This week a fantastic international business, that we are lucky enough to work with, sent us through some artwork for us to look at.  It was a series of beautiful posters for a new awards programme that they are rolling out across EMEA.

"Any potential cultural problems with this?" they asked.

My multilingual colleague Paul and I looked at these things and scratched out heads.

"Yes.  We wrote back.  You can't use those.  And here's why..."

What the posters showed were a bunch of hand gestures.  But the most prominent one was what my American friends would call an OK-sign: Thumb and index finger making a circle with fingers raised behind.  Like this, or this.

The unfortunate truth is that in Brazil, Italy and some other Mediterranean countries the symbol refers to parts of your body you tend to keep covered.

And so...

The question I am struggling with is how a multi-national business can manage all of these things.  The variations between countries make great fodder for dinner speeches and parlour games.  Think of the recent HSBC campaign.  There is also a good book I read ten years ago that is called Kiss, Bow and Shake Hands.

Unfortunately, there are degrees of relevance for these kinds of things.

When I was recently in a Gulf state, I asked whether it was true that I should be wary of wearing green and yellow ties.  I was promptly laughed out of the room.

However, my colleague had a great story to tell me of her own cultural faux pas.

She said that on a recent visit to my home town of Montreal, in the occasionally politically charged Canadian province of Quebec, she had made an unforgivable error: She wore red!

Huh?

That was a new one to me.  I'm not necessarily a red man, but I didn't know we weren't meant to wear it in Quebec.  I worked in Canadian and Quebec politics for almost 10 years, so I can just about figure out who and why someone might have told my Arab friend this.  But it's really a better story than a reality.

As has been said before in this blog, national culture is often thought to be more of a hurdle than it actually is.

With a few exceptions.

OK?

/df