How Can You Overcome Challenges in International Online Messaging?
Posted by Abigail Simmons on March 31, 2014
Digital campaigns for non profits can be global and reach audiences everywhere with the right international messaging. As part of my research at Fission, I set out to see how organizations attempt to navigate their messaging to an international audience.
International non profits often seek engagement from diverse populations for their campaigns, which can span demographics from both the developing and developed world. The challenges that come with outreach to developing regions center around differences in languages, cultures, and practices in technology.
How do nonprofits effectively create a campaign that can be received by an audience that is not as media literate as another or for populations with varying access to internet? The use of social media in one region may be vastly different in another, so balancing the right messaging channels is essential in outreach strategy.
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Then there is the differences in language and culture, which can be a large problem by itself. For example, when using humor in social media or other outreach content to promote an issue, it can be easily translatable to one audience but extremely confusing or bizarre to another audience. When the beer company Coors, sent their advertising campaign “Turn Loose” to Spanish speaking countries, they did not know that this phrase would be translated as, “Get Loose Bowels”, which in turn received many confused responses. Another example is that of Pepsodent, who advertised for teeth whitening tooth paste in countries in Southeast Asia, where people prefer darker teeth and actually die them brown. There are several companies and organizations that have learned from this problem in messaging across cultures the hard way.
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In order to avoid or make up for this, organizations often choose to refer their internet strategy to local people on the ground in their targeted countries or to natives of the specific culture they wish to reach out to. Alternatively, they may entrust their messaging to translators for all of their campaigns. In either case, there could be some difficulty in knowing who is suitable and who really understands how to ensure that your message is translated well while also keeping the integrity of the company’s image and style of marketing.
In order to better understand how to connect with audiences across these language and cultural barriers, it’s often best to work with companies that have the experience of designing and implementing campaigns that span multiple audiences. Fission happens to be one such company! Marketing analysis shows that regionally customized content will statistically reduce the risk of having messaging that is not well received by 30%-40%.
Strategic use of mobile outreach and using stories and images from different regions can also increase the participation and virality of content for a nonprofit’s campaign.
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Fission is working with the Varkey GEMS Foundation to promote their $1 million Global Teacher Prize, an award for an exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession and is encouraging students to become excellent global citizens and teachers themselves. This award is for teachers from all over the world, and seeks to do for education what the Nobel Prize has done for science and literature. In order to reach these regions and ensure that people around the world apply for the Global Teacher Prize, we have launched international outreach for this award through social media, online ads, blogging and email. Within a few days, have received nominations from places as diverse as Somalia, Dubai, France, and Japan!
How is your non profit navigating its message through multiple cultures? What are some of your challenges? Fission will partner with you to help your messaging reach populations worldwide and mobilize them to take action and use their passions to impact the world. Continue reading this blog for more on best outreach strategy practices for your messaging!
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