Supplying insights to make communication more inclusive across languages and cultures, Farhanna is continuously researching how people organize their physical/social world around them, influencing behaviors and beliefs. Farhanna created and led the marketing team for a global translation company for nearly five years, which includes assisting life science and healthcare clients with identifying multicultural suitability issues and helps culturally adapt content for patients, providers, consumers and/or employees. She proudly helps clients improve patient engagement, judges the annual ANA Multicultural Excellence Awards and has been an AdWeek MENA Summit speaker.
For over 17 years, Farhanna has worked on creating powerful connections between people and brands. She executed global marketing strategies in-house for brands in luxury such as Estee Lauder and Kiehl’s and FMCG brands such as French’s Mustard and Frank’s RedHot. She also implemented multicultural marketing strategies to gain relevancy with the increasingly diverse US population such as Hispanic consumer acquisition strategies for Clinique and Chinese patient programs for a chain of urgent care centers in the tri-state area. Farhanna’s passion for cultures was further sparked by multiple international immersion programs while attaining her MBA from NYU Stern. She has lived in the U.S. and Indonesia, studied in Belgium, Egypt, Japan, Turkey and India, worked in Canada and continues to be a world traveler.
When Farhanna is not at the office, she enjoys volunteering her time as “First Lady” of the City of Paterson, advising her husband and his cabinet on effective government communication strategies in NJ’s third largest city, where about 50% of residents are born outside the United States and Limited English Proficient (LEP). As a child of immigrants, this is her passion.
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Alka Bahal: Welcome to the Think Factory’s Workplace Podcast powered by OGC Solutions. My name is Alka Bahal. I’m a partner with Outside General Counsel Solutions and the Chair of our Corporate Immigration Services Group.
I’ll be your host today. I am very pleased to have with me Farhana Sayah, Cross-cultural Marketing Strategist, Founder and Chief Marketing Strategist of Cultural Fit and First Lady of Patterson, New Jersey. Welcome to the podcast, Farhana!
Farhanna Sayegh: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to chat with you today.
Alka Bahal: I’m looking forward to it. So let’s start off by telling us a little bit about Cultural Fit.
Farhanna Sayegh: Yes, so Cultural Fit was created over time as I saw a need for organizations to make sure that they were thinking through a global, making sure that they had global mindset, a cross-cultural mindset when they were thinking about communication.
So it’s really about tailoring your communication to make sure that you’re effective in connecting with diverse cultural backgrounds, access in so many ways, consciously and subconsciously, the different values, the different beliefs, the different communication styles, different behaviors. And if we can’t adapt, we just end up not resonating. And increasingly, we’re all becoming a global citizen.
Alka Bahal: So what inspired you to sort of come into this area? What was your passion for cross-cultural marketing and strategy based in?
Farhanna Sayegh: Yeah, I actually was inspired by my years of marketing experience. I’ve been a marketer for about two decades now. I’ve worked in a number of different industries from personal care to foods, to healthcare, to business services. And I found that there was this common thread of trying to figure out how we resonate across populations.
I’ve worked on global product launches. I’ve worked on multicultural marketing campaigns to resonate with the growing diversity in the United States. And I always saw the need for really pausing and making sure that connecting with others, with different cultures, wasn’t just at the bottom of the checklist after everything was done for the general market, right?
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