There are several teams of horses that travel around the United States and
others that remain in their official homes at the company headquarters, and
Anheuser-Busch Brewery complex in St. Louis, Missouri.
Television advertising featuring the Budweiser Clydesdales had been a long
standing Super Bowl tradition from their first appearance in 1933 to their
enduring presence on the American landscape.
The Clydesdales are more than they symbol of Budweiser beer.
They are the living embodiment of America's industrial spirit.
Brands also carefully choose products to build cultural equity.
One key aspect in the foreign expansion is to offer a product that caters to
the taste and expectations of target consumers in the new market.
In the same way that brands required cultural meanings,
products can also gain cultural symbolism.
We talk about this in some earlier videos.
Certain cultural traditions involve the use of products that get imbued with
the values of the culture.
For instance, in America, to express that something embodies the qualities that
are thought to be typical of American culture,
people often use the expression is as American as apple pie.
That's because an apple pie is an American icon in the same way that arepas,
the corn dog made into a flat round patty that is baked or grilled are a Venezuelan
icon or basmati rice is an Indian icon and perfumes are a French icon.
For historic and cultural reasons certain parts become associated with the values,
beliefs and ideas of a culture.
That require cultural meanings can raise the level of a cultural symbol and
were referred to such products that's cultural or symbolic, or iconic products.
Because iconic products are loaded with cultural meanings, brands can build
their cultural equity by establishing connections with such iconic products.
Indeed, brands of iconic products are often times iconic brands themselves.
For instance, arepas are a cultural icons for Venezuelans and Harina Pan,
the market leader in the category is one of the most iconic Venezuelan brands.
Similarly, jeans are considered to be an American icon and
Levis enjoy a relatively high level of iconicity for Americans.
So, one approach for a brand to increase its cultural equity in a foreign market is
to associate itself with products that symbolize the culture of target consumers.
Successful global companies pay careful attention to this product
strategy in order to boost their cultural relevance.
For instance, McDonald's carefully analyzes the taste and
traditions in the different foreign markets in which the company operates and
introduces products, specifically design to embody the cultural traditions of
foreign consumers, such as rice burgers in Hong Kong or the Maharaja Mac in India.
Products with cultural significance can also help a brand to heighten or
reinforce its equity in existing markets.
For instance, in its quest to become an American icon, one of the first product
extensions undertaken by Under Armor, the American apparel brand was athletic shoes.
This was a smart move given the cultural significant of athletic shoes for
Americans.
Our product is strongly connected to a lifetime of fitness, style and comfort.
Similarly, when Budweiser, the American iconic beer introduced barbecue sauce was
reinforcing the collection with American tradition of grilling and drinking beer.
Brands can also used cultural symbols and ideals in their communication.
Communicating culturally relevant images to build cultural equity focuses on
informing consumers about the imagery associations and
the cultural insights that support the brand's distinctive cultural meanings.
Certain images are more culturally relevant than others are as we discussed
earlier.
A brand attempting to increase his cultural equity should promote images that
are culturally relevant for its target market.
For instance,
marketers can build cultural equity among vertical individualistic consumer segments
by communicating self-enhancement brand name by use of power.
Social status, prestige, controller dominance over people of resources and
achievement.
Personal success for demonstrating competence.
This is something that Toyota has try to do to established a cultural connection
with American consumers in the big cup trump market in
which vertical individual is as likely to be a salient cultural orientation.
In one commercial, the Toyota Tundra is pulling the space shuttle.
An American symbol of ingenuity and technological superiority.
This commercial not only appropriates these meanings and
transferred them to the brain, but also communicates the grand schema and
ruggedness that characterizes American culture.
In other commercials for the Tundra,
Toyota has made connections to American football, the iconic American sport and
highlighted values of achievement and competition which are cherished values for
the vertical individualist American culture.
Building cultural equity can also be done by gaining cultural insightfulness
in communications.
Brands can use their communication strategy to demonstrate their cultural
insightfulness.
This can be a powerful way of building cultural equity.
For instance, in the 1970s, the Volkswagen Beetle was one of the most iconic
brands in the United States, controlling about 5% of the auto market.
The company reached this status by engaging American culture
in a very unique way.
Volkswagen capitalized on the anticonformism brewing among young
Americans at the time who thought that the good life built around over consumption
promoted in mainstream media was overly scripted and conformist.
The brand offered consumers a car that would let them escape the pressure to
adhere to suburban standards and
would allow them instead to create their own stories.
This cultural insight is cleverly captured in a Volkswagen
ad from the 1970s with the tag line, we do our thing, you do yours.
Depicted two side by side Beetles.
One with a traditional black look and
another colorfully decorated in an artistic pattern.
The ad further states that Volkswagen's thing is to steer clear of the idiocy
of annual model changes and to focus instead on perfecting its Beetle.
Meanwhile, consumer's thing is to treat their Beetle like something else.
To scrub them, stripe them and flower them in very far out ways or
to treat it as a new member of the family that happens to live in the garage.
