Interview With Wendy Pease, Global Marketing Expert

Laryssa Wirstiuk 00:09
I’m Laryssa, and I want to help you find the best strategy for communicating the magic and wonder of your jewelry brand. So, you can thrive by doing what you love and filling the world with beauty and creativity. Welcome to the Joy Joya Jewelry Marketing Podcast. Hi, I’m your host Laryssa Wirstiuk. Through this podcast, I aim to empower and inspire jewelry entrepreneurs and professionals so they can thrive while adding more beauty to the world. I’m passionate about digital marketing for jewelry brands and I’m excited to share my passion with you. As we all know jewelry is joy, so I’ll gladly seize any opportunity to talk about it. This is episode 160 and today I’ll be sharing my interview with Wendy Pease, an expert in global marketing and entering new marketplaces abroad. Wendy is the owner and president of Rapport International, a translation and interpretation services company that specializes in marketing translation. Throughout her career, she’s worked with hundreds of companies to help them communicate across more than 200 languages and cultures. Wendy is the author of the book, The Language of Global Marketing, as well as the host of the Global Marketing Show podcast. In this episode, we discuss the potential that global marketing holds for jewelry brands, specifically. What are some of the most common mistakes she’s seen in the marketplace as well as the success stories? How can you successfully tap customers in other countries whether you’re a solopreneur or multi-million-dollar jewelry brand? How can you effectively communicate the emotional resonance of your jewelry when there’s a language barrier? We cover all these questions and more in this fascinating episode, so keep listening. But before we get to the solid gold of this episode, I’d like to take a moment to remind you that this podcast has both an audio and video component. So, you can either listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch the interview on YouTube by searching Joy Joya. I love creating this content as my act of service for you my awesome listeners, and you can support the podcast for free by taking the time not only to subscribe, but also to leave a rating and review on iTunes, which helps other jewelry dreamers find it too. Let’s discuss some recent news related to jewelry or marketing. Each week I share my thoughts about three relevant articles and you can get those links by visiting joyjoya.com/signup. Once you’re on the VIP list, you’ll receive our weekly digest filled with new episode announcements. First, I saw this really fascinating article from marketingprofs.com called how people want brand messaging to make them feel. As you can tell from the title. It’s all about what consumers want from a brand when they interact with that brand. What kind of feeling do most consumers want to have? So according to a recent survey from a test, 57% of respondents say that they want brand messaging that makes them laugh, or that entertains them and that’s what’s really appealing to them right now. I thought that that was so interesting that consumers really want to have fun. They want to have a positive and uplifting experience when they’re interacting with a brand and less seriousness. 47% say that they want brand messaging that makes them feel motivated and inspired and more than a third 34% of respondents say they want messaging that’s educational, thought provoking, or reassuring. Honestly, I think a lot of jewelry brands today take themselves a little too seriously and in reality, today’s consumers want an element of fun when they interact with a brand. Do you want to know how to have more fun with your jewelry marketing so that your customers can experience more fun? Well, shameless plug. You’ll want to register for my webinar on February 21st at 1pm Eastern time through the jewelry e comm annual conference, and I’ll put that link in the show notes. I will be presenting on this exact topic and I hope to have fun in my presentation. So, I highly encourage you to check that out. The second article comes from pssk.com and it’s all about Amazon’s first physical clothing store and how they’re providing a glimpse into next gen retail. Even though this is about a clothing store. I still think it’s relevant for jewelry brands as especially those with a brick-and-mortar footprint, or those looking to pursue more omni channel sales opportunities. This is all just about the future of retail and how consumers are going to expect to shop in the coming years. So, E commerce and technology giant Amazon is opening its first ever physical clothing store called Amazon style. This is definitely an interesting insight into how brick and mortar retail will be changing and evolving in the coming years. According to the article, quote, the company has indicated its new physical store will offer up to double the number of available styles as traditional stores. The increased capability will be powered by smart technology and intelligent inventory management tools that remove friction and streamline stocking enablement and quote, I personally from a consumer shopper perspective, think this is awesome. Because lately when I’ve been going shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, I feel and this might be a trend you’ve noticed too, that physical inventory is just down in general. So, it’s really interesting that Amazon is going to be implementing tools that will help them maintain a high inventory in a really smart and thoughtful way. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this comes about. The PSFK research team has been following the trend of retailers that are blending omni channel offerings and innovative technology offerings, as well as features that enhance the in-store experience. They see quote, a promising and convenient future for the retail industry. My last article is from mediapost.com and it highlights the findings of a just released 2022 edition of Independent PR firm Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer. They found that businesses are now the most trusted institutions worldwide. I thought that this was extremely fascinating. As a jewelry business, you have to make up for consumers distrust in things like government and media. Because today, people trust those things less and they actually have more trust in businesses and expect businesses to be trustworthy, and to share signals of trust and connection with consumers. So, that’s really like a top priority thing to keep in mind in all your interactions with customers. A quote from the Edelman study says, business must now be the stabilizing force delivering tangible action and results on society’s most critical issues. Societal leadership is now a core function of business. That didn’t necessarily blow my mind. But it really puts the lens in the spotlight on the fact that businesses have to serve as this model of trustworthiness and transparency and really be interested in connecting with customers in a genuine and authentic way. That means businesses like yours have to fight harder than ever before to earn and maintain customer trust in their interactions with you. Your customers likely are coming to you with this distrustful, hesitant mindset just because of the attitude in which they approach other institutions. So, it’s kind of bleak, but it’s also such an opportunity for you as a business. In all your marketing efforts. You can focus first and foremost on building trust, showcasing user generated content, customer reviews and testimonials, showing authentic behind the scenes content, being transparent about your supply chain, et cetera. As I mentioned, if you want to get the links to the articles I share in this segment of the podcast, you can become a Joy Joya VIP by visiting joyjoya.com/sign up. Without further delay. Let’s get to my interview with Wendy. If you’d like to learn more about her book and podcast in her services, you can find the links to these resources in the show notes. Hello, Wendy. Welcome to the podcast. I’m so excited to have you as a guest today. So, thank you for coming on and joining me.

Wendy Pease 09:23
Oh, thank you. I’m so excited to be here. I’m thrilled to talk to you a fellow marketer.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 09:29
Awesome. So, tell our listeners a little bit about how you first entered the global marketing space and why are you so passionate about it?

Wendy Pease 09:38
It’s a good question. I am so passionate about it because I’ve lived internationally. I lived in Mexico and Taiwan and the Philippines when I was a child and I know what it’s like to be the different one. I mean, when we lived in Taiwan, we were living in a small agriculture community. My dad was in international agriculture research and they just put a center in there. So, the town we lived in, had no TV, no running water, no electricity and they had never seen blond haired kids before. So, the kids would come over and want to touch my hair and touch my skin just because it looks so different. So, from that, I learned that even though people speak different languages, and they have different cultures, and they have different experiences, people are all people and you can form friendships, even if you don’t speak the languages. I’m really passionate about helping people communicate across languages and cultures. I got into it, I guess it was, time in the making? Well, let’s talk about my business is Rapport International. I bought it 17 years ago, because it looked like the perfect storm of my experiences and running the business. That had something to do with culture and language. It had something to do with business-to-business services, and it had something to do with helping people.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 11:15
That sounds perfect.

Wendy Pease 11:17
Yeah. So, it aligns with a lot of my values and it’s a lot of fun.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 11:22
I’m sure that passion that you have also fuels the podcast that you do about global marketing, the book that you wrote, tell us a little more about those two things.

Wendy Pease 11:33
My COVID project was to write a book, I’d had that on the dreaming lists of things to do for years and what I found is that there are a lot of companies that don’t even think about going international. There are free grants out there, there’s free supports from the Federal Department of Commerce and from all the states. So, you can get consulting, and you can get money for free to help you export and that’s because our balance of trade is so far off, we bring in so many more goods and services than we export. So, I wrote the book that talks about the opportunity, I mean, what’s out there to support you how you think about doing it, how you do a company strategy, how you think about which countries to even go into. Then it’s a changing world, with the internet, making goods and services accessible International, you have millennials who are traveling more, you’ve got higher disposable income in across a bunch of different measures of different countries, it’s a perfect time to go international. So, I wrote the book that explains all that, and then gives you a path on how to go about doing it. Then the podcast is a lot of fun, because I’m talking to people who are doing it and they do it in all different kinds of ways. So, the book is The Language of Global Marketing. You can buy it on Amazon, or any of the book places, and the podcast is the Global Marketing Show. It’s on all the podcast place. So, if anybody’s interested in being on it, you can certainly apply through our website. Otherwise, you get that there’s some darn tough socks are on there. Somebody from PepsiCo, somebody from Disney, so all sorts of people that have been fun to talk to.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 13:30
Yeah, two really amazing resources and I’ll link to both of those in the show notes for our listeners. I’m excited to dive into some of the things that you just mentioned that were in your book, but I would love to know your business. What specific services do you offer your clients just so we can get a better idea of how you support people?

Wendy Pease 13:52
Okay, thank you for asking, yes, we provide language services, which is anything from taking one language to another except for language teaching. We don’t do that, you know, give referrals to things I recommend or people I recommend. But we do written translation and spoken interpretation. A few people outside the industry know the distinction between those two terms. So, if you learn one thing from this podcast, learn, translation is written like websites and contracts and packaging and your Amazon keywords and that’s all translation and interpretation is spoken. So, that can be live in person, it can be on a Zoom meeting, it can be over the telephone if you just have to have a quick call and it can be conference interpreting. There’s multilingual chat, there’s language testing, so we’re really good at figuring out the best way to accomplish what you want to do with language.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 14:54
Sure, I’d love to hear if you’re able to share some types of clients that you’ve helped or even the different industries that you’ve served and what you’ve seen in terms of success and in moving toward global marketing.

Wendy Pease 15:08
Sure, it’s interesting, because we’re just working on some case studies. and we were documenting numbers on that. When we’re looking at translating websites, we’re seeing export revenue, like double in size, we’re seeing visitors of websites that have been translated increasing substantially, there was one that was close to 200% increase in visitors just from adding language in, we’re seeing companies expand into and get new contracts with distributors or clients, because they’re translating brochures and materials that are going out. So, often people say, well, translation is a cost, and I’m not sure I want to do that. But what they’re not figuring in is, if your clients, or your prospects can’t connect with you, then they’re not going to come. Now we have to talk about your book, because that is really what you talk about. Your book is Jewelry Marketing Joy, and I so appreciated reading a copy of it. Because it completely talks about how you have to understand the value of your brand and really connect. What I loved about your book as you throw all the different ways that you can do marketing. By the time I was like, well, oh, my gosh, I could do this, I could do this, I could do this, but how do I put it in a plan and how do I figure out to afford it? That was the next section of your book, wrapped it all together. So, that’s a good place to start, particularly if you’re in jewelry, because all the examples in your book were jewelry manufacturers or creators and I thought that was such a good resource.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 16:58
Oh, great. Thanks, Wendy. I appreciate that. Also, a COVID project just like you.

Wendy Pease 17:07
That’s fantastic. Something to keep us entertained.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 17:11
So, tell me, what are some of the common mistakes that you’re seeing out there in the marketplace when it comes to moving into a global market? I would love for my listeners to avoid making those mistakes. So, what are they?

Wendy Pease 17:23
Okay, number one is thinking English is the global language. So, all the statistics show that 75% of bilingual people are more apt to come to your website and stay there and read if you provide in language content, and well over half of them are willing to pay more money if you provide in language content. So, the numbers are right there that English is not the global language and something since we’re talking to a lot of people in the jewelry industry, jewelry is an emotional buy. So, you not only have to make sure the language is there, but you have to make sure that emotional connection is there. So, English is not the global language, if you want to increase your sales, put in translation. The number two mistake is thinking that Google Translate is going to do that for you. So, I have all sorts of examples of where Google Translate can go bad and one of my favorite ones is the Mazda tagline that they came out within Japan. It was Jimba Ittai. Now I love Mazdas. I am on my second one. I’m a huge fan of their car. I don’t know what it is. They just fit me, they ride nice, whatever. So, Jimba Ittai captures a nice feeling that I can relate to, but it’s really hard to put it in English words. It’s that feeling of a horse warrior galloping across the field with a bow and arrow fully pulled and ready to go in and it’s feeling all at one with the horse. Now see how many words I took to say that in English. We don’t have a word for that maybe the Cherokee language they do but we don’t in English. So, when I first put that into Google Translate, it came out with danger.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 19:27
Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s far off.

Wendy Pease 19:31
Tagline for a car. The second time I put it into google it came out as just Jimba and the third time I put it in was just last week and it was something like, I’ve hit my center or something. I’ll have to go look it up again as to what it is, but it was something getting closer. But you could see how each iteration of Google is changing and it’s not capturing that. So, I think using the Google Translate plugin, and then number three is where you put your language navigation, the standard for the users to put a globe up in the top right-hand corner, and then drop down to the language and make sure you translate what language it is. So, even if you get really fancy, and you show language by the countries that they’re coming in from, or the language, their browser is set to, make sure you have the Language Switcher up there. Because if I lived in Taiwan, and you had my IP marked as living in Taiwan and wanting Chinese, I would still want to read it in English, because I’m not going to buy off a Chinese site.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 20:46
Sure, that makes a lot of sense. I don’t even know what the percentage is. But why do you think that US brands leave those global markets untapped? Is it nervousness about it? Is it because they don’t know how to approach this pursue? What do you think is the limit?

Wendy Pease 21:07
I think it’s fear. I think it’s fear of languages and culture of the unknown and the number one thing that hits me across the podcast interviews that I do, is that you can be successful. Just stay curious. Stay curious, people are going to do things differently. If you stay curious, and you ask politely, you can figure things out. So, yeah, and companies that export have on average, 20%, higher revenues, they’re more profitable, have higher valuations, they pay higher salaries, and they’re more stable. So, the companies that do go through that learning process and start to do it end up being stronger companies, because when one market is down, another market can be up.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 22:01
Sure, it can be a little bit of an insurance policy rather than putting all your eggs in one country basket, I guess.

Wendy Pease 22:08
Exactly. The other thing that’s surprising is exports, number one export from the US is services. So, I’ve had a lot of service agencies, particularly B2B, now I can’t say particularly B2B, but I can say that service people who have read my book are surprised, like creative marketing agencies. I never thought about selling internationally. But there’s so many companies that want to come into the United States, and there’s so many ways to help their companies expand international. So, sometimes it’s just taking the blinders off.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 22:50
That makes a lot of sense. So, for our listeners, mostly leaders at jewelry companies, solopreneurs, at jewelry companies, what is the potential do you think for these product-based jewelry businesses, specifically, when it comes to global marketing? Why should they really pay attention to this and consider it as a possibility?

Wendy Pease 23:14
Oh, live outside of the United States, like American products, they’ve got a good reputation they are usually known as well made, there’s something about the brand halo that goes across the Made in the USA, and plus you’re talking to a much larger market. So, you can reach your target audience across different countries. Plus, the other thing is if you’re selling your jewelry on Amazon, or Etsy, they’re global platforms. So, why not add a little bit of translation and figure out. Call into Amazon, they’ve got huge supports for small businesses that want to go international and how you can distribute internationally. So, figuring out how to leverage their system that’s already there is huge.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 24:10
Sure, that’s such a good point and one I didn’t even think of all the marketplaces, I mean, I’m looking at Amazon shopping for whatever and most of the products I see are, I don’t know, from China or whatever country and I think they might need your global translation help because sometimes I’m like, what are they trying to say about this product? That sounds a little crazy.

Wendy Pease 24:34
I would love introductions to anytime you get a user manual where there’s a poor translation or packaging, send me pictures send me names. I love that because we put it all over social media as a learning opportunity.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 24:48
That’s why there are a lot of examples.

Wendy Pease 24:51
Send them in, send them in to me.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 24:55
So how does a business owner know if they’re ready to take this plunge? Is there a certain key performance indicator in their business that should let them know they’re ready to enter a global market? Or is it just more like a mindset thing? Like, I’m ready to do this. That is such an interesting point and such a progressive way to think about branding. Because you’re right, so many people, even in the US, even if we’re not even going beyond the US, there are so many countries spoken here. If you really want to appeal to a diverse customer base, maybe making their life a little easier by speaking their language.

Wendy Pease 25:12
Mindset thing, I see lots of company, no, I don’t see lots, I see some companies thinking global from the start. They’re usually millennials who have traveled that are very tech savvy and they understand that if I put it out on the internet, anybody can find it. So, they think global from the start, and that’s huge. I’ve seen other companies grow big and they didn’t think global from the start. Then all of a sudden, their website isn’t easily modified and there’s a lot of clunky stuff in the background that they don’t do it. So, if you’re just starting a company, think global or think multilingual from the start. The other thing is, the country that has the second largest Spanish speaking population is the US. So, Mexico was number one, US is number two, and then you’ve got Spain and Peru and all the other Spanish speaking countries. So, if you’re here in the United States, put some Spanish up on your website, even just the landing page, it’s low money, and enable people to buy the jewelry, because they might do it from here and then you can easily expand into Mexico and other Spanish speaking countries. Yes. Then you know, if you provide information in their language, they’re more apt to come to your website, and they’re more apt to spend more money. So, doing little things, even if you’re going to a jewelry convention, putting a little sign up that says welcome in multiple languages just brings people over. If you don’t speak the language, like I learned as a kid, there’s still a way to converse, particularly in public, when you’re at a booth where you’ve got goods that you’re selling.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 27:27
Yes. Jewelry is such an international industry. I mean, obviously. But, for example, in August, I went to this really major trade show called JC Kay, and there are people there from Turkey, from Israel, from China, all over the world. It’s really important to remember that the supply chain, spans so many countries globally, and how does that affect the presentation of the final product too.

Wendy Pease 27:56
Fantastic point, which brings us to the free supports that the government offers. There are step grants available for small businesses that want to go to international trade shows. So, you can get a lot of your costs covered by applying for a step grant and then going international and if you meet a jewelry distributor, at one of these conferences that can distribute your product, or a retail store that wants to carry it, you’ve just there increased your sales.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 28:27
Wow, I didn’t know about that. That’s really amazing.

Wendy Pease 28:29
Yeah, so if you’re going to those international conferences, you might even want to look into getting a step grant, Actually, I can send it to you. But if anybody is interested, if you go to our website, Rapport Translations, R-A-P-P-O-R-T, Translations, and then just look for the little search magnifying glass on the top right and search step grants. It’ll bring you to a page where you can read about them, and then you can click the List of them and find your contact there, your state and reach directly out to them.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 29:03
Oh, that’s an excellent resource. Thank you.

Wendy Pease 29:06
Sure.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 29:07
So is there a way, I’m sure like a lot of smaller brands, even if they’re open to exploring entering global markets, I’m pretty sure they’re not just going to go to every country all at once, when they start, is there a way for them to know who to target first where to begin? How to dip their toe in the water and move forward with this?

Wendy Pease 29:30
Excellent question. So, I always recommend that you think about your company strategy and then you have to make sure that aligns. So, if your goal is to open one international market, then you look at your marketing strategy, you want to think about who are your buyers and where are you going to go and then you can come up with your multilingual strategy. Now, with that said, it’s interesting to me that a lot of companies in the US will first target English speaking countries. It’s a natural, you think they speak the same language, although we have done translation for UK English from American English, because they are slightly different and with consumer marketing, you might want to consider that. But those, you’re going to have the most competition in. So, there’s other ways that people figure it out, it might be that you have friends or family that are going to be of assistance in the country, it could be that you’re looking at your Google Analytics and you see a lot of inquiries coming in from a certain country, we had a client we were working with, that was getting a lot of inquiries in from Germany. So, he translated a mini site of German on his websites, so people would come and find it, and then he could optimize it and then increase. So, if you’re selling jewelry, you might get into a pocket of people in a country that like it. So, if you’re paying close attention to your analytics, some business owners want to travel a lot to a country. So, say you have a dream of going to Italy every year, maybe you pick a country like that. So, there’s all sorts of different options of how you get in. But you can go to your state contact, and ask them to help you do a strategic analysis of what might make sense to go into.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 31:25
I like the idea of choosing a country, you’d like to travel too frequently, and making your business work around that. I think that’s my favorite one.

Wendy Pease 31:37
A lot of people that do that, strategically it might not make the most sense. But if you’re going to open a market there and have to travel, why not make it someplace fun?

Laryssa Wirstiuk 31:47
Sure. Absolutely.

Wendy Pease 31:48
Yeah.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 31:49
So, we talked about a lot of the benefits, but I’m sure there are challenges that come up. It’s not going to be like a totally easy, fancy-free process. What are some things that someone might anticipate as challenges just so they’re aware? What are the common issues that might come up in this transition to global markets?

Wendy Pease 32:12
I think testing your brand name is one. You’ve heard of all the examples. I mean, one funny one that comes to mind right now is in Iran, there is a detergent called barf. Well, that’s not going to sell. They didn’t test it. We tested a brand name for our company, because they had a product called take and toss. It’s a Tomi and they took that international on that name and it didn’t work because Europeans were like, well, do I take it? Is it reusable when I wash it? Or do I toss it? Is it disposable, I can’t do it. Here in the US there’s more of a well, it’s cheap enough, I can throw it out, or I could wash it and reuse it and hopefully, we’re changing a little bit with that. But just the product didn’t work well. So, they went back to the drawing board and came up with a new name, which was Sava with S with the two dots over the A-VA and we tested across the multiple languages where they were going to use it in Europe, and found that that was going to be okay, so that was really smart of them to do. It’s not really expensive to do and come to us and we can run it by translators and run them through the brand name testing. So, that would be one of the things. The other is maybe doing too much at one time. There was a travel agency startup, they had a new twist on how to do things and they said, well, we’re going to go global and they tried to go all at once, that they didn’t build their communities enough. So, it ended up imploding because they didn’t have the investments enough to support it. So, start out with one market, figure out your process and then replicate it. So, I think those are two of the big things. Then I think the other for jewelry marketing would be thinking about the payment system, the currency exchange, how you’re going to do that and logistics. You’re not going to have to worry about CEE marks because they don’t really fall in there. But that’s where you can go to the state resources and they can help you because there’s all sorts of automated international payments now.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 34:32
That makes so much sense. So, you mentioned about testing, to, for example, the brand names to see if they would work in a certain market. What are some of the most common modes of testing, are these focus groups, are they customer surveys, what do you find to be effective?

Wendy Pease 34:49
For testing for the jewelry or for the language?

Laryssa Wirstiuk 34:54
I guess to test the marketplace to see if it’s viable to enter with the brand that you want to enter with.

Wendy Pease 35:02
Very good conversation with Steven Pope yesterday who is called The My Amazon guy, he does everything to maximize your return on Amazon sales and he is a huge fan of just testing stuff. I’m completely into market research and go out to focus groups and have a professional run the focus groups and get the information that you can have for positioning, but that can be quite expensive. So, if you’re a smaller jewelry creator, you can put stuff on your website and test it really fast, you can do all the A B testing. I think I watched one of his videos that was showing soaps, and just not having the brand name on the soap made a huge difference, because people wanted to see that it was individually wrapped, and then how they laid the flower. So, take different pictures, make sure they’re professional pictures, and then try different things and don’t be afraid to switch them out quickly. So, I think if you’re a smaller company, just start testing that way. If you’re talking about language testing, that’s a different thing. You want to have somebody that’s fully bilingual, understands the messaging, understands the culture behind the messaging that you’re going to want to test. So, you can do it.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 36:33
Speaking of messaging, and testing messaging, we mentioned earlier that jewelry is a very emotional purchase that there’s emotion in the story. How can you ensure that that nuance is being communicated in the messaging? I think we sort of touched upon this in the episode, but I’d love for you to just focus specifically on this question.

Wendy Pease 36:54
Oh, I think it’s a fantastic question. There are about 2000 translation agencies just in the US and all of them have a different specialty, there’s probably overlaps in them. But there are some agencies that do machine translation with post human editing, that is not going to be a good marketing translation, because that’s going to get the gist across, it might work for lots of content, where you just have to get the point across. There’re other agencies that might use different translators every time you send some work in. So, there’s no consistency across. There’re other agencies that specialize in pharmaceutical translation. So, if you’re doing anything with consumer product that you really need to have that emotional story behind it, you want to find somebody that really specializes in marketing translation. The reason is the translators that they’re using are going to be familiar with marketing, they’re going to stay consistent on your product. And then they’re also going to do some cultural adaptation to make sure that the story resonates with the culture that you’re translating into. So, if I give an example, I love this one from Staples, I use it quite a bit. They were doing their tagline make more happen and they were taking the more out and putting other words in, so make work happen make play happen. They were going to multiple different languages, our French translator got one of their series that was, make refrigerator art happen. Now, if you’re in the United States, you know what refrigerator art is. You have a guess you know what it is?

Laryssa Wirstiuk 38:42
Refrigerator art.

Wendy Pease 38:44
Yes.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 38:44
Like magnets, I don’t know.

Wendy Pease 38:47
It’s your kid’s art that you put under the magnet to celebrate their artwork.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 38:51
Right? Is that not a thing in another country?

Wendy Pease 38:54
That is not a thing in France. The refrigerator is for one thing, keeping food cold, so they don’t have it filled with magnets and their kids art. So, she came back and she said this won’t work. So, the option was to find something else that would work to replace that or just cut that one out and go with the other ones. So, that’s the kind of cultural adaptation that you want somebody to watch out for. Otherwise, somebody is going to look at that campaign and go what the heck is that?

Laryssa Wirstiuk 39:23
Yeah, so it sounds like with jewelry, especially it really needs that extra human touch to make sure it actually makes sense and that the feeling behind it is still being communicated that the words themselves are less important. It’s more about what’s being shared.

Wendy Pease 39:41
Absolutely. In my book, I use an example of Nike. They had this description. I think I did it on the air Pegasus because they’re my favorite running shoes. I’ve used them for years. They had a description that was very fun and fast and outdoorsy, and then I took that description and put it into Google Translate and then back translated it. It was like completely silly; it just missed the mark and the colors were off and it just didn’t make sense. I think I took description from their Spanish website and put that back into English and that didn’t even go right. So, you really have to capture that mood that you’re going for, for jewelry.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 40:29
It’s such an interesting concept and so important for people to just remember, in general, and again, even within the US, when people are speaking all these different languages and all these cultures, even if you don’t even live in this market, how can you be sensitive to all the cultures that are within the country where you live?

Wendy Pease 40:49
Right, like I mentioned, if you’re going to a jewelry fair, or you have a store or something. In one town next to me, there’s a big Brazilian Portuguese population and I know a printer that was there in town, and he just put something like welcome Portuguese speakers. His business increased, because people just felt welcome going in there. Town south of me is a lot of Spanish speakers. So, just simply putting up something that says, welcome in here. Then if you really need to talk to somebody, use telephone interpreting you pay by the minute, but probably on a jewelry transaction, if you get them in and they like the atmosphere of your store or your area, you could sell, you could connect with the client, and that’s the same. You think about it the same way with your website is how am I welcoming people in? How am I giving them that feeling and how am I taking them through the buyer’s journey so they don’t want to leave or feel offended?

Laryssa Wirstiuk 42:00
Yes. I’m always telling clients that, they forget that ecommerce experience needs to feel like it might in an actual real store, and how are you welcoming, like you said, and guiding them and making them feel like they’re not just out there on the internet by themselves fending for themselves, you know?

Wendy Pease 42:21
Yes. Did you talk about that in your book about Tiffany’s, I remember you talking about Tiffany’s?

Laryssa Wirstiuk 42:26
Probably, I use that as an example, so much that I probably did. Literally just yesterday I was using that as an example and their menu navigation and how easy it is and friendly and really guiding you toward what you want, even if you don’t even know what you want.

Wendy Pease 42:46
Right, and then you make sure to have the colors because the colors would be in the store, you need to match that in the website. Then you talk about colors for international. There are some differences. So, somebody asked recently, for the checkout button, does that have to be a certain color across different countries? It was like, no, it didn’t have to be, there’s not one single or a handful of colors that work best. But it has to be a contrasting color to the color of your website. So, if you are thinking of going international, think about what some colors are that may work.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 43:26
Yes. That’s such a great point. Wendy, this has been so interesting. I really enjoyed speaking with you today and I would love if you have any final thoughts or you want to tell our listeners how they can find you, I would love for you to share that.

Wendy Pease 43:40
Okay, thank you. Sure. We share all sorts of examples on social media. So, you can find me through Linktree is just a place where you can go and if you prefer, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook or LinkedIn, you can click on any of those and follow. So, Linktree is L-I-N-K-T-R.E-E/Wendy, W-E-N-D-Y, Pease, P-E-A-S-E. Also, on Linktree, you can find a link to our website, you can find a link to a couple of free pages of the book, The podcast is up there. So, that’s a good landing place. Then our website, we have a huge resource center there. So, you can go and search for anything about global marketing or translation language and read about it or watch videos and that’s rapporttranslations.com. I spelled it out earlier so you can find the step grant context too.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 44:42
Yeah, and I will link to all this in the show notes too. So, my listeners don’t have to sit there taking notes.

Wendy Pease 44:49
Excellent. Thank you.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 44:51
Yeah, thanks Wendy, for being my guest today. It was such a pleasure to have you and I know my listeners will benefit from your insights and perspective.

Wendy Pease 45:00
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really, really appreciate it.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 45:03
It was such a pleasure to be able to speak to Wendy and I hope you got as much value out of this conversation as I did. Again, check out the show notes for links to Wendy’s book and podcast as well as a link to book a free consultation with her if you’re interested. Got any questions or feedback for me? You can always email me Laryssa that’s L-A-R-Y-S-S-A@joyjoya.com. If you love this podcast, please share it with a friend who’d appreciate it and don’t forget to subscribe as well as leave a review on iTunes. To purchase a signed copy of my book Jewelry Marketing Joy, visit joyjoya.com/book for more information. Thanks for listening. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For more information about marketing services for your jewelry brand, visit joyjoya.com where you can download our free e-book, proven conversion strategies for E commerce jewelry retailers.