Cross-Cultural Living
L ast night I attended the Paris Twestival, one of the 185 cities hosting an event yesterday for the Charity:Water. It was a great way to meet other Twitter users living in the area. The event was extremely well organized by We Are Social based in London and in the middle of opening a Paris office.
The We Are Social team made the event friendly and… yes, very social. There were video links with other Twestivals, a live band, dinner, an open bar and raffle tickets. It seems like we all won prizes last night too.
In addition to the prizes I collected, a tall young man came up to me and gave me a dark red envelope marked “Private”. Inside was a simple dark red card labeled “FFB – FightForBlogiz”. There was also a message in French saying that FightForBlogiz.com wished me a happy Saint Valentines. This was his elegant offline promotion for an online promotion.
This was my first Valentine’s Day card received here in France – after living in France for more than 20 years without ever receiving a Valentine’s Day card, this surprised me. France is not really a card-giving country.
North American’s Give Cards
In North America, there is a greeting card industry. There are greeting cards for all sorts of occasions:
- Back to school
- Birthday
- Chinese New Year
- Christmas
- Easter
- Father’s Day
- Get well quick
- Graduation
- Mother’s Day
- New Years
- St. Patrick’s Day
- Thank you
- Thanksgiving
- Valentines Day
- Wedding
- Wedding anniversaries
The list is in fact much longer than this. There are Greeting Card stores to carry all of these.
Some countries think they have similar greeting card stores. They are usually stores with little gadgets and trivia you could buy for presents. But nothing really compares to the North American greeting card industry.
You see greeting cards are deeply rooted in North American tradition. Everyone finds them cute. Even if many people find them expensive.
The culture of greeting cards must be the reason behind the “cutesy emails” that are so popular in North America too.
Different Card Giving Practices
In many other countries, businesses send out Holiday Greeting cards. And this can lead westerners to assume that card giving is a world wide practice.
It’s not. Many cultures have not really caught the card giving bug.
If you ask for a Wedding Anniversary Card outside of North America you will definitely be disappointed by the choice of cards available if you are lucky to find one.
When I first came to Europe I quickly learned that I needed to stock up on Mother’s Day cards every time I visited North America. Not only was it a problem for me to find them in English in Europe, but Mother’s Day falls on a different day in European countries. They simply were not easy to find.
My mother expected her card to arrive on time. And cards matter in North America.
FightForBlogiz is not be the only non-American company using Valentine’s Day cards this year. And other cultures do different things on Valentine’s Day. So in tomorrow’s Market Review we will look at the different cultural practices for February 14th.
Brush up your international skills…
Read more on Cross-Cultural Living:
- 92 Ways To Say Happy New Year
- Can Flat Stanley Spend A Day With You?
- Card Giving In Different Cultures
- Cultural Differences Even In Washing Dishes
- Cultural IQ
- Differences In Copywriting Job Titles In French
- Different Names In The World
- Don’t Confuse Sales Method With Your Product Or Service
- Example Of Cultural Differences In Italian Politics
- Foreign Film Festival
- It’s All About The Offer – Let’s Refuel America!
- Living In A Multicultural America
- Motivation To Travel?
- The Cross-Cultural Classroom
- Twestival 2009 Across The Globe
Use these skills in your international tactics on the…
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