MediaCom kicked off the Cannes adfest by applying zombie data to The Walking Dead, one of the world’s biggest TV shows. The WPP-owned agency came up with a formula that it claims can help global brands hit the mark in different countries.
John Gittings, MediaCom’s global strategy director brought AMC, the people behind the hit show, on stage with him on Sunday to push the envelope.
Before getting down to pitch he asked how, in world approaching Peak Zombie, had they managed to conquer all?
Zombie kings
AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan said it was through the craft of the stories and the characters. Dave Alpert, the exec producer agreed. Truth begets belief, he suggested. The characters had proper back stories, so the writers knew how they would react to situations, delivering consistency. Importantly, when characters are killed off, they were “earned” deaths, not just for the sake of killing and keeping audiences on their toes (custodians of brand personae take note).
But back to pitching that insight.
The formula
He didn’t bother with much detail about the methodology, but MediaCom, said Gittings, uses “six cultural dimensions in over 100 countries to understand how each works and how we as story tellers can use them to shape content and connections for brands”.
With the help of AMC, MediaCom applied the dimensions of: hierarchy, individuality, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty, pragmatism and indulgence to the countries where The Walking Dead has most social and TV data. MediaCom then found two “very different clusters,” of countries according to Gittings.
Cluster One countries were the Anglo-Saxon heartlands: the US, Canada and the UK. That 420 million strong cluster was defined by “high individuality and high indulgence”, according to Gittings.
Meanwhile, Cluster Two comprised Spain, Turkey and Brazil. Those countries are defined by a high uncertainty score and low pragmatism, reckoned MediaCom. “That means quite a short-term culture,” said Gittings. “They like yes or no questions, [are] quite conventional and don’t like change.”
A mild generalisation to apply to 325 million people across three different cultures. Nevertheless, what were the learnings for The Walking Dead, asked Gittings.
‘The short-term, absolutist nature of life’
The “extreme individuality scores” of the Yanks and Brits indicates “people in these countries respond well to individual decisions,” said Gittings. “High indulgence scores in cluster one countries suggest the audience is responding well to salacious or sensational moments,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Latinos and Turks in Cluster Two don’t like uncertainty. “People in these countries like to experience The Walking Dead more as a form of collective therapy… They need rules, they don’t like conflict so [the show] is almost everything that they are afraid of,” Gittings pressed on.
Risking an entry into Private Eye’s Pseud’s Corner, Gittings ventured a theory on the low pragmatism scores evident in the Brazil-Turkey-Spain axis. “It suggests that viewers are enjoying the short-term absolutist nature of life within The Walking Dead,” he deduced. “They relish the simple choices: hunt or be hunted, survive or die”.
What should global brands do?
Those six dimensions, said Gittings, serve as lessons for marketers in global and regional communication.
Accordingly, Cluster One, which “challenges and questions things” will respond well to questions such as ‘who will survive?’
“In comparison, Cluster Two indicates [their] society is structured much more like a pyramid. So communications will flow through hierarchies and need to be more of an implicit order,” said Gittings. So if you were marketing The Walking Dead in Brazil, Spain and Turkey, just issuing a statement (or an order) such as ‘survive’ “would be more compelling to people there.”
Gittings then began the crescendo.
“By looking at The Walking Dead as a brand we can see how different cultural dimensions can help us evolve the content and connections story across diverse geographies. So it can help us identify which markets can be clustered together and where we can share and reapply,” he pronounced.
“It can help us identify which parts of a brand’s story we can focus on and how we should target it. Should we be sensationalist or should we embrace disorder? It can help us identify how brands should behave in channels. Should we ask questions or should we be more authoritative and issue statements? Or should we target individual versus target collectively?”
Then came the denouement.
“These cultural dimensions can be applied globally for any brand. So please if you are interested in finding out more [big, global brands]… come and talk to us.”
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