Peppa Pig has provided us all with an important lesson in marketing this week – specifically, the importance of understanding your target markets and subtly adjusting your messaging to suit them. Steve Maybury, Podium account director and Peppa Pig aficionado, explains how.

I’m always happy to draw influence from virtually any source when it comes to finding inspiration for content for Podium and its clients. We work with such a broad range of industries and sectors that it’s critical to stay in touch with news, events and developments, but also to embrace all forms of entertainment and culture to help the creative process along.

Plus, you never know where inspiration will come from. Noel Gallagher happily ripped off paid tribute to 80s kids’ TV show You and Me when he wrote She’s Electric.

“Coz I’ll be you and you’ll be me
There’s lots and lots for us to see
There’s lots and lots for us to do
She is electric, can I be electric too?”

If it’s good enough for Noel, it’s good enough for me.

Peppa Pig and the International Misunderstanding

Peppa’s on a lot in our household. There’s something for everyone: my 18-month-old son enjoys the nuanced humour and in-jokes, whereas I very much like the bright colours and the movement.

I was very pleased, therefore, when I realised Peppa Pig had presented us with an invaluable lesson about marketing, when a message about spiders, intended for UK audiences, failed to translate when the show was exported to Australia.

Turns out it's quite hard to find a royalty-free image of Peppa Pig

Turns out it’s quite hard to find a royalty-free image of Peppa Pig

In one episode, Peppa is told that spiders are friendly and it’s ok to touch them. A reassuring message for UK kids, who aren’t likely to be hurt by any native British arachnids, but hardly the correct message for Australian children, though: Australia is full of all sorts of creatures that are just waiting to bite, sting, eat and kill you. They casually found 50 (fifty) new types of spider earlier this year. One of them can walk up glass doors. (Click here for the nope.)

Anyway, the offending* Peppa Pig episode has been pulled from Australian screens and, hopefully, no harm has been done.

Understanding your audience is crucial

However, it’s fascinating to see that a message can be so helpful and friendly in one country, for example, could be downright deadly in another.

It’s why Podium works so carefully to hone the way we deliver all of our clients’ messages, to suit their varying audience groups and to ensure that everything is said to the right people, at the right time and in the right way.

If you think your business messages could be reaching a few more people, or you just want to chat about children’s TV, give us a shout on 0191 233 6397.

 

*It received one complaint.

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