Global Advertising

The term ‘global’ brings implications of a sense of ‘togetherness’, global advertising therefore suggests marketing to the world as a sole unit. The pioneer of global marketing was Theodore Levitt, ‘he insisted that companies should start thinking themselves as global rather than multinational’ (Barnet, 1994: 168). ‘The global corporation treats the entire world as if it were a single entity and sells the same things in the same way everywhere’ (Leiss, Kline, Hally, 1997: 171). However this generates question over the possibility of the success in ‘global’ advertising in a world of individual consumers. In a society where we are bombarded with over three thousand advertisements per day it is self evident how the advertising industry have evolved in our world of globalization. Global brand recognition transcends national boundaries, exhibiting the power of advertising. The concept of advertising in a ‘global’ manner is good in terms of economy despite this it still indicates it’s own contradictions inherent in such media. Aside from the obvious language and translation barriers, the employment of the same imagery and phrases signifies the same values and meanings; this is built upon the assumption that every individual possesses the same cultural, social and political values ‘there remains a need for all sorts of local knowledge in the agency and local modifications in the campaign’ (Myers, 1999: ). This notion is supported through the promotion of (Robertson, 1995) ‘glocalization’ – the adaptation of global products to cater specifically for local market segmentation. Global advertising also insinuates the problem of cultural imperialism, when looking at the global leaders in terms of advertising it is heavily dominated by wester...

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...f the pivotal role advertising has played in globalization, ‘advertising can be a significant source of information about a culture and the value orientations of a society’ (Englis, 1994: 41). It is therefore important to consider that the international advertising and marketing of a product is generally one country’s conception and cannot necessarily thrive in heterogeneous market.

Works Cited

Barnet R.J & Cavanaugh J (1994) Global Dreams Imperial Coroporations and The new world order, Simon and Schuster.

Englis B.G (1994) Global and Multinational Advertising, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Leiss et al (1997) Social Communication in Advertising, 2nd edition, London: Routledge

Myers G (1999) Ad Worlds: Brands, Media, Audiences, London: Routledge

Mueller B (1996) International Advertising: Communication Across Cultures, Wadsworth Publishing Company.