Every market needs a different message - Blue Diamond Growers' international marketing efforts - company profile

Communication World, April, 1990 by Gray Allen

Every Market Needs a Different Message

How Saatchi & Saatchi and Blue Diamond Growers market worldwide

Does a savvy marketer take a "winner" of a marketing communication campaign in the US and attempt to apply it abroad?

"Not if you want to be successful," says Roger Baccigalupi, president and CEO of Blue Diamond Growers, a Sacramento, Calif.-based cooperative that sells two-thirds of its growers' almonds in 94 countries worldwide.

"To sell abroad takes innovative marketing and the recognition that every country in the world is a different market. And that which works in the US probably won't be appropriate overseas," he says.

A Can a Week, That's All We Ask

The veteran marketer practices what he preaches. For the past three years, Blue Diamond has aired in the United States a series of award-winning, home-spun television commercials featuring real farmers waist deep in almonds, politely asking viewers to buy "A can a week, that's all we ask."

The message was meant to change US consumers' perception of almonds as a special occasion treat to an everyday snack food. And it worked.

Devised by the global advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi, the commercials have been the heart of one of the most successful US advertising campaigns in recent years, and, as a bonus, have won millions of dollars worth of free publicity for Blue Diamond in national and regional news media, including the "Today Show," "Dan Rather's Evening News" and Business Week.

But did Baccigalupi let heady success at home cloud his judgment overseas? Not for a minute. You won't find California almond growers grinning out at TV viewers anywhere else in the world.

Messages Tailored to Market

In fact, Blue Diamond tailors its message to each market it selects for a campaign. The only similarity between commercials airing in markets in New York, Tokyo, Moscow, Toronto or Stockholm is the Blue Diamond logo. But even that sacrosanct corporate asset bends to local tastes when necessary. In Korea, for example, where the English alphabet is seldom used, a Blue Diamond logo using the Korean characters was created. And product labels are printed in the local language in at least 25 markets, and are bilingual in Canada and Finland.

Why is this necessary? Why won't a winning message in the US sell almonds abroad? Blue Diamond asked its neighbors to the north about that.

The cooperative pretested the grower commercials in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver and were told by the Canadians that growers standing in almonds were just too silly. Besides, they said, they prefer to buy products from Canadian farmers, not American farmers. So Blue Diamond hired a local ad agency to create a spot that had positive images and feelings for Canadians. The hands-down choice was a Monty Python style for a series of commercials in French and English which enlisted the talents of William Shakespeare, Michelangelo's David and Napoleon to promote "Blue Diamond Almonds. The Classic Snack."

And so it goes around the world. Blue Diamond assumes that no two markets will react the same, that each has its own set of differences, be they cultural, religious, ethnic, dietary or otherwise. And that each will require a different marketing approach, a different strategy. All of which calls for research.

Before entering a new market, Blue Diamond marketers scour every source from library to embassy personnel to international bankers to learn everything they can about local tastes, customs, taboos and market potential. They follow up on those samplings by contacting brokers, agents and potential customers in the area to learn what they must do with their product or their messages to win the order.

Research Pays Off

Such respect for local sensibilities pays off, handsomely. To crack the Soviet Union market, which Baccigalupi notes "does not lend itself to promotion," the CEO seized upon a line in the USSR's 1980 five-year plan which called for improving the Soviet diet. He promptly commissioned a study of the nutritive qualities of almonds from the University of California at Davis. Their findings: Almonds contain no cholesterol but as much protein per pound as cooked lean beef.

Impressed, Moscow began importing boatloads of the tasty nuts and made them an officially endorsed snack food in the USSR's anti-alcoholism campaign. Today, the Soviet Union is Blue Diamond's third largest overseas customer.

Such attention to detail also has won converts in Japan where almonds were an unknown commodity until Blue Diamond opened an office in Tokyo and staffed it with Japanese from the general manager on down. To win the hearts and mouths of their countrymen, Blue Diamond's Japanese staff snooped out marketing niches and developed exotic new almond-based products that catered to local tastes and needs. Among these products are almond tofu, almond miso soup and Calmond -- a nutritional snack concocted from a mixture of dried small sardines and slivered almonds.

Calmond is a big hit with school-age children who need calcium in their diet but don't have ready access to milk products. In all, more than 100 new almond products have been introduced into the Japanese market, most created for that market alone.