Translation and Marketing for Luxury Brands - Show #87

Martha Cristina Garza has helped luxury brands like Cartier,  Moleskine, Dr. Smood, and Maison Kayser launch in multiple countries.  As a marketing expert for high end brands, she especially knows the importance of understanding your brand differentiators and the cultures of your target markets.  It’s interesting to hear from her about the perspectives of consumers about brands in different countries, for instance Cartier is the number one luxury brand in Mexico, yet in Italy, it’s only a luxury brand for Grandmas!  She sees that brands are getting better at story telling and understanding that they need to connect with the cultures, yet they struggle with exact messages when they don’t know the culture. 

 

For example; a high-end backpack manufacturer from Italy positions itself as innovative and best in class in making leather backpacks that are “powered by performance”.  When entering the US, the creative team came up with a campaign to connect with the market.  The developed a picture of the nice leather backpack on a sofa and the tagline of “Netflix and Chill”.  Now, as a native US English speaker, I understood that Netflix and chill would not talk to their target audience of businesspeople in their 40’s and 50’s.  In addition to “speaking” to the wrong market of younger consumers, they also didn’t understand that the message “come on over for Netflix and Chill” includes a hidden invitation of intimacy. 

 

She strongly recommends that marketers who aren’t native speakers and don’t fully understand the culture are well served in working with a company like Rapport International to make sure your messages are accurate and culturally appropriate. 

 

Her final recommendations: 

• Understand the local culture 
• Hire experts to assist you 
• Consider all touchpoints – including the human interactions with your employees. 

As with every episode, I ask guests what their favorite word is.  Martha’s is “la pozzanghera”, an Italian word that means puddle.  She thinks it’s just a fun word.  Go ahead, say it! 

 

Links: 

https://marthacgarza.com/ 

https://www.instagram.com/marthacristina/?hl=en 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marthacristina/ 

 

Connect with Wendy - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendypease/ 

Connect with Martha - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marthacristina/  

Music: Fiddle-De-Dee by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com