Creating video content that communicates cross culturally
Crafting content that communicates and resonates with audiences across different cultures in the modern landscape is not only important, it’s essential. Representing different cultures, and ensuring that the creative is relevant, inclusive and engaging to a range of cultures, is key to connecting with international audiences in a powerful, resonating and relevant way. It’s good for your content, good for society generally, and, of course, it’s good business. Here are some tips and tricks to getting it right.
The ideation stage
It’s incredibly important to have cross cultural values front and present when you’re in those early stages of brainstorming. What sort of content do you want to create? A case study, an animation, an interview? What are the key cultural considerations you need to factor in? How are the messages, personalities and ideas going to represent different cultures, races, genders and values?
Which audiences are you trying to reach, and which audiences are going to see the content? Just because a piece of content isn’t targeting a specific audience, it doesn’t mean they won’t engage and react to it. There are geographical, political and broader societal factors at play, and it’s crucial you plan through these considerations early.
Be proactive. Acknowledge the power your content holds in the way it portrays your business, your staff and your customers, as well as the effect it may have on audiences.
WorkGenius wanted to create a multi-location company story video, crossing borders and creating a piece of content that was relevant, powerful and engaging to a wide cultural audience.
The production stage
Whether you’re on the shoot or leaving it to other experts, it’s very easy to get caught up in the stress and excitement of the big day and bypass some of the values you highlighted in the ideation stage. In the rush of getting a shot or cutting footage, last-minute impulse decisions can undo the purposeful ones you made earlier.
Be diligent about the things that matter. Create a checklist of the values you’re incorporating into the content, and use it as a sense check at each decision and stage of the production process.
IBM creates this series of speaker videos across multiple platforms for their regional social content series, crossing cultural and geographical borders in a single series of videos.
The distribution stage
The journey does not end when you’ve crafted your content. The way you launch it, the places you distribute it, and the mechanics with which you publish all matter. A superbly conceived piece of content, posted with a caption that doesn’t reflect its true purpose, or aimed at a channel or audience that doesn’t resonate with its cultural themes, is wasted and potentially even harmful to your business.
Again, use your checklist. What are you trying to achieve? What missteps do you need to be wary of? How are your values on culture, race, politics and gender reflected through the distribution of your content?
With these three stages in mind, here are some of the specific ways you can be conscientious about cultural values into your content, ensuring it speaks to, and resonates with, a global audience.
Representation
Creating content that is representative of a society, audience and customer base has never been more important, topical and powerful. A brand must be conscious of the talent they’re using, the messages they’re pushing and the way they’re framing issues and values. If you’re going to create content that communicates cross-culturally, it has to be relevant to and representative of the cultures it is trying to communicate with.
Be diligent about representation in all stages of your ideation and execution. Do your homework on the cultures and values of your demographics, think through the common missteps, and keep these considerations front of mind in every decision and stage of the process.
Captioning
It’s well documented that many audiences digest content without sound, but including captions in your video also ensures you can reach a truly global audience across language barriers. Customizing content to include captions in specific languages, and distributing it appropriately, makes a single video relevant to more audiences and more valuable to your brand and your customers.
This is particularly powerful for regions that speak multiple languages. Reaching them all with the same video increases reach, minimizes production and advertising costs, and ensures your brand is proactively engaging with the entire audience.
This piece of video content uses captions, local personalities and on-the-ground creatives to launch a new Primark store in a simple, relevant way.
Animation
The world of animation opens up lots of opportunities in communicating cross-culturally. Because you have a blank slate, a brand can fully embrace values and culture-specific messaging, creating content that is diverse, regionally relevant and tailor-made to your audience.
Using different languages, capturing colours and themes that resonate with each audience, and customizing each version for a specific region is easy when the only tool between you and your audience segments is an animator. Just remember to incorporate your cultural values. It’s animation, but representation of race, gender and other cultural values still matters.
This New Zealand based start-up uses animation to talk to an international audience on their remote teams offering, a business model that is inherently international and cross-cultural.
Shoot anywhere
Using 90 Seconds Shoot Anywhere opens up thousands of cities and creatives across the globe to your business, and this has huge potential for cross-cultural content. You can capture content that reflects the many locations and cultures of your audience, and lean on the cultural know-how and lens of the creatives themselves, ensuring it’s authentic and accurate.
Trying to bolt cultural factors onto your content can be dangerous. It can ring fake and appear done for the sake of it. Engaging with creatives on the ground, shooting locally and incorporating the expertise of those within a culture is the fastest route to genuine, considered content that achieves its objectives.
A co-branded campaign between TripAdvisor and Dubai Tourism seeks to leverage local icons, personalities and businesses for an international audience.
Working & producing together
The intuitive one-stop platform that is 90 Seconds also streamlines working with an international team. It simplifies shooting in international locations, and it helps with the ideation and distribution of your culturally diverse content.
You can collaborate with people all over the world, ensuring your ideas are well-conceived and representative, then edit and distribute your content in ways that highlight your objectives and values.
90 Seconds
Content Team
