Do Business Well

As products become more global, marketers will increasingly have to take into account cultures and values that may be different from their own. I think that I may have been helped on this score a bit by the fact that I am a Mexican who has worked for American companies all of my life. But even so, it has been a learning process. By now it seems obvious, but I remember a few years back when someone at Coke presented me with a sales projection that showed sales in the Mideast would decline sharply in January from the year before. The person presenting the plan explained that most of the Moslem fasting period of Ramadan would fall in January, meaning that during this monthlong period Moslems can’t eat or drink anything from dawn to dusk. Because of the difference in the lunar calendar, the date changes, and this particular year, January would be our slow month.

At first, it seemed to make sense. When millions of people are fasting, it is easy to assume that consumption of food and drink in the areas where they live is going to fall. But that’s lazy thinking. The fact is that Moslems don’t stop eating and drinking during Ramadan; they just stop doing it during the day.

Sales declines didn’t reflect reduced consumption of beverages, but rather reduced availability because stores and restaurants were closed at night when people were eager to drink and open during the day, when shoppers could only think about eating and drinking later. Further, the fact that our advertising was directed at people who were awake and thirsty during the day and yet unable to buy our products, meant that much of our daytime advertising was being wasted on an unreceptive audience.

If you’re fasting and can’t drink during the day, the last thing you want to see is a nice, inviting ad about how refreshing a Coke would be.

We realized that if we wanted to sell soft drinks during Ramadan, we needed to do it at night. Even if people were going to the store during the day to stock up for the night, they were still going to be a lot more enthusiastic if we recognized that. So we changed our advertising and then ran promotions and activities that would allow us to sell product during those times. We were careful not to try to take commercial advantage of this very important holiday, while at the same time addressing the real need that people had to eat and drink after fasting. We just did what we could to make Coke products a part of breaking the fast. Since there are 1.2 billion Moslems in the world, even a tiny increase in sales can make a significant difference.

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