Most international communication budgets are spent on the one layer of culture that has already been solved. The failures happen everywhere else.
Translation is no longer the hard part of global communications. Machine translation is fast, cheap and, for most business content, good enough to start from. Yet campaigns still land badly abroad. Not because the words were wrong, but because everything wrapped around the words was built for somebody else.
At Consultancy32, we run international communications programmes across Europe, North America, the Gulf and North Africa. What follows is the model our consultants use to explain why messages fail across borders, and what to do about it as per heir own words.
Key takeaways
- Intercultural communication is the practice of adapting how a message is built, delivered and received across cultural contexts
- Culture no longer maps onto national borders. Age, sector, company culture, language community and belief systems all act as filters.
- Messages pass through five filters before they land: language, market, organisation, cohort, individual. Budgets cluster at filter one; failures cluster at filters three to five.
- AI has largely solved translation. It has not solved resonance, and it has raised the bar for local specificity.
- The operational fix is sequencing, not volume: segment regions, define priority zones, localise proof, and launch in waves.
What is intercultural communication in business?
Intercultural communication in business is the practice of designing, adapting and delivering messages so they are understood as intended by audiences with different cultural references, expectations and decision-making norms. It covers language, but also tone, formality, evidence, visual representation, timing, channel choice and the etiquette of the interaction itself.
Its commercial purpose is straightforward. As Barbara Mahe, Co-Founder of C32, puts it:
“Having a proper intercultural communications strategy ensures differentiation from competitors, and it is key to support business activities internationally.”
It is also what converts an international footprint from an operational cost into an asset.
“The value of intercultural communication for global leaders and international businesses lies in its ability to turn diversity into a strategic advantage.” — Réslène Yahimi, Comms & Events Consultant, C32
The discipline exists because meaning is not transmitted; it is reconstructed by the receiver. And every receiver reconstructs through their own filters.
The premise shift: culture stopped being a synonym for country
The traditional model of international communications assumes one culture per market. Build the master campaign, translate it, adapt a few visuals, ship it by country.
That model is now visibly broken, and the reason is demographic rather than linguistic.
“Culture isn’t synonymous with country anymore. Demographics like age, gender, language, beliefs create ‘cultural filters’ that determine how communication is received. Mapping these cultural lines is key, and the fact that it’s done abroad adds another layer.” — Hugo Arruda, Communications & Public Affairs Consultant, C32
Two audiences in the same country can be further apart than two audiences on different continents. A 26-year-old software engineer in Lyon may share more cultural reference points with a peer in Berlin than with a manufacturing executive two hours away. Switzerland is a single market with at least three communications realities inside it. The Gulf is not one audience. “Francophone” is not one audience.
There is a second, less discussed problem: the cultural lines move. A market map that was accurate five years ago may now be wrong about its own population — not because the borders changed, but because the people inside them did.
Once you accept both points, the unit of localisation changes. You are no longer localising by country, once. You are localising by filter, repeatedly.
The Resonance Stack: five filters every message passes through
We call it the Resonance Stack. Each layer can pass a message through intact, distort it, or stop it entirely. A message only resonates if it survives all five.
Filter 1 — Language
The words themselves: which language you speak, plus translation, idiom, product naming and register.
The first decision is not how to translate but what to speak, and to whom.
“Choose a language that will be understood by most people. And understanding the cultural nuances, consumer behaviours, trends, and specific needs of each market gives you far more power to own your narrative.” — Réslène Yahimi, Comms & Events Consultant, C32
In practice that usually means operating in two registers at once — a working lingua franca plus the audience’s own language where it matters most, a split Alexandra Brainos-Gimond, Press Relations Director at C32, applies directly to press work: “Communicate in English, and in your audience’s language.”
This layer is also where the most famous failures live, because they are the easiest to spot in hindsight.
“Check that your product name doesn’t offend anyone before you launch. The classic cautionary tale: Mitsubishi had to rename their car in Spain and LatAm because ‘Pajero’ is a vulgar insult in Spanish.” — Claudia Nanni, Events Director, C32
Naming, tagline and slogan screening across every launch language remains non-negotiable. But if this is where your intercultural work stops, you have cleared the lowest bar in the stack.
Filter 2 — Market
The country-level system: media landscape, press conventions, legal constraints, business etiquette, pace, and the rituals around how business gets done.
Market-level rules are invisible until you break one.
“I once asked to confirm a meeting with a Dutch company 3 days ahead of the meeting only to learn that it was seen as a massive ‘faux pas’. In the French culture, it’s OK to ask for confirmation. I wasn’t aware of the cultural difference.” — Diane Gaillard, Co-Founder, C32
The same applies to press relations, where the mechanics of distribution differ market by market.
“As for press relations, I localise the content with trends, figures or local client stories, to feed the pitch. At times, to raise awareness, I’ll consider a budget for press wires to distribute the press release locally.” — Alexandra Brainos-Gimond, Press Relations Director, C32
Note what is being localised there: not the language, the proof. Local figures, local client stories, local experts. That is a market-layer intervention, and it is the one most global campaigns skip.
Filter 3 — Sector and organisation
The professional culture of the industry and the company you are addressing: what counts as evidence, how much formality is expected, how decisions get made internally.
This filter cuts across borders and is routinely mistaken for a national trait.
“A Belgian client told me this caveat about storytelling: Francophone business audiences are more often trained to look for numerical facts and science first — it’s why financial centres have so many French quantitative analysts. Stories are less powerful than they are in anglophone cultures.” — Alexander Brown, Communications Director, C32
A narrative-led deck that wins an anglophone room can read as thin in a room trained on figures first. Same product, same market maturity, different epistemics. The fix is not to abandon storytelling — it is to change what the story is made of.
Filter 4 — Cohort
Sub-national and cross-national groupings: language communities, generations, belief systems, professional identities, regional identities.
This is where Hugo’s “cultural filters” bite hardest, and where the sharpest, least-anticipated failures occur. Sometimes the line is geographic:
“Years ago, a Swiss phone company launched a new TV/Digital spot in the German part featuring a Swiss German public figure. The spot was very funny in German because the person was very well known in the German part, and it was a great success. In the French part, well… it was the opposite. The company faced a wave of criticism because the guy was not known at all and nobody could understand the spot because they didn’t have the context of the storytelling. Examples like this one are many.” — Martine Ayer, Communications Director, C32
One country. One campaign. One budget. Two entirely different outcomes, separated by a language border inside a single market.
And sometimes the line is generational — which means it moves while you are planning against it:
“In Morocco, for years Darija and French were the most common languages. But now among the youth in particular, English, or ‘globish’, is becoming more and more common. So it’s key to know your audience and find out which works best for them.” — Réslène Yahimi, Comms & Events Consultant, C32
Two brands can target “Morocco” with identical budgets and reach entirely different populations depending on a single language decision — and the right answer in 2020 is not the right answer now. Cohort mapping is not a one-off research exercise. It has a shelf life.
Representation is a cohort-layer decision too:
“When I used to live in Dubai, most of the visuals we produced depicted men and women with Middle Eastern features wearing traditional attire. Representation has to feel local.” — Claudia Nanni, Events Director, C32
And cultural fluency here has a political dimension that global brands can no longer treat as an edge case. Hugo Arruda points to campaigns that became widely discussed precisely because they intersected with a domestic cultural debate — American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney campaign, which drew polarised reactions along US political lines, or Volkswagen model names that shifted across countries to reflect local perception. Cohorts read messages politically whether or not the message was intended politically.
Filter 5 — Individual
The person actually reading it. Their role, their pressures, their preferred format, their tolerance for ambiguity.
“Clarity isn’t universal. What feels direct in one culture can feel abrupt or vague in another. Strong global communications come from reading both the company culture and the individual behind it, then adjusting tone, format and rhythm.” — Stephanie Herrmann, Communications Director, C32
The mechanism underneath all five filters is the same one:
“With empathy, you communicate using your audience’s frame of reference. Narcissism or not, people tend to identify with things they see in themselves.” — Hugo Arruda, Communications & Public Affairs Consultant, C32
Where the money goes vs. where the failures happen
Here is the asymmetry that makes the Resonance Stack useful as a budgeting tool.
| Filter | Typical share of budget attention | Typical share of failures |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Language | High | Low (and declining) |
| 2. Market | Medium | Medium |
| 3. Organisation | Low | High |
| 4. Cohort | Low | High |
| 5. Individual | Almost none | High, and invisible |
Failures at filters three to five rarely produce a scandal. They produce silence: a press release nobody picks up, a campaign that underperforms in one region with no clear reason, a deal that stalls after a good first meeting. Because they are quiet failures, they are rarely diagnosed — which is exactly why they repeat.
What AI changed, and what it didn’t
Generative AI has compressed filter one almost to zero cost. That is a genuine gain, and our teams use it.
“AI has made this much easier — especially for translations. Beyond that, I always research behaviours and words that might unintentionally offend the target audience.” — Claudia Nanni, Events Director, C32
Two consequences follow, and both are underrated.
First, competitive advantage has moved up the stack. When every competitor can produce fluent Portuguese, German and Arabic overnight, fluency stops differentiating. What differentiates is local proof, local faces, local reference points and local judgement — filters two through five, all of which resist automation because they depend on people who have lived the context.
“Adapting stories and visuals to cultural differences demands in-depth knowledge about cultures, ideally by having lived there, by speaking the language…” — Barbara Mahe, Co-Founder, C32
Second, the way audiences find you has changed. International audiences increasingly reach brands through AI assistants and answer engines that read, summarise and translate content on their behalf. Generic global boilerplate is precisely the content these systems have least reason to surface: it says nothing specific enough about any one market to be worth citing. Content anchored in local data, named local experts and market-specific examples is both better communications and more retrievable. Localisation and discoverability have quietly become the same project.
And some things simply do not compress:
“In a fully digital world, it’s easy to default to remote. Yet in some cultures, key conversations still require presence. A recent trip to meet a tech client in North Africa showed how a few days face-to-face built trust that months of calls simply couldn’t replicate.” — Stephanie Herrmann, Communications Director, C32
How to launch across regions: the operating model
Our consultants converge on the same sequence.
1. Listen before you adapt. Research precedes localisation, always.
“I make my audience talk before adapting my service. Only then can I know how to speak to them.” — Diane Gaillard, Co-Founder, C32
“I do benchmarking and study competitors to understand how visuals and stories can be adapted and improved.” — Stéphanie Morin, Art Director, C32
2. Segment and sequence. Do not launch everywhere at once.
“Take the time to segment regions. Don’t communicate everywhere at the same time. Define priority zones. Be meticulous and use feedback to improve your technique.” — Diane Gaillard, Co-Founder, C32
Simultaneous global launch is the single most expensive way to discover a cultural problem. Wave-based launches turn your first market into a test that funds the accuracy of the next.
3. Hold the core, flex the delivery.
“Effective delivery: One global voice, many local accents.” — Alexander Brown, Communications Director, C32
“The main challenge for international communications is ensuring one adapts to local audiences and cultural differences while maintaining a coherent image globally.” — Barbara Mahe, Co-Founder, C32
Decide explicitly what is fixed (positioning, values, visual identity, claims) and what is local by default (examples, spokespeople, proof points, channels, humour, timing). Ambiguity here is what produces either bland uniformity or brand drift.
4. Interrogate the need, don’t assume it.
“Come with the conviction your product or service will make the difference and be curious about the new market, the customers, their needs, the trends. ‘Are you answering or imposing needs?'” — Martine Ayer, Communications Director, C32
5. Buy execution capability, not just strategy.
“Execution is strategy: Get an experienced agency team that really understands how to deliver by working with the different ways audiences engage with messages across varied markets, media, cultures and languages.” — Alexander Brown, Communications Director, C32
6. Adapt every time. Treat it as recurring work, not a set-up cost.
“Don’t assume ‘global’ means uniform. Every market comes with its own cultural codes, expectations and pace. Go beyond localisation: understand how decisions are made, how trust is built. Adapt every time.” — Stephanie Herrmann, Communications Director, C32
“I’d say understanding the target audience, sticking with clarity, transparency, consistency, and being open to feedback and adaptation.” — Stéphanie Morin, Art Director, C32
Adaptation is also what protects you when things go wrong:
“Crisis communications is a great example of how communications outreach needs to be managed differently from one country or region to another. For instance, apologies differ a lot between Japan, France and the US.” — Barbara Mahe, Co-Founder, C32
An apology that satisfies one market can read as evasive in another and as excessive in a third. Crisis playbooks written for a single culture do not travel.
The end state: selling in a market vs. belonging to one
Surviving all five filters gets you understood. It does not, by itself, get you chosen. The brands that win internationally go one step further: they organise part of their calendar, their products and their creative around the culture itself.
“In the Middle East, brands like Nike and Crocs now build collections and ad campaigns around Ramadan, turning cultural awareness into cultural belonging. That’s the difference between a brand that sells in a market, and one that belongs in it.” — Réslène Yahimi, Comms & Events Consultant, C32
That distinction is the most useful strategic test we know of, because it is uncomfortable. Awareness is a briefing document. Belonging is a budget line, a product decision, a moment in the year when you show up because the audience’s calendar says so rather than because your fiscal quarter does.
It also raises the stakes on everything above it. A brand that shows up in a cultural moment without having done the work at filters two through five doesn’t read as belonging — it reads as opportunism, which is worse than absence. Belonging is what the stack is for.
Pre-launch checklist
Run every international launch against the stack:
- Language choice — Which language will most of this audience actually use today? Have you verified that against current behaviour rather than an old market profile?
- Language safety — Have the name, tagline and key claims been screened by native speakers in every launch language?
- Market — Have you localised the proof: local figures, local client stories, local experts? Do you know the press and etiquette conventions of each market?
- Organisation — Does the evidence match how this sector and this company evaluate claims: narrative-first or numbers-first?
- Cohort — Have you mapped the cultural lines inside each market, including generational ones? Does representation in the visuals feel local to each one?
- Individual — Have you adjusted tone, format and rhythm for the person who will actually read this?
- Calendar — Are you working to the audience’s cultural calendar, or only your own commercial one?
- Sequence — Are priority zones defined, and is there a feedback loop between waves?
- Presence — Which relationships in this market require being physically in the room?
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between translation, localisation and intercultural communication? Translation converts language. Localisation adapts content — formats, imagery, examples, references — for a specific market. Intercultural communication goes further: it adapts how the message is constructed and delivered based on how a given audience builds trust, evaluates evidence and makes decisions.
Why do global campaigns fail even when the translation is perfect? Because language is only the first of five filters. Most failures occur at the organisational, cohort and individual layers — mismatched evidence, unfamiliar spokespeople, tone that reads as abrupt or vague, representation that doesn’t feel local.
Should we communicate in English or in local languages? Usually both, and the balance is an audience question rather than a policy one. Choose a working language most of your audience genuinely understands, then localise where it carries weight — press, customer-facing content, anything requiring trust. Language use shifts by generation, so verify current behaviour rather than relying on an older market profile: in Morocco, for example, English is increasingly common among younger audiences alongside Darija and French.
Can AI handle intercultural communication? AI handles translation well and can accelerate research. It does not replace lived knowledge of a market, local relationships, local proof points or the judgement to know when a message will read as tone-deaf. As fluency becomes universal, those become the differentiators.
Should we launch in all markets simultaneously? Rarely. Segmenting into priority zones and launching in waves lets each market inform the next and contains the cost of any cultural misjudgement.
Why does intercultural communication matter for leaders specifically? Leaders’ words travel furthest and are quoted out of context most often. Alexandra Brainos-Gimond, Press Relations Director at C32, notes it is crucial for adapting messages in press releases and thought leadership to the reality and interests of different markets. Diane Gaillard adds that it lets leaders “speak globally but still respect cultural nuances” — and, as Réslène Yahimi puts it, it is what turns diversity into a strategic advantage rather than an operational cost.
Working with C32
Consultancy 32 is an international communications consultancy delivering effective communication tools, strategies and insights across markets, languages and cultures — corporate and brand communications, press relations, public affairs, events and design.
If you are preparing a multi-market launch, entering a new region, or trying to work out why a campaign underperformed in one market and not another, we can help you map the stack before you spend against it.
Featuring insights from Diane Gaillard and Barbara Mahe (Co-Founders), Alexander Brown, Stephanie Herrmann and Martine Ayer (Communications Directors), Alexandra Brainos-Gimond (Press Relations Director), Claudia Nanni (Events Director), Stéphanie Morin (Art Director), Hugo Arruda (Communications & Public Affairs Consultant) and Réslène Yahimi (Comms & Events Consultant).
