It’s not all about words.
Localization marketing strategies do not only rely on their success in strong storytelling. There are a lot of dots that need to be connected for building a bold campaign overseas, and one of the most challenging is the perfect setup of images. Those dots can only be connected once a team formulates the image to project, discarding possible negative cultural mishaps.
When images accidentally turn friends into foes
Nowadays royalty-free stock photography is a good alternative when aiming to create a cool visual public image for localization, but all their advantages can turn against a brand if the marketing department doesn’t consider the even smallest cultural details in their strategy.
Right to left or left to right?
One famous example of cultural misconception was the Samarin antacid campaign that used three images to show their Indian audience the effectiveness of its products. In the first frame a man was feeling ill, then in the next image, the same man drank the product and finally the same man was feeling well in the last image. Fair enough for western patterns but they did not realize that in India (and many other parts of the world), people traditionally read from right to left, so they understood that the medicine turns people sick.
And so there are lots of stories of brands choosing images based on their perception of a campaign that worked in other countries but then accidentally started a crisis that led to a huge loss of money or brand image.
On the other hand, you can check the IKEA websites all over the world and you will notice lots of differences not only with the products selected, but how they choose the scenario and, of course, the accurate models to build the perfect imagery.