A Spanish guy vs. +2000 Korean kids
Discover who won the "battle"
From the bottom of my heart mind
Fresh stories from a Spanish Copywriter.
Back in 2017, I lived in South Korea for 3 months. More precisely a couple of kilometres away from Suncheon, a little city in the south of the country.
I went there to work in a scout camp: every day one school would come, with students between 9 and 10 years old, and I had to stand in front of a class explaining in English how Spain was.
Every day, 4 classes of 25 kids (total=100)
Every week, 20 classes of 25 kids (total=500)
Every month, 80 classes of 25 kids (total=2.000)
There were 3 months, so make your maths. Also it was a scout camp, so add a lot of games, some survivals lessons and songs.
Their English wasn’t good and they were kids in a camp, so I knew I had to get creative to get their attention. And so I did: music (why talk about music when we can listen to it and dance?), videos, little games to learn the numbers, etc.
But the most important thing was to keep my eyes open and see in which parts they connected more with the content.
I found 3 keys:
Football: They call it “soccer” and loved Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, Real Madrid and Barcelona.
Art: They didn’t know (or care) about Gaudí, Dalí or Picasso… but they were so passionate about “La Tomatina” (a really local festivity near Valencia)
Food: No idea about “paella”, “bravas” or “potato omelette”, but they went crazy when heard about churros (it was huge there).
So I started collecting this feedback and used it naturally. Each week, I felt the students connected more and more with me. I was able to kept their attention for longer and, if I asked the next day, they remembered a lot of the stuff.
Also, being tall, blue eyes and have a curly hair helped me to be different and grab their attention. Since it was a little city, for most of them it was the first time they would see a European person in real life.
The take away is simple: listen to your audience and adapt the content to them. Is about the language, of course (I learned the basics in Korean to talk with them), but localization is about way more.
If you are launching in a new country, research about the song of the moment, the most trendy food, the things they know (and they don’t) about your original country. And play all of it to create local campaigns that really resonate with them.
Market-in
Resources to reach your peak level.
💡How to take more translation projects from customers? Federico Stiefel, Solutions Architect at BeLazy, will answer this question today in a free webinar. Check it out here.
⚡Who are the top 100 language services providers in the world? Nimdzi put together an interesting list for anyone working in the localization industry.
Outside the desk
Where the magic really happens.
✈️ I did a little trip to Hudson Valley, north of New York. These are the kind of things you don’t do when visiting a place for a week or two.
👨💼Mike Michalowicz is a bestselling author, with books like Profit First, Clockwork & Fix This Next. I met him couple of days ago… and I can only say there are things coming.
🏋🏻♀️I’m really into sports and CrossFit has stolen my hearts (and strength) for the last months. It was born here in the USA, so is cool to work out close to its roots.
Make it global, baby
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All the best for the rest of your week,
💙 Ricky from Textonality.com 💙