7-1
Chapter 7
The International Market
Environment for Brand
Promotion
7-2
1. Identify types of audience research that contribute to understanding
cultural barriers to effective communication.
2. Describe challenges that complicate integrated marketing communication
in international settings.
3. Compare the basic types of agencies that can assist in brand promotion
around the world.
4. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of globalized versus
localized promotional campaigns.
7-3
Communicating across Cultures
• All of us wear cultural blinders, so we must overcome substantial barriers in trying
to communicate with people from other countries. This is a major problem for
international marketers as they seek to promote their brands around the world.
• International marketers must overcome two biases: ethnocentrism and selfreference criterion (SFC).
• To overcome these blind spots and avoid errors in advertising planning, marketers
need to conduct cross-cultural audience analysis.
• Such analyses involve evaluation in the target countries of:
• economic conditions—less-developed countries, newly industrialized
countries, and highly industrialized countries
• demographic characteristics—the demographic dividend
• values –individualism vs. collectivism
• customs and rituals—perpetuate a culture to the point of being “invisible” to
native participants
• product use and preferences—often specific to a culture, may depend on
rituals and customs
7-4
Challenges of International
Brand Promotion
• Worldwide marketers face three distinctive challenges in executing their
campaigns: creative, media, and regulations.
• The creative challenge derives from differences in experience and meaning
among cultures. Even picturing can be problematic—the images featured in
an ad may be translated differently from one country to the next.
• Media availability, media coverage, and media costs vary dramatically
around the world. Global television networks and direct broadcast by satellite
(DBS) are helping marketers to overcome these media issues.
• The amount and nature of advertising regulations vary dramatically from
country to country, sometimes forcing a complete reformulation of a
promotional campaign.
7-5
Ad Agencies for International
Marketing
• Advertising agencies offer marketers the expertise needed to develop and execute
brand promotion campaigns in international markets.
• Marketers can choose to work with global agencies, an international affiliate of the
agency they use in their home country, or local agencies in the targeted market.
• Each of these agency types brings different advantages and disadvantages on
evaluative dimensions such as:
• geographic proximity
• economies of scale
• political leverage
• awareness of the client’s strategy
• knowledge of the local culture
7-6
Globalized versus Localized
Campaigns
• A final concern for international brand promotion entails the degree of customization a
marketer should attempt in campaigns designed to cross national boundaries.
• Globalized campaigns involve little customization among countries, whereas localized
campaigns feature heavy customization for each market.
• Standardized messages bring cost savings and create a common brand image
worldwide, but they may miss the mark with consumers in different nations.
• As consumers around the world become more similar, globalized campaigns may
become more prevalent. Several trends are facilitating the creation of a global
consumer:
• Global communications provide standardized messages and homogenize
viewers. Common experiences and exposure on the Internet reinforces shared
values globally.
• Teenagers and youth culture in many countries share similar values and
lifestyles and thus make a natural target for globalized campaigns.
• Demographic and lifestyle trends are becoming common across multiple
cultures: more working women, more single-person households, increasing
divorce rates, and fewer children per household.
• The Americanization of consumption values around the world, greatly due to the
exportation of U.S. pop culture, has helped create a standardized global
audience. However, there is some backlash against this effect.