Go Logo! A Handbook to the Art of Global Branding

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Reclaiming Cultural Heritage

through the Commercial World

VIRGINIE DERCOURT, PH.D., Professor/Lecturer/Writer on

Multicultural Branding Issues

Virginie Dercourt started her professional career at Cato Gobé working as

a marketing strategist for such brands as Pepsi, Gillette, Marlboro, and The

Limited. She then worked for seven years as a marketing manager for L’Oréal

in Paris.

C O N G O

M

anagerial and academic researchers now accept that products, brands, and

points of sale in the commercial world can play a significant role in the con-

struction of an individual’s sense of self. Borrowing from psychology, psychiatry,

anthropology, and history, researchers show that “materiality” plays a key role

in the achievement of satisfactory lives. Marketing managers understand that they must cre-

ate ideas consumers can see, endorse, and use to build this sense of self, but the way to do

it is far from obvious. In their development of brands, products, and points of sale, market-

ing managers must consider all types of consumer needs and desires, which is challenging

because consumers cannot always articulate how they would like things to be.

I was fortunate to experience different cultural environments—and was exposed to a lot

of misconceptions about the French, the British, the Americans, the Swiss, and the Dutch.

Although these misconceptions were not unusual, our essential task for clients was to dis-

cover the key cross-cultural values that these consumers did have in common—and to de-

velop communications that touched these deeply felt emotional need states. At L’Oréal, my

daily challenge was to manage both the emotional and the business dimensions of brands.

Despite the sheer size of the group, L’Oréal as a company has managed to maintain a very

strong creative culture. Regular fieldwork is compulsory, and training in different creative

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Reclaiming Cultural Heritage

through the Commercial World

areas is held yearly. During my seven years with the group, I was exposed to very different

business challenges: new product launches, distribution network issues, and international

brand development.

Among my different field experiences, the ones conducted in the sometimes-troubled Paris

suburban areas, among French ethnic consumers, best illustrate this ongoing challenge. As

a professor teaching marketing in that area, I was surprised by the way the female ethnic

students (born and raised here) use cosmetics and fashion brands. They mix and match

elements of their original culture (such as the veil, the use of henna) with elements from

the national culture in a very creative and personal manner. Instead of completely endorsing

the French commercial culture, they seemed particularly keen to include elements of their

traditional culture.

Ethnic products and brands are a booming market in a number of European countries. In

France, Halal food represents a US $4.3 billion market (US $21.8 billion in Europe) and

has been growing at 15 percent per year since 1990. In the cosmetic category, the Afro-

French female consumer spends, on average, seven times more on hair care products than

the French Caucasian. In Italy, the ethnic market represents a US$45 billion market. Not

surprisingly, world-class brands such as Nestlé and L’Oréal are developing specific products

to target this market. My research indicates that a large number of fast-moving consumer

goods (FMCG) categories are recognizing the need to take cultural roots more seriously.

The challenge for marketing managers is to understand the psychological need states

associated with these complex identity issues and then to develop appropriate brand com-

munications to help consumers manage these issues. I conducted extensive one-on-one

interviews with eighteen- to twenty-seven-year-old ethnic female consumers—and their

mothers—in the suburban areas of Paris. All were born in France (or had arrived before

age five). For the majority, both parents were born and brought up outside of France—in

Algeria, Morocco, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tahiti, Turkey, the French

Caribbean Islands (Martinique, Guadeloupe)—and two of the interviewees had one parent

coming from outside of France, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

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M A R O C

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