Culture eats strategy forbreakfast…
…and lunch and dinner

Dominic Carter
CEOThe Carter GroupWhat did you have for breakfast?

But, if your breakfast
looked like this…

The conversation probably
takes a different turn

Culture?

Living in Japan since the late 90’s andleading an independent market research
agency there since 2003

But what does ‘culture’ really mean?
Meet Marika
An Aussie working inJapan & APAC
research

Brought up in Australianculture
Living in Singapore(a multicultural country)
Likes exploring andunderstanding new cultures
Enjoys cultural eventsLoves Melbourne’s foodcultureAnd what do you associate with the term ‘culture’?
39% Arts(performing & Visual)
20% Education &family upbringing

13% Civilization &ethnicity
9% Leisure, sport,
travel, funSource: European Cultural Values 2007

24% Traditions,language, customs &communities

24% Literature,
poetry, playwriting

18% Knowledge,
science & research

13% History

18% Lifestyle &manners

11% Museums

9% Values, beliefs,
religion & philosophy

Coming to a non-textbook definition

Dark matter?
It exists everywhere, and is the defining
influence on human behaviour, but it isoften hidden…

“Culture hides more thanit reveals and strangely
enough what it hides,
it hides most effectively
from its own
participants…”
Edward T. Hall (1959)

We are surrounded byculture…

In the same way fish aresurrounded by waterAs researchers, ourquestions and answers arealways influenced by culture… And so is the fish

The experiment: ‘What do you see in this picture?’

Can we even trust
what we observe?

Source: The University of Michigan Institute for Social ResearchWe perfectly replicated the results with a similarpicture in our own team in Tokyo
Australians plus Japanese
who lived in Australia
commented on the fish andwhat they were doing
Japanese colleagues
described the field and/ or
the relationships in thatscene

Thinking different?
Japanese tend more to:Give more even weight to disparate
sources of information – gathering andintegrating, rather than deducing anddeleting
Greater comfort with contradictions
Sometimes value the ‘reasonable’ or‘received’ over what we might see as
rationalDifferent thoughts, different meanings
Japan provides a constantchallenge to westerners’ ability toobserve and analyzeIn quantitative research, we can’teven assume that scales mean thesame thing
Qualitative interpretation also has its
challenges as people don’t always
say what they mean

The Noh Theatre
The actors wear masks through theperformance which assigns work to
the audience“Each note, each word must be
savored, weighed, calculated, andthen put again into context; thecontext and never the word alone
creating the image.”
Donald RichieWe have built our agency approach on the idea of‘unmasking’

Giving the respondent a voice‘Unmask’ where we need toTeam from within and without
the culture

How we unmask

Stepping back
Recognizing the inherent worth
and value in the conflicts andparadoxes that come whenworking across cultures§ Seeing, not judging§ Forget about what you thinkis important§ Refraining from persuasion

Questioning everything

Create spacefor doubt

Using conflict to tell the story
Story itself is the result of theattempt to reconcile conflict
It needs to integrate opposing
points of view and possibilities
Superficial readings of what
respondents tell us lead us toconclusions on ‘you can’t dothat in Japan’A story fromthe field

Market entry for international brands
The world’s 3rd largest consumer
market by value for mostcategories, with a rapidly aging
population
Skincare is well positioned to takeadvantage of the mega-trends inJapan
Culturally complicated category

Our client, a quickly growing skincare brand from the US… wanted to develop a winning
strategy for entering theJapanese anti-ageing market

But Japan’s skincare consumers have strong biases

A strongly developed “Japanese-ness” is fundamental tothe culture and thinking of the Japanese§ Incomparably different fromother people§ State of being is preferable toany other§ Non-verbal communication§ Language is inscrutable toforeigners§ Physiologically uniquecompared to foreigners

So… Japanese skin is differentJapan’s sacred cow in skincare

Foreigners can’t understand Japanese skin

Is it true?
True enough for our concept and brand platform to be rejected

There appears to be a physical basis for the belief§ First skin layer is 1/3 thinner andfollowing skin layers are deeper
compared to Caucasian skin
§ 20% higher oil content§ ‘Foreign’ products tend to be perceived
to be stronger/ harsher
But what about the cultural perception,indeed the responsibility…?

Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

When culturally confronted, suspend judgement
Japanese believing themselves to be
unique does not mean that theforeign brand cannot be accepted
You need to understand their beliefs
And you need to understand yourown beliefs

Compare our beliefs with the consumer’s beliefs
WESTERN

JAPAN

We’re all waging
a fight againstageing

Science as
authority

Transformation

Aging issomething you
work withTradition as
authority

Purification

We all want to look better
But we have different ideas on common sense in achieving that objective
FIXINGSCIENCE

TRADITION

PURIFYING

Your differences define your opportunities

The opportunity lies intranscending the fact that
our client is different andJapanese skin is differentWe all want to look younger
FIXINGSCIENCE

Opportunityfor
transcendence
is somewherein the middle

PURIFYING

TRADITION

Learning from success – SK-II
Japanese brand (owned by P&G)
Based on a scientific discovery of the antiageing benefits of an ingredient ‘pitera’ insake yeast (brewery workers’ hands alwayslooked young)‘Fixes’ but it does within a solid Japanesecontext of purity (rice)
A brand that travels well outside Japan
What would an American SK-II look like?

The job of the researchers
We can’t instantly fix a profound case ofcultural misfit, or an inability to adapt
We can map the oppositions and identify
the productive paradoxes
Workshop the resolution
Looking for innovative, disruptive
opportunities that appreciate we are thesame, but we are differentどうもありがとうございました！
Do-mo arigato - gozaimashita!

Culture eats strategy forbreakfast…
…and lunch and dinner

Dominic Carter
CEOThe Carter Group