Yes: Standardize for Greater Efficiency

Some advertisers say that advertising does travel from country to country. Proponents of this viewpoint argue that many cultures, especially those of industrialized countries, have become so homogenized that the same advertising will work throughout the world. By developing one approach for multiple markets, an advertiser benefits from economies of scale because it does not have to incur the substantial time and expense to develop a separate campaign for each culture.Theodore Levitt, The Marketing Imagination (New York: The Free Press, 1983). The 2006 World Cup, which was broadcast in 189 countries to one of the biggest global television audiences ever, illustrates how a standardized approach looks. MasterCard ran ads that appeared in thirty-nine countries, so its ad agency came up with a spot called “Fever,” in which a hundred-odd cheering fans from thirty countries appear. There’s no dialogue, so it works in any language. At the end, the words, “Football fever. Priceless” appeared under the MasterCard logo.Aaron O. Patrick, “World Cup’s Advertisers Hope One Size Fits All: Month-Long Tournament Sets Off Scramble to Reach Huge Global TV Audience,” Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2006, B7.

No: Customize to Appeal to Local Tastes

Other advertisers point to huge variations across cultures. They feel that each culture is unique, with its own value system, conventions, and regulations. This perspective argues that each country has a national characterA set of behavior and personality characteristics distinctive to a certain country., a distinctive set of behavior and personality characteristics.Terry Clark, “International Marketing and National Character: A Review and Proposal for an Integrative Theory,” Journal of Marketing 54 (October 1990): 66–79. An advertiser must therefore tailor its strategy to the sensibilities of each specific culture.

At a basic level, the need to customize is a no-brainer: Consumers speak many different languages, and intended meanings in one tongue don’t always translate seamlessly to another. It’s unlikely that Bimbo, a popular Mexican bread brand, or Super Piss, a Scandinavian product to unfreeze car locks, would go over well in the United States.

Advertisers have (for the most part) learned the hard way over the years to avoid obvious language gaffes. They often conduct back-translation, where a different interpreter retranslates a translated ad back into its original language to catch errors.Shelly Reese, “Culture Shock,” Marketing Tools (May 1998): 44–49; Steve Rivkin, “The Name Game Heats Up,” Marketing News, April 22, 1996, 8; David A. Ricks, “Products That Crashed into the Language Barrier,” Business and Society Review (Spring 1983): 46–50. Still, mistakes do creep in:

• The Scandinavian company that makes Electrolux vacuum cleaners introduced the products in United States with this slogan: “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.”
• When Parker marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its claim “It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you” came out as “It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”
• Fresca (a soft drink) is Mexican slang for “lesbian.”
• Ford also ran into problems in Latin markets. The company had to change the names for its Fiera truck and its Caliente and Pinto cars. In Spanish, a fiera is an ugly old woman and a caliente is slang for a streetwalker; pinto is Brazilian slang for “small male appendage.”
• Buick had to rename its LaCrosse sedan the Allure in Canada after the company discovered that the name comes awfully close to a Québécois word for masturbation.
• IKEA had to explain that the Gutvik children’s bunk bed is named “for a tiny town in Sweden” after German shoppers noted that the name sounded a lot like a phrase that means “good f**.” IKEA has yet to issue an explanation for a workbench it calls the Fartfull.Mark Lasswell, “Lost in Translation,” Business (August 2004): 68–70.

Language aside, there are many instances where cultural sensitivities vary widely, and advertisers that try to export their own symbolism to another country do so at their own peril. In China, an ad for Nippon Paint (a Japanese brand) caused an uproar; it showed a sculptured dragon unable to keep its grip on a pillar coated in smooth wood-coating paint. Dragons are potent symbols in China, and seeing one easily defeated by a Japanese product proved too much.“China Bans Offending Nike Advert,” BBC News, December 6, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4072203.stm (accessed February 13, 2009).

How Local Do Ads Need to Be?

So what’s the correct answer? Although it feels warm and fuzzy to state that people are people wherever you go, in practice the standardization perspective hasn’t worked out too well. One reason for the failure of global marketing is that consumers in different countries have varying conventions and customs, so they simply do not use products the same way. Kellogg’s, for example, discovered that in Brazil people don’t typically eat a big breakfast—they’re more likely to eat cereal as a dry snack.

True, some large corporations such as Coca-Cola have been pretty successful at crafting a single, international image. Still, even the soft drink giant must make minor modifications to the way it presents itself in each culture. Although Coke commercials are largely standardized, the company permits local agencies to edit them so they highlight close-ups of local faces.J. S. Hill and J. M. Winski, “Goodbye Global Ads: Global Village Is Fantasy Land for Big Marketers,” Advertising Age 58, no. 49 (1987): 22, 36. In their product as well as their advertising, Coke modifies the flavors of its product based on the tastes of the locals. These flavors can be taste-tested at Coke Headquarters in Atlanta or World of Coke at Disney’s Epcot Center in Orlando.

For a standardized approach to work, it needs to appeal to consumers in each market that share a lot in common (other than perhaps language and allegiance to one soccer team or another). Two types of consumers are good candidates: (1) affluent people who are “global citizens” and who come into contact with ideas from around the world through their travels, business contacts, and media experiences; and (2) young people whose tastes in music and fashion are strongly influenced by MTV and other media that broadcast many of the same images to multiple countries.

Components of Meaning

From a semiotic perspective, every marketing message has three basic components: an object, a sign (or symbol), and an interpretant. The objectIn semiotics, the product that is the focus of the message. is the product that is the focus of the message (e.g., Burger King’s menu items). The signIn semiotics, the sensory image that represents the intended meanings of the object. is the sensory image that represents the intended meanings of the object (e.g., a funky “King”). The interpretantIn semiotics, the meaning derived about the object. is the meaning derived (e.g., quirky, cool).

Signs relate to objects in one of three ways: They can resemble objects, be connected to them, or be conventionally tied to them.Arthur Asa Berger, Signs in Contemporary Culture: An Introduction to Semiotics (New York: Longman, 1984); Charles Sanders Peirce, in Collected Papers, ed. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur W. Burks (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931–1958). An iconAn icon in the marketing or advertising context refers to a well-known, enduring symbol of an underlying quality. is a sign that resembles the product in some way (e.g., the Apple logo is literally an apple). An indexIn semiotics, a sign that is connected to a product because they share some property. is a sign that is connected to a product because they share some property (e.g., the Rock of Gibraltar that stands for Prudential Insurance conveys the property of endurable dependability, which is what the company hopes clients will associate with its policies). A symbolIn semiotics, a sign that relates to a product by either conventional or agreed-on associations. is a sign that relates to a product by either conventional or agreed-on associations (e.g., the green Starbucks logo depicting an “earth mother” with long hair conveys environmental responsibility and alignment with nature). A lot of time, thought, and money go into creating brand names and logos that will clearly communicate a product’s image. The Nissan Xterra combines the word terrain with the letter X, which many young people associate with extreme sports, to give the brand name a cutting-edge, off-road feel.

Hyperreality

One of the hallmarks of modern advertising is that it creates a condition of hyperrealityThe process of making real what is initially simulation or “hype.”. This refers to the process of making real what is initially simulation or “hype.” In other words, advertisers create new relationships between objects and interpretants as they invent new connections between products and benefits, such as when they equate Marlboro cigarettes with the American frontier spirit.

Over time, the true relationship between the symbol and reality is no longer possible to discern in a hyperreal environment. The “artificial” associations between product symbols and the real world may take on lives of their own. Fictional characters routinely cross over from make-believe to the real world—sometimes they even “endorse” other products, as when a talking Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup bottle shows up in a TV commercial for GEICO insurance.