Going international: the key to campaigns that resonate

You know what they say about assumptions... they’re no good when taking your campaign to international markets. 

You know what they say about assumptions... they’re no good when taking your campaign to international markets.  

Just because something is a hit at home doesn’t mean it’ll automatically make a splash overseas. It’s super important to do the due diligence of understanding an international market just as well as you know your home base – the things that are a given in one market may not be in another.   

Gillette spent countless dollars developing a special razor – the Vector – for the Indian market that could accommodate thicker hair.  They did focus groups in the US with Indian students, went on 300+ visits to India, and conducted all kinds of research. The razor still flopped.  

It took nearly a decade to finally create a version that worked. It wasn’t until a US-based executive observed an Indian man shaving in his home that the reason the Vector design failed became clear: Indian men were shaving without running water, rendering what would be a useful innovation for users in the US, well, useless in the Indian market.  

This marketing fail may be from two decades ago, but the lesson for marketers is timeless: to really know your audience, you need to go where they live.  

Where consumers live now 

In 2008 – over half a decade since the original launch of Vector – that Gillette was able to have the breakthrough that allowed them to develop something that would resonate within the Indian market.  

With the modern capabilities of market research, the turnaround on that correction can be much, much faster – and won’t cost as much as 300+ round-trip flights across the world.  

That’s because consumers today live online, and if you want to find out what they think about your product, you can find out from HQ, wherever that may be. 

The VP of Gillette at the time, Alberto Carvalho, said to the Daily Mail about traveling to India to conduct research – “That's another 'a-ha' moment, that taught us the importance that you really need to go where your consumers are, not just to talk to them, but observe and spend time with them to gather the key insight.” 

Marketing to culturally specific values

Gillette’s extensive research also helped them to realize that, because of the conditions of the typical Indian man’s shave, which tended to happen in the dark early morning hours in shared bathrooms without a running tap, they valued safety over the closeness of their shave. Gillette's director of research and development noted that even though he’d worked in this category for 23 years, he never realized with those insights that's how the Indian market thought about the product.   

Thus, the Guard razor was born.   

Gillette’s attempts to shift cultural values, or emphasize ones around preferring a clean-shaven look, were wildly successful in part because they tapped truly relevant cultural figures – like Bollywood stars and the preferences of Indian women. This helped to create the campaign that made the Guard "one of the most significant product launches in Gillette history".  

The market-driving approach is what helped propel Gillette to success with the Guard razor, building a small business-focused distribution network to reach its target customers where they were.  

The takeaway is clear – time spent in or around a certain market doesn’t guarantee flawless insights. It’s the lived experience and rich data that you get in the wild that does it.  

Though this particular marketing oversight is in the rear-view mirror, this problem persists today for brands all over.  

But with in-feed testing, you can go exactly where you need to for breakthrough insights – right where consumers live.