. Use culturally accepted colours in your communication campaign especially in your key visuals. Though you can’t change your company’s corporate colours, you can still leverage culturally positive colours into your poster, website and brochure designs in a smart way.
For example, if your corporate colour is green, then for a poster you would have your company’s brand name and other poster design elements in green colour. This is your company’s corporate identity and you should, of course, follow it. However, you can use an image whose significant part is in, for example, red colour if you are in China or yellow in Thailand because these are all very well-loved colours in these countries.
Stay away from using colours that can be culturally offensive or disrespectful. And try to stay away from colours like grey which, while is a colour of sophistication in Western countries, is often seen as a dull and unattractive colour in Asia. It is not a colour that you would want to use when you are communicating a change in Asia.
Local Music. Music touches the soul. But local music does more than that, it grabs you. If the change communication campaign from your HQ uses music in any form, for example as soundtracks or background scores for motivational or informational video clips, I would recommend you to explore the possibility of replacing that with locally produced or locally-sourced soundtracks (in fact, replace the videos themselves locally).
Asia Pacific is such a huge and diverse region that you can expect almost every Asian country to have its own special time-honoured traditional instrument interweaved into its fabrics of culture. Sometimes its a wind instrument, sometimes its a string instrument or a percussion instrument or its an amazing vocal tradition or possibly all of that and more. Or it could also be that you have a strong and vibrant contemporary local pop music scene in your country.
Regardless of whether it’s traditional or contemporary, why not think about leveraging that soul-grabbing local music to reach out to your local target audience during a change campaign?
And let’s be realistic. Nobody is going to switch sides just because you added local music to your campaign video. It would be awesome if that happens. But no, that’s not going to happen. But it’s exactly this and other small but important localisation considerations that are going to make your local audiences switch sides. Not because of any single activity on its own but because of that wholesome, collective change experience. So music is good, but local music is even better.
For additional ideas about localising key messages, activities and campaigns in China, you may want to visit another blog of mine. This blog showcases my tens years of working and living experience in China with lots of short stories and anecdotes: http://livinglifeinchina.com
Key Takeaways
- Asia Pacific is a culturally diverse region. You need to localise your change communication campaign to suit your country in order to connect with the local audience.
- There are three main reasons for doing this: firstly, to offer better clarity and understanding, secondly to relate more closely to the local audience and thirdly to touch the hearts and minds in an emotional way.
- When you talk about touching the hearts and minds of the local audience, you have to think about localising the change communication campaign in terms of your local styles, local images, local colours and local music.
For Those In-Charge of Change 