The Oreo has long been a top-selling cookie in the U.S., but Kraft has had to reinvent and redesign the Oreo to sell to the world’s different cultural markets, ‘hitting and missing’ along the way. Chinese consumers originally found the cookie too sweet, so the company developed 20 prototypes of reduced-sugar Oreos. The final product is a four layered crispy wafer filled with vanilla and chocolate cream, coated in chocolate; a huge success.

Kraft has tailored other products to entice different cultures. For the Germans, they introduced dark chocolate under its Milka brand. Research showed that Russian consumers enjoy premium instant coffee, so Kraft’s Carte Noire freeze-dried coffee is positioned as upscale, offered at film festivals, fashion shows and operas.

However, Kraft and it’s Oreo have not caught on in Britain. Their advertising campaign, blue-and-white posters on the sides of the iconic red buses, instructs consumers to “Twist Lick Dunk”. In a culture with a long history of tea and biscuits, Britons don’t like the idea of being told how to eat one. Dunking in milk, instead of tea, doesn’t sit well either.

Kraft’s cultural challenges highlight yet another example of how cultural attitudes and expectations are revealed so strikingly the more personal the product or activity is. This is important to consider not just in brand-building and marketing, but also in personal interactions — social etiquette, meeting protocol or use of verbal and non-verbal language, to name just a few examples.

Amanda
RW3