Multicultural Marketing in 2025

Welcome. Dear listeners to the speak and flow podcast where we dive into unique strategies and experiences to help you and your team achieve maximum potential and flow even when the stakes are high.

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Melinda Lee: I am so pleased

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Melinda Lee: and honored to be able to introduce our speaker and expert today, who is versed with meeting with different countries and cultures

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Melinda Lee: and and helping them to develop marketing campaigns. So his name is Jonathan Holbert. He is the reveal growth consultant, based in Ohio. He's also the instructor for the Association of National Advertisers.

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Melinda Lee: based in New York, really well-known firm. He does presentation skills, training for writing and delivery and finally training to develop multinational country marketing opportunities.

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Melinda Lee: Welcome Jonathan.

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jonathanholburt: Well, thank you, Melinda. Thanks for having me on your show.

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Melinda Lee: I'm so pleased I'm excited to dive in. And so, before we get into the meat and the heart of the conversation, can you share with the audience. What are you excited about with reveal growth partners

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Melinda Lee: or consultant.

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jonathanholburt: In terms of my career. I've always been excited about the idea of working with companies to find solutions to grow their business, and in my particular case, my area of expertise has always been communications. So, finding that way to communicate with your audience in a way that connects with them so that they're more likely to give your, you know, to take your product or service and say, Yes, that's something I want to buy or consider with consumers or with customers.

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Melinda Lee: I love it. I mean, even if we're not trying to sell a product, we are all or service. We're trying to sell ideas, too. And so do you think some of these strategies that we'll talk about support that.

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jonathanholburt: Absolutely, because, having an idea, an organizing idea will better allow you to connect with your audience, because if you have an organizing idea, your consumers will hook onto it and and start to see your product or service along the lines of that organizing idea. And oftentimes companies that don't do as well connecting. Don't have that organizing idea at the center of their brand.

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Melinda Lee: Yes, I love that. And so you have had so much success and

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Melinda Lee: accolades. And so it's an honor again to talk to you, and so can you share with us a time when it was not easy. It was a challenge to get this buy-in. So what is before, you know, we're going to share. What is the idea? What is that technique to get buy-in? What is the advice that you give? But it wasn't that you just knew how to do that, so share with us a time where it didn't go, that well.

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jonathanholburt: Okay. So early in my career I had Procter and Gamble as a client based out of Singapore, and I was the regional account director on Ola, the Ola business, and I was presenting to a Procter and gamble client, and at the end of it he took me aside. He said Jonathan.

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jonathanholburt: in order to really connect with this audience ourselves, you really need to be not just a good speaker, but a better listener, and he says, I think you need to focus on your listening skills. Because if you focus on your listening skills, you'll find that we're going to hear you better. You're going to hear us better, and then we're going to be able to connect

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jonathanholburt: as a team, and that that advice came early in my career. Thank God! And I've always followed it.

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Melinda Lee: What was that like for you? When you heard that.

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jonathanholburt: It's like any kind of advice you get kind of like jolted. But I really took it on board, and I felt it was the best advice I've ever got.

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Melinda Lee: Right?

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Melinda Lee: Did you know that you you weren't? Did you know at all? Did you have an awareness that you could have been better speaker or listener at that time.

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jonathanholburt: No, not really. A lot of people who are big talkers don't

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jonathanholburt: really. Look at themselves and say, maybe I better be a better listener. So you know, that's the reality. With most people who talk a lot, they just don't necessarily listen as well.

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Melinda Lee: Right. Well, that's awesome. I'm glad that you took that. It was early on. You took that as a real sound advice, and you implemented on that

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Melinda Lee: for yourself. And so can you share with us? What are some other challenges or things that you see that people fail to do when they're trying to get buy in from someone.

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jonathanholburt: So I think the 1st thing is, they really need to know their audience, and if they don't know their audience, they're really not going to connect, and by knowing your audience to me there are 5 steps, one. You need to know who the key decision maker is in any room, and one of the things that I learned. I worked in Asia for 27 years, and I worked in

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jonathanholburt: well. I worked in countries as diverse as from the Philippines to Egypt, and from Japan and South Korea down to New Zealand and Australia. And one of the things that I learned is you really need to understand in the different rooms and cultures you're in who that key decision maker is. Because if you don't connect with them.

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jonathanholburt: you're simply not going to succeed. That's the 1st one second one is, understand who the influencers are. Now, the influencers might be obvious. If you're presenting to a CEO the head of finance is obviously the guy signs the check.

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jonathanholburt: The Cmo is the marketing director, but the influencers might be somebody, as

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jonathanholburt: you know, less defined as best friend of the key decision maker, or somebody who goes, you know, goes to lunch with them every day or hangs out with them, or has been working with them for many years. But understanding who those influencers are is the second step. The 3rd step is really, what are their expectations of you? They are rather, what do they know about you?

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jonathanholburt: And this is where you really need to talk a little bit about your own background and experience on the topic, so that they find you credible in that space. Then it's what are their expectations of you.

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jonathanholburt: How are you accountable? How are you going to take this presentation, and really deliver it in the space or the marketing space, or the geographic space that you're talking about. And finally, what are their issues and concerns now they may be issues and concerns about what you're talking about, or there may be issues and concerns on adjacent topics. So one time I presented to the Chairman of Publicist Group.

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jonathanholburt: and one of the things that he was concerned about was making sure that he delivered his promises to Wall Street in terms of margins, so I knew that any discussion with them had to at some point address that issue of concern that was in the back of his head. So this is something that I think those 5 steps of knowing your audience is really really critical.

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jonathanholburt: And during my 27 years in working in Asia, where I was really traveling around Asia quite a bit. I would always have to rejigger or rethink the way I was going to talk to the various groups of people and consumers that I was going to talk to, because it wasn't just about developing communications that would target

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jonathanholburt: consumers in India or consumers in China or consumers in Korea is about talking to the stakeholders in those individual countries, in ways that made me credible to them, so that they would buy into the communications program or plan that I was presenting.

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Melinda Lee: And so do you help companies to learn and go through this framework.

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jonathanholburt: Yeah. Well, that's what I did for most of my career. Yes.

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Melinda Lee: And then so so can you share with us an experience or a client that you had that did not do any of these things.

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Melinda Lee: and then, compared to someone that did like a case study. And what was the result?

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jonathanholburt: So there! There! There have definitely been clients that I can't. I can't name them. Obviously.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah.

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jonathanholburt: But there have been clients that that took the attitude of this is the way we wanted to present. We wanted to take us advertising, and we wanted to put it into an Asian country without any adaptation except for voice over, and we would explain to them that by doing that

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jonathanholburt: you weren't going to connect with that audience, and, in fact, just the opposite. You may be putting them off that you needed a scenario that connected with that audience that was culturally relevant, that you needed a talent that would connect with that audience so that the consumers there would really find that talent relatable. And so when we when we first, st when I 1st started working in Asia, it really was.

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jonathanholburt: you know they were. But I can't name the clients.

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Melinda Lee: Right, right anonymous name, or a fictitious name.

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jonathanholburt: Well, I can't actually, if I tell you to still figure out.

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jonathanholburt: But they were really trying to take us advertising or Australian based advertising with the wrong talent and the wrong scenarios, and just drop it into Asia and Asian scenarios. And it really wasn't working right. We did is we had a principle called Adopt adapter invent, which is either that in some cases you really could do that. Coca-cola is a great example where you could actually take a global execution and run it around the world in the same way.

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jonathanholburt: Adapt was really. And this is where the listening and presenting at a local level comes. Adapting is really where you take that idea, and you adapt it in a way that will connect with an audience

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jonathanholburt: in a particular market. And finally, the last one is adopt, I mean is invent. Sometimes you can't adopt or adapt. So then you have to invent an entirely new way of communicating with that audience. And one of the most famous examples from my career was Guinness in Nigeria.

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jonathanholburt: where basically, it was taking the Irish sensibility, but truly making a pitch for African males in a way that worked in Africa. And, in fact, at 1 point it was even creating a

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jonathanholburt: a Nigerian James Bond, that that Nigerian males could look up to. So this. So this was a case of invention so very different than the rest of Guinness advertising around the world but invention that genuinely worked.

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Melinda Lee: Got it.

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jonathanholburt: Well, we did something with Olay in China, too, because one of the things that we did I worked on Olay throughout Asia and in Southeast Asia, because it's hot and humid. You cannot use heavy creams

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jonathanholburt: or to Northern China, which gets very, very cold. We needed to create heavy creams that you know that a woman in Northern China could use during the harsh winters. So we went ahead and developed, you know, working with Procter and Gamble, and Ola developed a heavy cream for Northern China, and communicated that to to that audience there, in fact, we, interestingly enough, we shot the commercial for it in the midst of a Hong Kong summer

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jonathanholburt: model, had to look like she was cold when it was like 90 degrees out, and she was in a in a heavy overcoat. So, and this is, and this is communications both in terms of how you're presenting in a room, but also how you're trying to communicate with your audiences in different

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jonathanholburt: markets.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah. Do you notice that the communication? Does it take a while to understand it? How many times do you have to communicate it? Different iterations or versions.

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Melinda Lee: Do you.

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jonathanholburt: So one of the other ways that I believe that you can establish trust with any group, with any audience that you're presenting to or communicating with is really what I call the 3 C's of trust. And this is candor, competence, and concern. So in order to really establish that trust, you have to be really frank, Frank, in a diplomatic way, but still frank, so that people understand exactly where you're coming from.

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jonathanholburt: and then you need to show competence, which is, you know, basically, can you do the job correctly and have you? Do you have experience in doing this job correctly? And then finally concern. You know the fact that you are concerned about how this particular scenario is going to work out. One of the famous examples is Warren Buffett, in 2,009, who wrote a letter to shareholders and said, and I'll paraphrase.

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jonathanholburt: he says, dear shareholders, your CEO would have served you better last year if he had gone to the movies every day and ate popcorn rather than make the decisions that he made.

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jonathanholburt: So the form of candor. And Howard Schultz did something similar in 2,008, where he apologized for missteps at Starbucks, and how he would be better in the future, and both of them have obviously generated a great deal of competence through their years as CEO of Starbucks and Berkshire, Hathaway, but also concern that people could believe, because they were also the largest shareholders of those companies.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah, to have that ability to speak so candidly with candor.

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jonathanholburt: Yes.

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Melinda Lee: Even if it's tough.

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jonathanholburt: Yeah. So to me, yeah, candor, confidence and concern. And and I think those 3, those 3 C's really will establish trust. And when it comes to selling in or getting by into major communications programs. The clients that I dealt with obviously wanted to see that that there was confidence on my side and my in developing programs that have worked.

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Melinda Lee: Right.

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jonathanholburt: Because if they've worked in the past and we've developed programs that worked in the past, surely they have a better OP. Opportunity of working in the future.

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Melinda Lee: Right? Right? So then, then, from that point on, if they start to trust you, they see that you have the competence. And then now it's about having fine tuning. The messaging.

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jonathanholburt: Yes, yes, candor to make sure they listen to you. So they know exactly where you're coming from, the competence that you know what you're doing, and the concern that you really are concerned, that what you're doing is is going to work, and that you have accountability. So those those 3 C's of trust are very important.

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Melinda Lee: Got it, got it, got it, and it's a concern like you said concern what they want, not necessarily what we want or what we think you want.

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jonathanholburt: Yeah, absolutely. It's about the they need to know that you're concerned about the where they're at, that they are that they have issues or concerns on their side that you fully understand, and that you're trying to address and resolve as as a partner of theirs.

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Melinda Lee: and like you said, going back to the previous example of the company that you work with when they communicate from how we want to, or what we think is best

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Melinda Lee: that doesn't address their concerns.

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jonathanholburt: Yeah, if you if you if you're simply talking about, if if you're really up there presenting to somebody, and your your whole perspective is this is what I want. You're gonna find a lot of people are. Gonna say, okay, that's not what I want. And they're, you know, the distracted audience will suddenly go to their mobile phones or their their laptops, and they will switch off.

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jonathanholburt: So it's really trying to find out what they want and what they they need, and then trying to give them ideas that that address those issues or concerns.

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jonathanholburt: But to do that you have to be a good listener. You really have to listen well to what they're saying, and you need to ask the questions, to probe what they're saying, to make sure you fully understand it in the best possible way.

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jonathanholburt: and because when I work 27 years in Asia, oftentimes that required me to really ask a lot of questions in the different markets. So, for example, when I talk about who the key decision maker is. Well, in Japan, for example, they have a culture of Nemawashi, which is known as root binding.

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jonathanholburt: And so the key decision maker in many cases isn't 1 person. It's a group of people and the influencers and the key decision. Makers are kind of the same people.

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Melinda Lee: Pleasure.

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jonathanholburt: But you go into more hierarchical cultures like India and China. Really, there is one key decision maker where you need to be able to connect with them.

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Melinda Lee: Hmm.

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jonathanholburt: And and then the influencers

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jonathanholburt: can be people that are more logically structured within the organization or people that are, as I mentioned, related to the the decision maker in other ways.

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Melinda Lee: Did you have to develop your listening skills? It would be different, based on the culture.

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jonathanholburt: Yes, definitely.

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Melinda Lee: How did? Yeah, how you do that.

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jonathanholburt: So it's basically certain cultures are more subtle, certain other cultures are more direct. So, for example, Vietnam and South Korea. In my experience, people are very, very direct, and you need to be very direct to connect with them. I've discovered that Thailand people are a little bit more subtle, and therefore need to be more and Japan. So you need to be more subtle in communicating with them and listening to the concerns that they have.

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Melinda Lee: And then asking the right questions. So you're understanding what they're saying.

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jonathanholburt: Yes, asking the right questions, so that you fully understand or understand what they're saying, and making sure that you're really addressing what what their issues are.

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Melinda Lee: Right and not leading with assumption.

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Melinda Lee: because a lot of times you're like, oh, they said this, but that doesn't really mean that's what they really intend?

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Melinda Lee: Right? Yeah, yeah.

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jonathanholburt: Absolutely, so.

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Melinda Lee: Right like you mentioned, like the Japanese.

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jonathanholburt: Like the Japanese. Yes, yes, but yes, doesn't mean yes and so often and oftentimes we would. At the end of a meeting in Japan, we would ask for questions, and we would get basically silence. And it would only be afterwards where we do one on one that we really find out what people really thought of of the presentation. In the meeting in India, for example, we'd ask people for help in addressing perhaps a particular marketing task that we were doing and

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jonathanholburt: response we might get would be, yes, we'll do the best we can, which isn't the same thing as saying no, but in fact, it was the same thing as saying no light way of saying, we'll do the best we can, which may mean we're not going to do anything at all but trying to understand. You know, what are the what people are really telling you is is an important part of working across many different cultures. And I think that's also true in terms of working in the United States, too.

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Melinda Lee: What strategies would you give someone or advice that is about to go to a different country? Different culture that needs to get buy-in.

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jonathanholburt: Well, I mean, you know, it's it's basically know your audience. 3 C's of trust and import. And the other thing was, of course, just when you present, making sure you don't present more than 5 key points.

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Melinda Lee: Hmm.

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jonathanholburt: You can present less. Of course, if you have a terrific program or campaign that's generating double digit growth, you don't really need to present even 5 different points. You can present 3, and that will be adequate enough, but sometimes less than that. But the most important thing I've always discovered whenever I traveled is, make a real effort to learn about the country.

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Melinda Lee: Right.

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jonathanholburt: Ever. I've gone to country. I never went from airport to hotel to office and back again. I always made an effort to

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jonathanholburt: eat local food, go to a local museum or important cultural site, read about the country, read about the culture of the country, ask questions in a social gathering, try to understand as much as I could about the country, and you know I spent 27 years in Asia for work related purposes, and over time. I got to be very conversant with the different cultural nuances of different countries.

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Melinda Lee: How long do you think it would take someone to really understand the culture?

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Melinda Lee: Oh, I think it takes time.

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Melinda Lee: good sense to to get the buy-in to negotiate.

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Melinda Lee: You think it's like a, you know. One week, if you go there for one week and immerse yourself, you could start or a month a year.

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jonathanholburt: I think I think if you went there with one week or one month, and you really immersed yourself, you could get started. But the important is to bring in somebody who is totally conversing with the culture into the meeting.

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Melinda Lee: Right.

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jonathanholburt: And to go through carefully with what you're going to present and ask them. Just say, look, are there any watch houses, or anything that I'm not really addressing here. Please, whatever you, whatever you do, tell me now.

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Melinda Lee: Right.

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jonathanholburt: I want to find out after the meeting. I want to find out before the meeting, and make sure that I that I totally get. Get it correctly. It's important to. If if you don't have that experience in the culture, it's important that you

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jonathanholburt: bring that experience of the culture into the meeting. Right? So that's that's very, very important. And it becomes more challenging now because of so when I was doing a lot of my work. It was really traveling to individual countries face to face, reading body, language, reading facial expressions. Now, of course, you have a lot of teams, calls, or zoom calls, and you're doing everything by remote and people are.

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jonathanholburt: you know. Sometimes it got camera off, sometimes it got camera on.

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jonathanholburt: and oftentimes it's difficult to read the body language in the room, and that becomes even more challenging to make sure that you're getting it right.

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Melinda Lee: Yes, ma'am.

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Melinda Lee: yeah, it is true. And especially because we're we're trying to limit as much as possible or be intentional about traveling and flying.

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Melinda Lee: Sure, yeah.

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jonathanholburt: And and that the downside, of course, is you don't have the as good a connection, you, when you do things by remote, so

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jonathanholburt: save money on travel, but you may lose. You may lose it in other ways.

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Melinda Lee: Right, especially if it's a 1st time meeting. And you're doing some large brainstorming or or idea generation and discussion building trust. Yeah, I think those are important times to have that initial one to one, if possible.

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jonathanholburt: So I was working on a major client in Korea, and then the advice I got we had an American guy who's based in our office in Korea, and again I'm trying to leave the names of the clients. But one of the things he said to me, he said, Jonathan, if you want to work well in Korea. What you need to do is you need to fly in to Seoul.

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Melinda Lee: And.

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jonathanholburt: Have a social breakfast with a client where you don't discuss work at all.

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Melinda Lee: Oh!

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jonathanholburt: That's all you do is go in, have a social breakfast, ask about his family. Let him ask about yours, talk about his hobbies. Let him ask about yours, and then, without mentioning a single thing about work, pay for the bill, and then leave the country. Now that's a challenging thing to convince management of that. I'm gonna fly 7 h from Singapore to Korea to just have breakfast with a client.

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Melinda Lee: Writer.

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jonathanholburt: Talking about business, but he said, if you don't do that, you won't establish the expertise and the confidence and the trust of a client, and I did that, and it worked really well. The client did trust me, and I was very effective with that particular client, and there were examples of the time where they would have guys from Goldman Sachs, you know, very hard charging investment bankers flying in

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jonathanholburt: for one day into Seoul, 1st time meeting the client and trying to wrap up a deal within one day, and it would get thrown thrown out of the country with nothing because.

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Melinda Lee: And.

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jonathanholburt: Because they were sending a signal that they were there for purely transactional reasons, not to establish a long term relationship, establishing that long term relationship takes time and it it does. It just takes time.

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Melinda Lee: Well, are there some countries where that is effective, where you just come in and do a deal? It feels more transactional versus

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Melinda Lee: Korea, where you said you needed some more, you know. Trust building, just not even talk about business.

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Melinda Lee: do you?

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Melinda Lee: What do you think.

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jonathanholburt: I think the Us. Is more transactional. I think Australia is more transactional, but even then trust is an important factor and takes, you know, as I often tell, people trust takes a long time to build.

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Melinda Lee: It's.

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jonathanholburt: Very. It's very quick to destroy that trust. So yes, I think the Us. And Australia are more transactional cultures versus relationship building relationship, driven type cultures in Asia, for example, or Europe or Latin America. But even then I I wouldn't. I'm not sure I would trust anybody who

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jonathanholburt: flew in from New York to Los Angeles and wanted to cut a deal, you know, overnight you'd want to make sure that you were really dealing with somebody who you could trust and establish that trust with you and your organization.

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Melinda Lee: Right.

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Melinda Lee: I love that, Jonathan. Thank you so much for sharing that the 3 C's the listening, and then your framework to really understand the audience and the nuances of the different cultures and countries that you've experienced. And so that's really fascinating. And so I trust that the audience learned a lot as well. So I'd like to close with the question that I asked all my guests, what is that one leadership takeaway that you want them to remember.

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jonathanholburt: Be a good listener.

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jonathanholburt: If you're a good listener you'll be a good speaker. If you're good listener, you'll be good at connecting with your with your audience. If you're a good listener, people will want to listen to you, because if you listen to them they'll reciprocate.

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jonathanholburt: you know, and listen to you, so always be a good listener and not just listen. But listen beyond the words. What are people really asking in a question? Are they really asking a very direct question, or are they asking a direct question that is really disguising something that's bigger and more tangential that you need to address in your communications program in the way that you're presenting to them. So be a good listener.

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Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah. And it's a, and it's a skill. It does require refinement practice.

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Melinda Lee: But but it's definitely worth it.

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Melinda Lee: Better. Speaker. So thank you, Jonathan. I really appreciate your time and your insights.

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jonathanholburt: Well, thank you, Melinda. I I certainly enjoyed this discussion a lot.

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Melinda Lee: Me, too, me, too, and thank you listeners for being here. I trust that you have your golden takeaway that you're gonna implement right away. And so remember, anytime you have an opportunity to communicate. You also have opportunity to connect.

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Melinda Lee: to inspire, and to make a positive difference in your communities and in our world appreciate you so much until next time. I'm your sister in flow.

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Melinda Lee: Bye-bye, bye, Jonathan.

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jonathanholburt: Okay bye, bye.