by OLIVER SWEET and ELLIE TAIT, Ipsos
People
love the idea of culture. Finding out what makes France French, Spain Spanish
or Denmark Danish is why we travel. We see culture as a manifestation of the
greatest human achievements – we flock to art galleries and read the latest
Booker Prize–winning novel. But if we’re so naturally gripped by the idea of
culture, why is it so hard to get traction for the value of culture in
business?
Cultural
intelligence doesn’t come naturally in corporate settings, even for researchers.
When we go to work we often switch off our cultural curiosity. We begin client
debriefs with penetration statistics, household expenditure and demographics,
but we rarely attempt to immerse our clients in the culture their product is
inextricably nestled within. Variations in survey results are described as
‘market differences’, a damp squib of a term for what is actually a complex web
of cultural influences.
Why
do we fail to integrate cultural insight in a meaningful...
