International Advertising

International Advertising-How is it affected?

Introduction

What is advertising? It is a paid-for communication through media such as television, newspapers or radio. Most advertising can be categorised as either informative or persuasive, or a combination of the two. Advertisements can be seen on billboards, buses, television, the internet, etc. They are usually put in areas where members of the public can easily see/hear and access the advert. Advertising spending is on the rise, as study a show that in the US, $155billion was spent on advertising during 2006 alone. A review built by the accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers that same year stated that the worldwide advertising expenditure was at $385billion.

What is Global Advertising? Terminology such as international, global, export and multinational has caused some problems when mentioned along with advertising. Some of this is due to the facts that that some organisations produce and market their products in a range of countries and have some form of subsidiaries there. This has caused some of them to focus solely on export from their home country or the country of manufacture, some companies perform their marketing abroad largely through franchisees and licensees; whilst some engage in both forms together.

Global advertising is therefore defined as the advertising activities of any profit or non-profit organization in more than one country.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising#Global_advertising)

Factors That Affect Global Advertising

Standardisation Vs Customisation

This is a problematic issue that organisations face whether to standardise their advertisements to a single message for all the countries they advertise, or try and adapt them in so they can be tolerated and meet the requirements of the variety of markets globally.

Standardisation

Standardisation is about considering the world as one whole market, ignoring the fact that there could be cultural, national and regional differences, and advertising a company’s message in the same manner in all countries. By doing this they are targeting similar consumers in each state, all with similar buying trends and attitudes.

There are a few advantages of this approach, one being that it doesn’t need that much if any advertising research in comparison to customisation, which in turn is cheaper to manage, and requires less work to be done overall. This means that one message is used to transpire a company’s message. Arguments that are for this include:

- In recent times the world seems to be adapting to similar lifestyles and behaviours. This is very common in developed countries. However, countries like India and China have even adapted to more westernized living traits, especially in their main developed cities.

This shows that in International Marketing, people’s lifestyles and behaviours are important factors to consider. The world’s population is now seemingly becoming more and more similar in terms of living traits, especially in the more developed countries, which could come to benefit marketers where they can market similar products and services without having to tailor it.

- The world we live in continues to urbanise, so more and more people are moving from bucolic areas into cities to work. This allows them to implement similar attitudes and lifestyles to each other, even though they may live in different states.

This again shows that people are now moving out of rural areas to cities, where they work in similar environments to people all around the world. The world is becoming similar in this aspect and in terms of International Marketing; it shows that marketers consider this a beneficial as people are now more likely to develop similar trends.

- Media has now become much internationalized, which has in turn given people similar outlooks, even though they live in different countries. The youth culture, for example, is similar across different countries. This is because they all seem to read the same magazines, watch the same programmes or movies, and dress up similarly too. This eventually grows with them, as they take these similarities in to their later life, so they will end up following these similar trends.

This is beneficial to companies, as it could help in the development in their international marketing strategies. The youth are the adults of tomorrow, so companies like Pepsi like to focus on the youth as they will end up being the adults, hopefully taking the mindset of purchasing the product with them.

An example of standardisation is that of Red Bull, who worldwide use the same adverts and slogans, which is that �Red Bull gives you wings!’ This is because there is a similar target market as they are seeking middle-class individuals, teens to adults, to buy the product. Another example is that of �Birdseye Fish-fingers’ which use the same �Captain Birdseye’ character in all of their commercials worldwide. This is due to the fact that it is culturally respectful, and is inoffensive to people religious beliefs or a government’s political agenda. The only aspect that changes in these commercials is the language voice-over.

In terms of international marketing, standardisation is an important factor, which many organisations choose to use in advertising, promotion and production. This is due to the fact that it is a much cheaper tool to use, and is less time consuming and complicated as they only have to create one or two approaches to market penetration. An example of standardisation in production side of marketing is Range-Rover, who produces the same type of cars for countries worldwide.

Customisation

Customisation is the opposite of standardisation, basically considering that there are factors in different markets, especially in international markets that force companies to adapt their product or campaign to a different country or market segment. The main problem with customisation is that it would cost more due to the fact that adverts would have to be modified for the different market segments. These are the factors to why customisation should be used in international advertising:

- Cultural differences between the countries. This could be due to their way of living or religious beliefs. Countries in the middle-east for example, have different culture views on women in society, where they are not allowed to dress indecently. Commercial like L’Oreal, which