Sprechen-Vous Italiano?

Most Americans won't win any prizes when it comes to communicating in a second language. We typically grasp at the remnants of our high school French or Spanish, filling in the gaps with English and ad hoc sign language. But in a post at the Influential Marketing blog, Rohit Bhargava highlights a young street merchant called Ravi who flips with ease from one language to the next as he sells fans made of peacock feathers.



In the first video, made by an English-speaking tourist and posted to YouTube, the young Ravi—dubbed the Lingo Kid—rattles off his sales pitch in series of languages: French, Italian, German, Arabic, Russian and Japanese. (If you watch closely, you'll notice that he also alters his tone and body language to mirror those of his customers' cultures.) Ravi might not get the grammar and vocabulary exactly right, but that's beside the point: virtually any tourist who encounters Ravi will get the gist of his meaning.

Three years later, the tourist returned and interviewed Ravi—now a teenager—once again. In the second video, he delivers his pitch with greater polish, and appears to have added Mandarin Chinese to his repertoire. Ravi also explains that he has never been to school; he learned each of these languages by listening to his customers.

This remarkable young linguist is your Marketing Inspiration. Says Bhargava, "Both videos together offer one of the most simple marketing lessons that you can imagine … that sometimes it doesn't matter what you're selling, just that you speak the right language."