M’s the word: Guns, fast cars and marketing

To succeed in marketing, remember the cultural context in which you are working



I have been having some difficulty, recently, in getting a concept across to a group of specialists. 

After four attempts, when I was beginning to think I am losing the plot, the light went on, and my audience gave a very clear signal that the penny has dropped. Which set me thinking.

About 13 years ago, I left the UK to run strategic marketing for a major pharmaceutical company in the US.

Well, it was a big company and I really only ran a bit of strategic marketing ... but that is beside the point.

I walked into an alien culture, truly two countries divided by single language.

For an Englishman, the number of rules and the legalistic, or should that be litigious, approach to everything was astonishing.

I was helped, though, by a number of anarchists, in particular by a couple of project managers-one, tall and taciturn; the other, large and shy. But what humor.

Jim, the tall one, had a slightly manic look about him, with a Stalinist moustache and twinkling eyes.

He could be relied on for a droll icebreaker in difficult situations.

In fact, he was there to supply the mot juste when I slid unwittingly toward a confrontation with Bill, the larger one.

I had stumbled into a conversation about guns.

Remember, this was the US, where it is a man's right to bear arms.

Bill was playing cards, and the topic had shifted from cars, where I was on safe ground, to guns, where I was clearly not.

I think I made the unfortunate segue into guns by remarking on the sight of a pickup truck with a gun rack on it, cruising down the street in Pennsylvania.

I made a somewhat risky cod psychology remark that guns were an alternative to fast cars in the scale of sexual statement.

Jim, who was standing behind Bill, gave me the warning frown that said I had strayed into Bill country.

There are apparently three kinds of gun people, you see.

There are the guns for killing stuff, the weirdos, and there are the guns for fun people. And Bill was a guns for fun kind of guy.

So I cut short the monologue on how guns are clearly about penis substitution, which was turning Jim purple, and which was causing Bill to warm up and crackle, and asked Bill how many guns he had.

He actually had to count them off on his fingers and worked his way round both hands almost twice: 17.

At which point my mouth went slack. There have been perfectly adequate ambushes, political coups and hijacks conducted with a smaller arsenal.

I asked Bill where they were, and he responded that he keeps them in a shack in the hills.

I suggested that they are under lock and key, but shucks no.

So I went quiet, trying not to think how this would have gone down in Yorkshire.

And, of course, I realized another lesson: In all aspects of work, especially in marketing, it is very easy to forget the cultural context in which we are working.

Try to put yourself into the shoes of the person you are engaging with, and to establish an understanding of the context.

Usually, poor communication stems from the simple failure to appreciate that directions to a common destination are not helpful if you start from different places.