Page 74 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

33 TAP INTO COUNTRY-OF-
ORIGIN EFFECT

If you have a product that can be exported (and who doesn’t?) you
might be able to use country-of-origin effect to your advantage.
Country-of-origin effect is the phenomenon by which products and
brands are colored by consumers’ opinions about the country the
product comes from—and for many firms it can work greatly to
their advantage.

For example, we tend to believe that Germans are good engineers,
that the French produce great food, the Belgians make good
chocolate, and the Americans are good at fast food. There are, no
doubt, bad German engineers, incompetent French chefs, poor-
quality Belgian chocolatiers, and very slow American restaurants,
but the overall impression remains.

The idea

Cachaca is a Brazilian spirit made from sugar, rather like a white
rum. Until recently, cachaca was virtually unknown outside Brazil,
since only about 2 percent of cachaca production is exported. This
all changed, however, when Sagatiba was launched onto the British
drinks market in 2005.

The company’s advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, decided to
use a Brazilian theme. The most famous icon of Brazil is, of course,
the statue of Christ the Redeemer that stands on the Corcovado in
Rio de Janeiro. Saatchi & Saatchi was aiming for a young audience,
so it began by (controversially) hiring graffiti artists to spray
images of Christ the Redeemer on walls all over the East End of
London. It also commissioned an image of a pool player resting

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