Bowing Down to Local Culture

One thing that struck me the most while I was making an omra pilgrimage to The Holy Land last week was how English doesn’t have traction in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. For the whole eight days I was there, I barely met three people that spoke acceptable English. The rest just had terrible, broken English or didn’t bother to speak in it and chose to go with their native tongues instead.

Perhaps that’s the reason why so many international brands went with localizing their brands when the enter the KSA — or better yet, Arabian — market. As evidence, I bring to you a collection of how the brands cope with the fact.

Fuddruckers	Chilis
Applebee’s	United Colors of Benetton
Payless	Pizza Hut
Debenhams	Starbucks Coffee (do you notice the mermaid-less logo?)
Oreo	Pepsi
Sony	KFC
Burger King	MAC Cosmetics
NEXT	Subway
Giordano	Swatch
HSBC	Cinnabon
The Body Shop	Baskin Robbins