Comments on: Culture matters

By: Angelina

Angelina — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:39:15 +0000

Culture is an indispensible feature of our life. I think it’s quiet obvious to say that culture do matters.yet,culture cannot be restricted to some specified lines drawn by human,we can just get a glimpse of it.
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By: Lafayette

Lafayette — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 14:51:24 +0000

GM: “I know this sounds like that earnest lecture that kicks off “anthropology 101.” It is designed to remind us that culture is invisible and active in the most minor things.”

Culture is more, much more than appears in this piece. It is the foundation stone of a people, and the accumulation (for some) of thousands of years of history. For instance, the Jews or the Chinese.

What can one say about a “culture” that is not even three hundred years old and consists of an amalgamation, mostly of white anglo-saxon protestants but also of the world. It is a rainbow culture, perhaps more so than a great many others who have remained “culturally pure”. Perhaps still in search of itself?

Moreso, the vehicle of culture is language. It is the means by which people interact, develop relations, order their world. Damage that vehicle and the means of communication, so central to a functioning society, is hindered as well. Like money, bad speech chases out the good.

Because of a long culture of traditions, people find touchstones or markers that serve as references. Some of these markers are political, most are societal – offering people roles to pursue or avoid. Inevitably, it is difficult not to tend towards the norm in terms of attitude and behaviour, and any eccentric behaviour tends to marginalizes the individual.

But, what of a people without stable societal markers? Without reasonably unchangeable norms that serve as guidelins? What of them? They wander in search of a stable marker, one that does not shift or morph with time. Life becomes more difficult since standards change.

You can’t measure distances in miles on the European continent. They are indicated in meters. That doesn’t mean you cannot find destinations, just that you are never quite sure how far along you are on the road. And a lot easier to get lost.

By: Joe Grossberg

Joe Grossberg — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 16:19:56 +0000

Imagine people from another culture watching Borat. How ineffective would the humor of inpropriety be with someone for whom our cultural norms are alien?

By: Tom Guarriello

Tom Guarriello — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 10:50:15 +0000

After almost 20 years of working with organizations, I still find it stupifying that so many leaders fail to appreciate the power of this post’s title. The ways in which culture impacts everything in a company (in a mostly invisible, “fish don’t know they’re wet” kind of way) is what makes one insurance company, for instance, so different from the next. Yet, leaders often throw up their hands in the way you describe after paying symbolic homage to “building a culture of excellence” or some such tripe. Understanding deeply the implications of a culture and then trying to figure out its impact on a company’s competitiveness still remains one of the most powerful ways for leaders to engage their organizations.

By: jens

jens — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 07:25:31 +0000

find it hard to agree with “culture being invisible”. – definitely from the perspective of systems theory it is not. it is much more about a vital system of differences and distinctions that appear on the surface – visually or verbally or on different sensory levels. culture is experienced on the surface. it is about the differences that matter – to you or to them. either way it informs both.

By: Leon

Leon — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 02:29:14 +0000

In the 80ies, The British Petroleum management in Italy tested an ad of a guy with a parrot on the shoulder… disaster…

Parrot in Italian is “papagallo” also means in slang “gay”…… Can U imagine the italian macho driver with a gay on his shoulder…?

By: Rob Fields

Rob Fields — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 00:39:58 +0000

Funny, but I just suggested that culture is a medium. Not only does it frame our perceptions of social interactions as you point out in the example here, but it also impacts how we understand marketing messages. Imagine trying to calibrate marketing communications for Annakpok! How would we begin to bridge that gap, one that exists because some much of what we take for granted doesn’t exist/isn’t relevant in his world?

http://www.marketingpopculture.com/the_spark/2006/11/culture_the_new.html

By: Carol Gee

Carol Gee — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:27:44 +0000

I like your visiting hero. Will he reappear in Part 2? I can’t wait. Serials may be your thing, huh?

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 18:26:05 +0000

At the risk of stealing your thunder in Part 2, Grant, let me relate a story about how culture can matter to marketers, in a company I once worked for. In the early 1990s, the German mass media company Axel Springer Verlag, publisher of Die Bild Zeitung (at the time the world’s largest tabloid newspaper) noticed that newly-democratic Spain had no mass-circulation tabloids. By this, they meant a daily newspaper with lots of salacious stories, pinups of semi-naked women, sports stories, and horoscopes. The Spanish did have “respectable” daily newspapers and they also had salacious weekly magazines, but no salacious dailies: An obvious gap in the market, which ASV proceeded to try to fill.

Their valiant attempt failed, and their new tabloid folded after only a few months. The people of Spain just would not buy the paper. Only afterwards, in focus groups trying to understand why people would buy salacious weeklies but not salacious dailies, did they learn the truth: that people felt very embarrassed, in a country still deeply religious, being SEEN in public reading such papers. Weekly magazines they could read at home, in private, but daily newspapers would be seen by office colleagues, and by fellow commuters. Culture matters.