USED COMMERCIAL APPLIANCES

National vs International and Localisation vs Standardization

1      Introduction

Common sense suggests that if one had to sell to a particular community of consumers, then it would help to speak in a language that this audience understands. The relationship between advertising and culture derives from this basic premise: advertisements reflect the culture of the community or location where it is aired. This is not, however, simply a one way relationship where an advertisement reflects an existing culture. It is, rather, a situation where advertisements and culture can be understood as mutually reinforcing. In other words, as Wright (2001) contends, advertisements feed off existing cultural texts, but they are themselves texts that participate in the production of culture.

The relationship between advertising and culture has become more interesting, or less straightforward, due to the influences of globalisation, which is a phenomenon that has increased the interactions between various cultures. An important feature of globalisation, as theorists such as Appadurai (1996) have indicated, is the deconstruction of the centre-periphery model of structuring the globe (Wallerstein, 1974). That is, the globe can no longer be divided neatly into powerful (western) countries at the centre, and the weaker (southern and eastern) countries at the margins. Instead, Appadurai has forwarded a theory that structures the globe as comprising gaps, which are formed due to the interaction of cultural similarity and difference. Two important components of this model are the role played by electronic mediation and mass migration, which create imagined existential spheres.

Yet, unlike Anderson’s (1991) theory of the imagined communities of nation-states, imagination in the contemporary world allows nationality to exist outside the territorial boundaries of the state. For example, while Korean immigrants might be watching Korean films in Philadelphia, American expatriates in Singapore may be watching American television programs, and the Indian cab-driver in New York City could be listening to the songs of the latest Hindi blockbuster made in Mumbai, while he drives around. In addition, due to the increased mediation of foreign cultures, the possibilities of cross-cultural allegiances increase. That is, while Asian viewers might develop a liking for American basketball, the popularity of Asian martial arts may increase in the U.S. (Appadurai, 1996). Moreover, cultural flows need not necessarily be from the West to the East and vice versa. As Larkin (2002) explains,   although western hegemony exists, it is also important to consider the range of non-western media choices available in a non-Western location.

Globalisation has also increased transnational commerce, particularly due to the trade agreements that have become operational. Thus, it has become more common for companies to be selling their products to customers in foreign countries. That is, a company based in France might be doing business in Chile, Kenya, and South Korea, while another company based in South Korea may be doing business in Chile, India, and Jordan. This phenomenon requires companies to advertise to foreign customers, which in turn requires them to understand the cultural characteristics of these foreign countries.

2      Localisation versus Standardisation

One of the debates that has marked the arena of global advertising, during the last two decades, is whether companies should tailor their advertisements for each individual country or region that they do business in, or standardise their advertisements for a global audience. This is a debate started by Levitt’s (1983) article, which recommends standardisation as an effective selling strategy in global markets. The benefits of standardisation include cost savings, building a single brand image, and the maximum exploitation of a good marketing idea (Buazell, 1968; Duncan & Ramaprasad, 1995).

Instead of choosing between complete standardisation and localisation, another option is to standardise strategically and incorporate local elements wherever required. An example of carefully planned standardisation is IBM’s global subtitles campaign, which successfully used standardised imagery along with subtitles in the local language of the countries where it was shown  (McCullough, 1996). Likewise, many multinational companies choose to create a single marketing idea-typically conceived by the American branch of its advertising agency, based in a city such as Los Angeles or New York that is then tailored for specific situations in the various countries where a brand might be doing business. For example, Coca Cola uses an advertising agency, McCann-Erickson International, which has a separate International Team that develops multicultural advertising for brands such as General Motors and Gillette (OBarr, 1989).

One of the reasons cultural differences, between various countries or markets where a brand is selling, have to be taken into account is because certain advertisements might offend the cultural norms and values of a particular customer segment. For example, advertisements in Muslim countries cannot show men and women in close contact, and women have to be fully covered according to Islamic norms. Thus, a certain Coca Cola commercial that was shot on the beach in Brazil had to be filmed twice, because the women had to change into long dresses for the Middle Eastern version, and then change back into bikinis for the version that would be shown in countries such as Brazil and Spain (O’Barr, 1989).

Tuncalp (2001) discusses a series of Saudi Arabian newspaper advertisements that were considered offensive to Saudi “culture, tradition, and heritage” (p. 33) by a group of Saudi judges. Tuncalp categorized these as careless advertisements, because they did not consider the tastes of the market. One pair of such advertisements was for Japanese products that used female models in a manner considered too sensual, according to Saudi values. Another example is an advertisement for an American fast food franchise, which showed a quintessential Anglo-Saxon American character, a colonel who had a goatee beard, and was pointing his right hand towards the audience while making a victory (v) sign with his fingers, that would have little resonance among a Saudi audience.

In contrast, a number of other foreign brands have carefully associated themselves with Saudi culture, as Zirinski (2005) discusses. His work tries to explain how advertisements add a layer of meaning to the product being sold, so the product is associated with a particular schema introduced by advertising (Goldman, 1992; Goldman & Papson, 1996; Williams, 1980; Williamson, 1978). The advertisements described in Zirinski’s book add a layer of Arabism to products that have nothing inherently Arab about them:

… a Swiss watch comes to represent periods of Arab-Muslim history; Philips’s kitchen appliances turn into tools for preparing Ramadan meals or muluhiyyah;a four-wheel-drive vehicle becomes an inseparable part of the Arab family; a children’s vanilla drink is transformed into “Nilla” or Nile drink; a foreign hair-dye company masquerades as a domestic firm; a cellular phone is equated with an Arabian falcon; and so on … For every Western product, an Arab biography and a private history are fabricated.. . (Zirinski, 2005, p. 130)

These are very clear examples of localisation, cases where the companies decided to create separate advertisements for Arabs. Similar examples are available from other countries, such as France (Martin, 2005), Papua New Guinea (PNG) (Foster, 2002), Trinidad (Miller, 1997), and Sri Lanka (Kernper, 2001).

In Trinidad, for example, the localisation of advertising content is connected to the localisation of the advertising industry, which was earlier dominated by expatriates from, initially, mainly England and, then later, the U.S. The Black Power movement of the nineteen seventies was largely responsible for the localisation of the advertising industry, since the then Prime Minister Eric Williams targeted the industry for being a domain of foreign control (Miller, 1997).

One of the reasons the strategy of localisation is justified or supported, by Trinidadian advertising executives, is that habits of consumption, differ across cultures. For example, in many international alcohol advertisements, probably produced in the U.S., the drink is consumed out of a glass filled with nothing but ice. However, Trinidadians commonly choose from a host of mixers to add to their drink. Another example is international advertisements for confectionaries, which are often targeted to children. However, in Trinidad women are the main consumers of confectionaries, so they need 1ocally produced advertisements that are targeted towards women (Miller, 11997).

Yet, there are certain drawbacks of producing advertisements locally in Trinidad. First, the quality of production is much lower than that of advertisements produced in England and the U.S. Second, due to the small size of the Trinidadian market, it is not economically profitable to target specific advertisements at even smaller segments of the market. Thus, the creative strategy adopted for the entire Trinidadian market, in local advertisements, is often very straightforward and unimpressive. Third, local advertisements do not necessarily use truly local images. The client may still want images that connote wealth, since he or she could be worried that his or her product would appear poor, if authentic local images are used, when compared to products that use foreign advertisements. Finally, local advertisements are usually criticized more harshly (Miller, 1997).

One of the most prominent effects of the localisation of Trinidadian advertising is the inclusion of local imagery, to associate with products. As an example, Miller (1997) discusses a television commercial that contained visuals, which were somewhat like a “tourist brochure:”

well-known river valleys and beaches, trees in flowers, cows in the fields, and the scarlet ibis, the national bird, during their spectacular mass flight back to roost in the evening in the Caroni swamp (p. 202).

Another effect of the localisation of Trinidadian advertising is the greater use of African models, instead of the White models that would be used earlier. Also, in certain cases ambiguous ethnicity is preferred, due to the financial advantages that derive from the ability to show an advertisement to a larger section of the market. That is, a brown model, or someone who is a mixture of African and Indian ethnicity, can be used for advertisements targeted at both the African and Indian sections of the market (Miller, 1997).

While debating whether to localise of standardise cross cu1tural or global advertising, another issue that needs to be taken into consideration is that certain consumers might not appreciate advertisements that have evidently been made especially for them. For example, African consumers had told Coca Cola’s advertising agency that they would rather not see African Coca Cola commercials that are about Africans. Instead, they prefer commercials that feature Africans, but look like commercials shown anywhere else in the world (O’Barr, 1989). Nevertheless, localisation of advertising content, as stated earlier, may be effective when there are significant cultural differences between the selling community (American businesses, for example) and the buying community (Chinese consumers, for example). The question remains, however, whether it is possible to bridge these differences using standardised advertising. If a business can show the same advertisement in multiple countries, then they will probably benefit economically, so there are significant advantages in being able to formulate a method of successfully standardizing global advertising, and many have already attempted to do so.

As Messaris (1997) mentions, certain scholars, such as Kernan and Domzal (1993), have suggested that advertisers use visuals to bridge cultural divides, because visual, rather than verbal, messages are more easily understood by a multicultural audience. This suggestion rests on the assumption that images can cross cultural barriers due to their iconic and indexical qualities. These features derive from the terms-icon and index-used by C.S. Peirce to represent two kinds of signs. An iconic sign possesses certain characteristics of the object represented. An indexical sign provides evidence regarding an object’s existence (Peirce, 1991).

An advertiser benefits from the iconicity of images, because this feature can be used to induce emotions from consumers by including stimuli, within the images, which have real world counterparts that these individuals have already been conditioned to. These stimuli can be reproduced through both the intrinsic features of the images as well as the manner in which they are filmed. Advertisers also benefit from the indexical nature of images, because, as an index, the image substantiates the information being conveyed, and it assumes a documentary quality (Messaris, 1997).

Indeed, a study by Alden, Steenkamp and Batra (1999) observed that products associated with global consumer culture, which is tantamount to standardisation, used a lot of visual imagery. Yet, Messaris (1997) is quick to furnish evidence that contradicts the argument supporting the ability of images to bridge cultural divides. A group of researchers had reported that Japanese consumers failed to recognise the picture of Emperor Nero in an Italian lipstick advertisement, which consequently failed to impress the Japanese consumers. However, using other examples, Messaris also mentions “that the intended cultural references in advertising are often relatively shallow” (p. 94-95) (original emphasis), so it is not important to recognise images in order to understand an advertisement. He further argues that a “substantially common international visual culture” exists due to “the cross cultural experience of Hollywood cinema,” so this might help the comprehension of advertisements, which require recognition of specific American images (p. 102).

Although Messaris (1997) presents a rather optimistic viewpoint of the cross cultural comprehension of advertisements, it is true that distinct differences exist among the advertising styles of various countries. Messaris recognises such differences in the context of their connection to the dissimilarities in the cultural values of various countries. The clash of cultural values was cited earlier in this section as well, as one of the reasons why a need exists to localise advertising. To be outlined, in the following pages (of this section, are selected examples of studies that have reported differences among the advertising styles of various countries.

3      National Styles of Advertising

British and Japanese advertising has been described as being less informative (or a softer sell) than American advertising, which contains more information about the product (Bradley, Hitchon & Thorson, 1994; Johansson, 2004; Nevett, 1992). Moreover, unlike their counterparts in the U.S., the Japanese advertisers cannot depend on lifestyle research to create campaigns. This is because, Japan is a more homogenous and patriarchal society where age and sex-rather than life-style segments per se-are the major markers of difference (Aaker, Asuyoshi & Reynolds, 1982).

French and Spanish advertising usually includes seduction, spectacle, romance, and humour, which are all highly valued in French and Spanish society (Taylor, Hoy and Haley, 1996). Also, French and Spanish advertisements contain greater emotional appeal, humour, and sex appeal than American advertisements (Biswas, Olsen & Carlet, 1992). Comparing East to West Europe, represented by the Czech Republic and United Kingdom respectively, Koudelova and Whitelock (2001) found significant differences in the executional formats, such as use of an ordinary person instead of a celebrity, of the these countries’ advertisements. These findings also supported the pre-existing notion that British advertisements are humorous.

A comparison between female-oriented advertising in Germany and Japan revealed that “the traditional approach of appealing to women” (p. 1335) was used more often in Japan than in Germany (Dallman, 2001). A study by Frith, Shaw and Cheng (2005) reported that Female beauty, as understood from advertisements published in women’s fashion and beauty magazines, is constructed differently in Singapore, Taiwan, and the U.S. According to these researchers, there is a possibility that “the beauty ideal in the U.S. is more related to body, whereas the Asian beauty ideal is more related to the face” (p. 66).   This is indirectly supported by Griffin, Viswanath and Schwartz’s (1994) finding that, compared to Indian media, there is “greater acceptance of sexual body displays in American media” (p. 501).

A comparison between American and European advertisements reveals that characteristically American values (individualism/independence, modernity/newness, and achievement) are more prevalent in American advertisements than European ones. In addition, while European advertisements used indirect speech most often, the American advertisements usually used direct speech (Caillat & Mueller, 1996).  In contrast, a remarkable similarity between American and Swedish advertisements, presence of youthfulness, individualism, a life of leisure, and ideal body shape, as well as Taiwanese advertisements, that preferred western over Chinese values, is reported by a set of studies (Shao, Raymond & Taylor, 1999; Wiles, Wiles & Tjernlund, 1996).

Likewise, there are overlaps of certain values (e.g. modernity and youth) in American and Chinese television commercials. Yet, Chinese commercials differ due to the presence of family values as well as the presence of traditional values (a finding reiterated by Yin (1999)), whereas American commercials assert individualism, enjoyment, and the economic benefits of purchase (Hong & Schweitzer, 1996). A study by Wang and Chan (2001) reported that, as they had hypothesised, American advertisements use more individualistic appeals than Chinese advertisements, while Chinese advertisements use more group oriented appeals than American advertisements. Their hypotheses were based on the assumption that western cultures are more individualistic than eastern cultures.

Finally, a study by Zhou, Zhou and Xue (2005) analyzes visual differences between American and Chinese commercials, based on the assumption that the U.S. is a more individualistic society and a low context culture, where “information is vested within explicit codes,” (Zhou et. al., p. 112) and China is a more collectivist society and high context culture, “characterized by the use of symbolism and nonverbal and indirect verbal expressions”  (Zhou et al., p. 112).

An interesting aspect of Zhou et al.’s (2005) findings is that all the hypotheses regarding cinematographic variables were rejected. In contrast, almost all the hypotheses regarding storytelling techniques and cultural manifestations on content were supported. The cinematographic variables tested were the use of subjective camera, length of an average shot, and the use of direct address. The authors conclude that cultural variables “might not translate as easily into technical production techniques,” (p. 117) as they do in the case of more traditional communication techniques, such as storytelling. In other words, there has to be more thought given to the cultural implications of these cinematographic variables, in order for them to be used in a manner that reflects the cultural traits of the consumers being targeted by a television commercial.

As may be obvious, Zhou et al.’s (2005) study is much more relevant to this research than most of the studies cited previously, since this research is also interested in the visual language of television commercials. Moreover, Zhou et a1.’s conclusion, that the cinematographic variables measured are not culturally resonant, ought to be noted as an important issue that can be further investigated by this study. This issue also raises a question regarding the cultural resonances of visual language; that is, how are cultural traits manifested visually, such as in film language?

4      Advertising and Capitalism

In particular, the role played by advertisements in building a capitalist culture is a phenomenon that ought to be noted. For example, Schudson (1986) compares advertisements to the art form known as Socialist Realism that was used to perpetuate socialist ideology in the former Soviet Union. Asthe capitalist counterpart, advertisements are termed as fitting into a genre known as Capitalist Realism. That is, advertisements idealize consumerisnn and free choice, which are the hallmarks of a capitalist society.

Williams (1980) forwards a similar explanation and considers advertising to be a magic system that obscures the dissatisfactions of the capitalist system. This is because, advertisements associate consumption with the fulfilment of desires that might not be related to the object being advertised, but are demanded by a society nevertheless. However, the role played by capitalism in leaving these needs unfulfilled is camouflaged, and the culprit appears to be the saviour. Williams also explains that the failures of capitalism as a social system are partly related to its focus on individual activity, whereas society requires communal engagement to solve many issues. Practical examples of advertising’s role in creating a capitalist culture are available from both, so called, first and third world nations. In the U.S., advertisements produced in the early twentieth century played a role in constructing a notion of citizenship that furthered the interests of mass industry:

By defining himself and his desires in terms of the good of capitalist production, the worker would implicitly accept the foundations of modern industrial life. By transforming the notion of ‘class’ into ‘mass,’ business hoped to create an ‘individual’ who could locate his needs and frustrations in terms of the consumption of goods rather than the quality and content of his life (work). (Ewen, 1976, pp. 42-43)

Moreover, the American advertisements of this era created a :particular sort of middle class lifestyle, which was biased by the characteristics-such as belonging to the Anglo-Saxon race-of the creators of these ads (Marchand, 1985).

Similarly, Burke (1996) discusses how hegemonic discourses about bodily hygiene, manners, and visual appearances, which were created in Zimbabwe during colonialism, were then reasserted through the advertisements produced in the nineteen fifties and sixties. For example, Burke discusses the advertisement for a brand of soap that recalled “established associations between African masculinity and dirt, between labor and pollution, between professional success within the colonial system and rigorous hygienic purification” (p. 153).   In addition, post-war consumerism sought to engage the local population in buying habits that would make them lead a European way of life.  The implication here is that advertisements are a vehicle for the communication, transmission and dissemination of culture.

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Cry baby: tragic story of the lamp