Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash – thank you!

The tale of the town mouse and the country mouse says it all. We can be friends, and we can look similar, but town and country mice often want different things, and live different lives.

In my slow-paced life, you’ve got to be creative. Entertainment and necessity often interlink. Today’s task is collecting petals to make confetti for an upcoming wedding. I’ll do it while out walking with a friend. If I lived in a town or a city, it probably wouldn’t take five minutes to grab some confetti from a shop.

On weekends, we’ll put on our wellies and tramp across several muddy fields to get eggs and bread, paying with coins in the honesty box. It’s a calm, yet sometimes inconvenient bubble. Life in the countryside takes more planning. Last week, I went on a 40-minute round trip to get some Calpol.

I lived in cities when I was a student, and I loved it. I still go to the city for excitement and energy. Learning from museums, viewing art, soaking up the vibrancy and hustle and bustle. Enjoying not having to wait around for one of two daily buses.

When I’m in town, or in a city, I can access convenient services that would normally take militant planning. I can buy almost anything I need, and I can try new things. It’s liberating when going out for lunch means you’re not just bound to the two shelves of sandwiches in the local shop. The same old everyday can get boring, but when you’re faced with a plethora of choices, it’s also overwhelming.

When you’re launching a brand in the UK and you need a cultural consultation, subculture matters.

Where does your target audience live?

• In a lifestyle where impulsivity is more difficult, will consumers go out of their way to buy from your brand?
• In a world full of overwhelming choices, what will prompt them to choose your offering over everyone else’s?

This is the kind of thing I ask during cultural consultations. If you’re looking to successfully launch a brand in the UK, I’ll go much deeper than language.

On a people level, we need to take into account that:

• We might share language, but we don’t all speak the same. Slang is great, especially if it fits your brand voice. But there are plenty of regional words and phrases flying about. This could be an important part of your regional strategy, or something to consider if you’re pitching UK-wide.
• We have the same amount of time in a day, but we spend our time differently. You might have a product or service that works seamlessly in city spaces, but is it the same in places with a rural infrastructure? Transport links and social and green infrastructure should be part of your considerations when you’re declaring something as simple to access or pick up.
• We both have to decide what to buy, but our buying decision factors are different. Talking of transport links, how can we make your product or service appeal to people who would have to make an additional trip out to access it? How can we make it more easily accessible so people in rural areas can get it when out and about doing other things (and therefore reduce their carbon footprint)? How can we streamline the process and make it easier for people who are in a hurry or under pressure from the watchful eyes of the growing queue of people behind them?
• We don’t have the same level of choice. In environments where there’s so much choice, we need to think about how can you differentiate. What makes your product or service appealing to people who often choose to go without? How can it stand out on a shelf of similar products? How can we make your service so easy that people don’t need to create their own workaround to overcome it?
• We can’t overlook the disposable income divide. Urban areas generally have higher average household incomes. This doesn’t directly translate to a higher standard of living, but it does indicate different regular expenses. Rent in the city might be higher, but so is the cost of transport in rural areas. This needs to be a consideration when you’re defining pricing and subscription models.

With my cultural consultation service, we’ll dive deeper into your target market, and their unique wants, needs, and lifestyle considerations.

Building a customer-centric product or service around your UK customers’ unique challenges means your potential customers will feel understood, valued, catered for, and at home – the heart of all localisation services.

Get in touch to find out more about how I can help you launch your brand in the UK today.