Hygiene and culture: Impact on brands

How culture drives hygiene behaviour and implementation

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the whole world’s way of living, working, travelling and interacting. While domestic governments have implemented different measures across the board, hygiene has consistently been at the forefront of their messages. In this White Paper, we look at how local culture has driven the various initiatives around hygiene and how brands across different industries responded to the pandemic in a range of local markets. From Italy to Australia, South Korea, Canada, Colombia, Nigeria, South Africa, Sweden and Japan.

In the few short months since reports first surfaced that a novel form of coronavirus had been discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan, COVID-19 has spread throughout the world and completely upended daily life for many of us. At the time of writing in late May 2020, the WHO figure for the number of people confirmed to have caught COVID-19 has climbed to over 5 million and only a handful of countries are yet to report their first case. Governments across the globe that differ from one another in almost every respect have faced the same dilemma: how do they protect their citizens in the absence of a vaccine?

To date, the only viable solution has been implementing various hygiene measures and forms of social distancing, along with lockdowns and travel bans, aimed at slowing the spread of the virus and protecting healthcare systems from becoming overwhelmed. The service and hospitality industries have been some of the worst hit, with hotels, restaurants and bars around the world having been forced to close down or severely limit the service they can offer in order to comply with the restrictions and measures laid out by their respective governments.

As virus cases begin to drop and government restrictions ease, new regulations will be drawn up for the gradual and safe reopening of these businesses. This will undoubtedly present a new host of challenges for international corporations to ensure that they are up-to-date and in compliance with the latest safety standards in each of their local markets. However, it is not just the measures themselves that will differ on a country-by-country basis, but also the underlying attitudes and behaviours of locals, which ultimately translates into a need to localise the entire brand approach.

With some of the industry’s leading international hotels already launching plans and communications around new hygiene and safety measures (for example, Hyatt’s Global Care and Cleanliness Commitment or Hilton’s Clean Stay with Lysol Protection), it will be important to take into account recent events and the profound cultural discrepancies that have been revealed as a result.

The interaction between culture and COVID-19 is interesting in its own right, but what is particularly imperative for brands to consider in this context is the range of approaches that have been tried and tested by governments and other local organisations around the world. Measures have spanned the full spectrum from total lockdowns enforced by criminal sanctions to “guidance” and an expectation that citizens will exercise their best judgement. Similarly, the extent to which citizens appear to have followed these official regulations has varied from country to country.

In many instances, these divergent paths are not purely dictated by the daily case numbers or experiences in past pandemics. They also reflect deep-rooted cultural beliefs and customs about everything from greetings to trust in government and other local authorities.

Governments, companies and private citizens are all in unchartered territory as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and companies in the service and hospitality sector have been particularly hard hit. As the lockdown measures start to ease and societies work to define a new normal, brands will need to adapt their products and services and tailor their messaging to reflect this reality.