Cultural Intelligence Series - The new rules of global success

Speaker A: Hello everyone and welcome to the Cultural Intelligence podcast series by rws. During this episode we're going to talk about cultural intelligence and the new rules of global success. And to do so, we're happy to welcome Ben Fass, RWS CEO, to answer our questions. During this episode, we'll talk about what success looks like nowadays and why AI keeps on raising the bar. We'll also talk about why enterprise AI is raising expectations and for speed personalization and authenticity across markets. And we'll also talk about why cultural intelligence is becoming a requirement as opposed to a nice to have. Hello everyone and welcome back to our Cultural Intelligence series, uh, by rws. Today we are going to talk all things about what it takes to take a global enterprise, um, to succeed. And uh, we're very, very pleased to have Ben Faz, um, with us today, the CEO of rws, to get his opinions and help us answer all those questions we have. Ben, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Um, maybe a very good introduction as a first question for that topic would be, um, what do you think has fundamentally changed when it comes to succeed, um, as a global enterprise nowadays in this day and age?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, I think it's um, a great question. I think when you think about it, over the last few years, um, we've moved from probably being impressed by, uh, innovation or brands that were coming from the U.S. uh, uh, and so the U.S. in particular was um, a characteristic of why you like the brand. Um, now I think brands fundamentally need to be relevant in the market in which they operate. Uh, there's more and more competition. The access, the barrier to entry, to create a brand, to create a clothing brand. Uh, cosmetic brands have dropped. It's, uh, easier. And so you're facing more and more competition locally. And so if you do want to operate across the world, uh, you need to find that relevance with each of the customers that you're going to find. Uh, and to do this is very hard because, uh, you have, um, an identity as a brand. You have a ton of voice. Uh, and to adapt this identity to the German market, even the German from the north or from uh, Berlin or in Munich, it's a bit different, uh, and uh, Southern Europe, et cetera, et cetera. Um, I think, um, this really personalization and adaptation has become a trait of the winning brands, uh, that understand how they speak to their customers wherever they are.

Speaker A: Do you think you can as a brand completely adapt and create the exact same emotion in people for different markets? Do you think it's actually something doable?

Speaker B: Um, I mean it's really hard. Uh, I guess that's what great brands or great ideas manage to do. Uh, um, I'm very impressed, for example about the South Korean culture. Uh, they've managed to uh, take over world of entertainment, uh, of music, of movies, uh, but they are adapted, they take over their culture but the traits of the market in which they operate. And I think you see that uh, more and more we work a lot with uh, Chinese brand car manufacturers. It's uh, uh, making sure that people trust the brand. Uh, they don't have some of the bias that they may have. I think that's possible. Uh, and it depends. Some brands are more comfortable in stretching themselves so really adapting over. And some are uh, really have such a strong characteristic that it's uh, important that they keep it but express it in the right way.

Speaker A: How has enterprise AI changed expectations, um, for speed, personalization and also consistency?

Speaker B: Um, so we're using uh, AWS has always been ah, um, a leader I guess in adopting new technology. Uh and AI has helped uh us deliver better content transformation faster, uh, over time. What um, enterprise AI is enabling us to do at the moment is unheard of. I think as you say, uh, what's critical for our customers is that their content is transformed and adapted faster. Uh, there's a, there's a shelf life of content that I think is reducing. As humans, we are reducing our attention span. And so you need to be able to talk about the subject of the moment. You know, the meme of today is uh, not the meme of tomorrow. Exactly. So speed is more important than ever. Personalization, uh, is very important. Uh, we all watch different content. Um, and I think what we are discovering is that enterprise AI allow us to rethink of the quality of what it matters. Rethink, uh, because quality used to be assessed by a human and that's a very biased way of uh, assessing quality. Uh, we're now able to triangulate and find how does that content, uh, sound, uh, from the Persona of, I don't know, a teenager in the south of France, uh, versus how does it sound from a businessman in Madrid? And so you're able to really fine tune the quality assessment. Uh, so I think we're making incredible progress through uh, enterprise AI at the moment. It does require very strict workflow management, very uh, thorough fine tuning, etc. So I think the network of experts that we have uh, is extremely important to get it right. Uh, but ultimately I still think that we need to localize and make a lot more Content available to a lot

Speaker A: more people on different platforms as well. You can watch anywhere.

Speaker B: Yes, that's a very good point. The uh, adaptation on the platform is also uh, very important. How you cut the content, how you edit it is key.

Speaker A: We see as a something on the side, but really we say on social we have to talk about the same topic, the same, we want to provide the same message to everyone but we, we have to adapt it in terms of length or the way we present it to different, for the different audiences. So small scale but very similar kind of process I guess. Um, do you think it's the reason why more and more companies consider cultural intelligence as a business requirement and not just uh, like nice to have? Is it because they realize this?

Speaker B: Uh, you know, I think the, the social platforms are actually a great uh, illustration of why it matters. Ah, you see some brands succeed and you see some brands who are, they are rowing hard and they have a thousand followers. It doesn't work. Um, and they're a good example to see how your message resonates. Have you found something that really matters? I'm very uh, impressed by some of the YouTube creators. Uh, how they're able to create such a connection with their audience is really, really fascinating. Uh, and some of them work in different culture also, which is even more fascinating. But uh, yeah, I think they're a great proof point that the adaptation, the cultural intelligence that you have is fundamental to succeed.

Speaker A: Where do organizations most commonly lose meaning or impact, um, or trust when they scale across markets? Where does it happen? Can we pin it?

Speaker B: Um, I mean one thing that I see over and over is uh, brands that think they can automate everything. Uh, and yes, uh, anybody can upload, uh, in Google Translate, in ChatGPT, any translation. Um, but if you do it, uh, without care, if you do it fully automated, uh, you're really losing some depth. Uh, and this we see, uh, if you lose depth, you lose engagement, you lose meaning, um, and your content becomes really boring. So uh, some brands are really proud. They have thousands and thousands of pages in hundreds of languages. Nobody reads them. And you measure that by the time spent on their pages, etc. Uh, it just doesn't work. And uh, it actually even pollutes their message because people don't understand anymore. I think it's, I'm fascinated how uh, it's really hard to find a short message that resonates versus, yeah, I can ask uh, any uh, generative AI platform to uh, uh, create a 20 page, uh, redaction on the subject. Nobody's going to read it. I think uh, understanding to who you're talking to, why you're saying it and what's the message that is going to resonate is really fundamental.

Speaker A: That was actually my last question, but I might skip to this one right now because it's a nice kind of link to it. What needs to change for AI to drive real world value as opposed to creating additional content that no uh, one will read and will get forgotten as soon as the day has passed?

Speaker B: Um, that's the stat that actually uh, surprised me. Um, but we passed the stage already where more than half of the content on the Internet is AI created. Um, and you see this, it becomes almost now, uh, it triggers um, an instinct in all of us. Whenever you read something, whenever you see an image, is it real or not? Uh, so you create. There's going to be a very, um, I believe people are going to develop more and more trust issues with what they're reading. Um, so we need to anticipate this. The first reaction when you read something, when you see something, see a video is is that real? Is that true? Um, and so we need, I'm a big proponent of AI and how we should use it. Uh, I think we need to be very careful and intentional on what we use it for. And just producing volume for volume is not going to help. Uh, there are techniques that we've built uh, uh, to guide the AI to work exactly uh, in the right direction. Um, we're working on a project at the moment with one of our customers who uh, uh, wants to fine tune how their voice agents are speaking. And they have the ability for their voice agent not to speak English, but to speak English from different background, different cultural background, different uh, part of England. Um, and ultimately when you engage with those voice agents, uh, and you're in Edinburgh and uh, the voice agent feels like uh, he's your neighbor, that creates a very strong emotional connection. I think that's we need to force ourselves to imagine how to best use AI not to do more of the same before at a lesser quality, but enhance, augment what we're able to do as human because of AI.

Speaker A: That's really interesting. Makes me think of a real life example. But when you're in uh, a foreign city and you hear someone talking your language, you know, if you have been there for an extended time or something, you're already connecting with them. We're friends, you know, we're like in the same situation. So I guess it creates the similar kind of feeling. Um, what value is being left on the table when global content and knowledge are not being produced with adaptability, uh, in mind.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think I touched briefly on it. Uh, but ultimately we don't localize, we don't transform content uh, just for the sake of it. What we want is uh, to have an impact. And so whether you're an e commerce website or you're a newspaper or uh, you are creating uh, some uh, information for life science purposes, you want that content to be read to have an impact, you want people to engage, you want people to buy, uh, your address. And so I think we're going to move more and more towards a measurement of the impact of those content being localized. We're able today to do it. It's more a matter of uh, sharing that information with our client. Uh, but gones are the day where you just translate for the sake of translating. Uh, I mean you have that some regulation. Sometimes you must uh, have your uh, content available in multiple langu. Ultimately what you really want is to build new connections. It's always the same. And building them in your language is already hard. Building them in the language that's not yours, where you're going to struggle within the company to find people that can tell you whether it's a good quality or not is going to be even harder. So uh, uh, you leave all the value on the table if you don't do it uh, properly because there's no engagement.

Speaker A: What does cultural intelligence mean to you? Short answer, like what does it mean? How would your answer to this?

Speaker B: Um, I mean cultural intelligence means empathy if you want to shorten it as much as possible. And uh, you have humans who are, who have a higher cultural intelligence than others. Uh, you have uh, friends who are extremely good at adapting to their audience. If uh, you're at a dinner or if you're at a pub, maybe you're behaving differently, but you have some humans that have this talent of capturing the attention of telling a good story, etc. Um, I find this fascinating. Uh, I'm not sure I have a very high level of cultural intelligence myself, but I know that this is what makes our life better, funnier, uh, more engaging, more emotional and so uh, um, ah, I'm m really passionate about the work we do to try to bring up that level of cultural intelligence.

Speaker A: That's a really cool answer. Thank you. Do you have anything you want to add, like a little anecdote, something like a piece of advice maybe for other companies, um, evolving in this day and age. Something you want to say?

Speaker B: You know. Um, so I um, had the pleasure of leading uh, RWS for. For a year now. Uh, and I've discovered a uh, world of possibilities. Uh, when you arrive you think, okay, it's translation. Translation is A to B period. Uh, and I've discovered the complexity of the work that we're doing, um, and how much just the choice of one word can change the whole meaning of a sentence. And so, uh, I um, think we are. We are really helping creating uh, connection, unlocking, understanding. Uh, and I think, uh, that's something that's ever more needed today than uh, ever. We tend to lose, uh, connection. We tend to misunderstand each other. And so it's important that we pay attention and we invest on a better way faster, way easier way to create those connections.

Speaker A: Thank you, Ben. Thank you. That was a pleasure to have you here. Um, and yeah, thank you for sharing your views with us.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Maureen, Sam.