Last June I was in Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, waiting to board my plane back to San Jose. As the plane unloaded its passengers from the incoming trip, I was astonished to see that the first 9 passengers off the jetway were kids ranging from about 6 or 7 to 13-or 14 years-old. All wore backpacks, and the older kids were fully wired like professional road warriors: cell phones hung from their waists, white wires dangled from their ear pods, and they all carried some electronic device – game, CD player kinds of stuff. The kids entered the boarding area and walked into the arms of parents, grandparents and family members waiting for them. From snippets of conversations and welcomes, it seemed that these young travelers were arriving for visits following the end of the school year.
That scene has stayed with me over the past several months. Every time I’m in an airport, it is amazing to see the number of kids traveling alone. It’s become routine for young people to live in two places with divorced parents or relatives who care for them during holidays and summer vacation.
Then there are the children of professionals living outside their home country. My niece’s children have lived in the Netherlands with their parents for the past four years. They are bilingual, switching seamlessly between Dutch and English depending on whom they’re speaking to. They can speak and understand snippets of other languages and have traveled to nearly every country in Europe. They are world citizens.
You can study history or simply watch a TV documentary and know that international travel is nothing new: The Phoenicians roamed the known world of their ancient universe. Pre-Christian Romans traded with Egypt and other African nations, as well as China. The Norsemen cruised the North Atlantic. Irish fishermen cultivated mussels off the coast of France. And some of the most famous trips date from the 15th century with the famous explorers boating to the Americas and the Pacific Rim in search of rare spices, gold and silks.
Becoming World Citizens – Starting at Infancy
The big difference between then and now is the age of the travelers. These ancient travelers were professional sailors, or criminals looking for a way to escape the confines of prison, or explorers, or the wealthy seeking their next adventure, or business people looking to find a new market. Yes, Christopher Columbus, Vasco DeGama, Hong Bao, Ferdinand Magellan and others were among the first marketers in their search for new trading partners as much as they were explorers.
But I digress.
Today, children stow their teddy bears and iPods in a backpack and board planes to cities and countries that were once the destinations of business people or families on holiday. They are world citizens comfortable – or at least accepting – of life lived wherever they happen to be.
The same lifestyle transformation is commonplace among adults. Students spend a semester in other countries, taking immersion language classes to fit into the local culture. Americans live short-term or long-term in other countries. Websites offer home exchanges so you can spend a few weeks or months in the city of your dreams. Last April, a friend and I lunched at a Paris sidewalk café down the street from the D’Orsay Museum. Americans sat at other tables. Americans live in RVs and winter in Texas or Mexico and travel the continent, following the sun to have as much summer as they can. The marketing implications are enormous.
Marketing to World Citizens
The lifestyle of the world citizen creates a new market that demands a new business conversation. We all still search for new markets, products and trading sources. Marketing to world citizens means a new approach in everything from the personal interface to marketing collateral, public relations and communications practices, and new approaches to the sales process.
1) Language and Culture. People from different nations may attend a conference and all speak English, but our home culture guides our thinking. Language patterns, speaking styles, and even views on topics need a cultural and verbal consideration. World citizens see things in a different light. Talking the same language is not the same as thinking the same idea.
2) Customer sophistication. Customers are now younger and more sophisticated in terms of their personal experiences. That changes the way they view products and services being sold to them. Remember that when you write to a design engineer, you are writing to someone who may be out of university 3 – 5 years. But his/her life experiences may span several cultures.
3) Value. Some marketing variables never change. With the knowledge of multiple cultures and lifestyles, customers still look for the value they receive from a product. The key here is offering value that meets the needs of a person whose life is more nomadic than those rooted to one location, lifestyle, job and culture.
4) Keeping up with the Websters. I’ve blogged about how the term “keeping up with the Joneses” needs to be changed to “keeping up with the Websters”; ie, web-savvy people. When marketing to world citizens, web skills are more important for doing your research, expanding your understanding and knowledge of where your customer is coming from – literally and figuratively. If you are not using search engines and mining data online, you need to catch up, or you are part of history.
The world citizenship dynamic holds myriad other changes for us as marketers and business people. We are all becoming world citizens by design or influences around us. In some ways, these changes are daunting. Our comfort and encouragement come from the fact that this is the way the world has always been.
The above remarks are the personal opinion of Barbara Kalkis, Maestro Marketing & PR (sm).05 Nov 09.
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