1.1 The debate of standardization and adaptation:

This paper is aiming to make a critique of the standardization debate in the global advertising strategy. For almost half a century this debate has been going on without any resolution. The believers of standardization state that the scope of global marketing is rising and for that the advertisement s has to be standardized across all markets. According to them the standardization helps to maintain the consistency of the image of the particular brand all over the world. The believers of adaptation state due to vast cultural and economical as well as political dissimilarity around the world standardization in not possible and may results in low competitive advantage and decrease in global sales. However, to adapt advertising each market increase costs and decrease possibilities to create synergies across market. These two groups of believers have originated another group of believers called the believers of compromise or combination. They are the middle -of-the-road believers who not only recognize local dissimilarities, but also believe some degree of advertising standardization is not only possible but also desirable. (Onkvisit and Shaw, 1990).

1.2The change in the media communication:

With the technological revolution people are able to communicate over thousands of miles with the greatest of ease. And among all these technological advancement satellite TV has become a popular concept to have a crystal clear television experience. Global market is becoming more competitive as consumers are getting all the information of their necessary products sitting at their home by clicking the remote of their TV. Therefore various changes are taking place in marketing communication, such as growth of global television. This growth is reflected in the annual advertising expenditure. Global advertising expenditure will grow to nearly $550 million in 2001, compare to $375 billion in 2003, according to ZenithOptimedia. The compound growth rate between 2003 and 2008 is generally higher than that expected between 2008 and 2011. Companies are giving more emphasis on their global marketing strategy to retain their existing customer and attracting new customers. (Source: SFN’s World Digital Media Trends 2009 report.)

‘Seeing is the believing’- become most effective phenomenon in the mind of customers. Television is used for advertising because it works like the live show: It tells stories, engage the emotions, create fantasies, and can have great visual impact. Because it’s an action medium, it is also good for demonstrating how things work. It brings brand images to life and personality to a brand. The following diagrams show how TV has been dominated over other advertising media.

1.3 The rise of satellite TV:

In 21st century television becomes a member of a family. The sales volume of TV has tremendously increased through out the world. The following graphs show how fast the market of television is growing in country like China, India and U.S.A. These graphs clearly indicate the rapid growth of satellite TV across the globe.

1.4 What is advertising?

Since our childhood we have been reading, watching, listening, and looking at advertisements. It’s become a major aspect of marketing communication. Although it is easy to watch or listen to any advertisement but in reality it’s very hard to create an effective advertisement for a product or service. It’s about creating a message and sending it to someone hoping they will react in a certain way. A modern definition, then, would be-“ Advertising paid persuasive communication that use nonpersonal mass media-as well as other forms of interactive communication-to reach broad audience to connect an identified sponsor with a target audience.”(Wells, Mariarity and Burnett, 2007, p5).

1.5 How advertising work as communication:

Advertisement is, first of all, a form of communication. In other words it is a message to a consumer about a product. It gets attention, provides information and sometimes a little bit of entertainment, and tries to create some kind of response, such as sale. Most advertisement is not a personal or as interactive as conservation because it relies on mass communication, which is indirect and complex. Mass communication is usually thought of as a process, sometimes referred to as the SMCR model of communication. . (Wells, Mariarity and Burnett, 2007, p99).

1.6 The Global versus Local debate:

The main purpose of the global marketers is to identify the essential change need for a specific advertising message and media strategy from region to region or country to country because of environmental requirements. The supporter of the ‘one world, one voice’ approach to global advertising believe that people from all across the world are now perceived a global view of the products for the same reasons; companies can achieve great economy of scale by unifying advertising around the globe. Advertisers who believe the localized approach are skeptical of the global village argument. Even Coca-Cola, the most global brand in the world, records radio spots in 40 languages and 140 different music backgrounds. Coca-Cola asserted that consumers still differ from country to country and must be reached by advertising tailored to their respective countries. (W.J.Keegan, 2007, p 412). The out growth of this debate has been three main schools of thought on advertising in another country:

• Standardization: Its contents that difference between countries are a matter of degree, so advertisers must instead focus on the similarities of the consumers around the world. Product category is important; there are enough similarities in the certain categories, such as high-tech products and high fashion cosmetics, that their advertising can be largely standardized across the border.
• Localization (adaptation): This school of thoughts argues that advertisers must consider difference among countries, including local culture, stage of economic and industrial development, stage of life cycle, media availability, research availability and legal constraints.
• Combination (Compromise): This school of thought reasons that combination of standardization and localization or adaptation may produce the most effective advertising. The reality of global advertising suggests that a combination approach is the best. Still the trend towards global market is unavoidable. The challenges for advertisers are to balance variations nationally or regionally with a basic global brand plan that maintains brand consistency. (Wells, Mariarity and Burnett, 2007, p 520)

Main Argument with Assessment

The first believer of standardization was David L.Brown, advertising manager at Goodyear Tyre and rubber, who in 1923 stated that humanity possessed certain common attributes and concluded that it was possible and logical to standardized advertisements across countries. How ever, the real debate about standardization started in 1950s and has been going on since then without a conclusion (Hite and Fraser, 1988). As explain earlier in this paper, there are three basis approaches to advertising- standardization, adaption and combination of both. (Kanso, 1992).

2.1 The decision to standardize or adapt advertising- advantages and disadvantages:

The decision to standardization or adapt advertising is based on the different views of the world. Those who prefer standardization are mainly concerned with reduction of advertising costs and consistent image worldwide while believers of adaptation point differential advantage through local adaptation.

2.1a. Standardization

Standardized advertisement themes provide consistent brand images worldwide (Kirpilani et al; Melewar et al, 2000; Onkvisit and Shaw, 1990; Tai 1997). Other benefits of standardization are effective use of advertising budget (Tai, 1997), consistency of communication, less duplication of effort and pre-selling of the company’s products (Kirpilani et al., 1998)

There are also arguments against standardization. To focus on cost reduction is to ignore the target groups need for meaningful message. (Onkvisit and Shaw, 1990).

2.1b. Adaptation

The main purpose of adaptation is to gain different advantage by adapting the advertisement to gain maximum effectiveness in terms of response and sales. (Onkvisit and Shaw, 1990). Adaptation of creative presentations and decentralized implementations of campaigns should offer greater benefits than less culturally-tied functions (Hite and Fraser, 1990). The major disadvantage of advertising is increased costs and loss of consistence brand image.

2.2 Does advertising lead to standardization or adaptation?

Marketing begins with local brand, expands to religion brand, and finally, goes global. Advertising also follows the same path. Basically global advertising is either market oriented or culture oriented. Ultimately, such campaigns should be centrally controlled and centrally conceived. There should also be logical applications and approval. The biggest strategic decision involves how much of the marketing communication strategy is globalised or localised.

2.2a. Nike adverts:

The advertisements shown on the following pictures are Indian and English examples, demonstrating how the global brand like Nike glocalised the advertisement all over the world. Here for both the advertisement their target audience and appeal is same. Nike has targeted the sports crazy young generation and for that they have chosen the sports celebrities of that particular country. What they have differentiated in those two advertisements is the style of the advert. In India they have chosen cricket as a medium of sports where in UK football as a medium of sports because those two sports are locally popular in those particular countries. Cricket is the most popular sport in India like football in the U.K. Although they have targeted sports as a medium of their marketing communication but for each an every country they have chosen the local popular one. So for Nike’s advert we can say they have chosen a global vision with local looks for their promotional advertisements.

2.2b. MacDonald’s advert:

In case of McDonalds’ they always prefers to make localised form of advertisement. Their main marketing strategy is “think global, act local”. In the European as well as non Hindu countries they mention beef as a product of their food in their advertisements to attract those people who love to eat beef, but in a country like India where most of the people don’t eat beef , McDonalds have to be very careful before make any such kind of advert in India. It may harm their business in India. The two advertisements shown on the following are Indian and Chinese examples, demonstrating how McDonald’s localised their advert all over the world. In the Chinese advert they have focused on a particular beef itemed menu, but in India they have concentrate on the family rather than the food. Because in India, family comes as a first priority to every individuals life. So they have made their advert which can attract the whole family rather than any individuals. Even they have given more importance on local language on both of their advertising in two different countries. And with that strategy McDonalds make them a globally local brand.

2.3 Problems associated with satellite broadcasting:

Despite the tremendous popularity of broadcasting advertisements over television, the satellite broadcasting has some problems associated with it. Those are:

1. Technical:

 countries which are still technically not that much advanced, poor radio frequency for the satellite broadcasting may create an obstacle for them. Due the deprived satellite system broadcasting any programme over television may not be that much effective since people are not accessing those TV programme regularly.

2. Legal:

 The term ‘legal’ is used to denote both the desired general framework of regulation, and certain substantive problems traditionally considered to be legal, such as copyright, neighboring rights, and the protection of broadcasts. There are some legal international instruments applicable to direct broadcasting satellite such as ‘Outer space Treaty’,’ITU’ etc. Every channel has to follow the rules and regulation of those acts.

3. Programme Content:

National social concepts and legislative views differ with regard to rules concerning the content of programme broadcast within particular state boundaries, and globally accepted rules and adequate international agreements do not exist at present. There are mainly three types of offensive programme content: political, socio-cultural, and commercial.

Political undesirable content included interference in the internal affairs of other states, incitement to racial and religious intolerance, violation of fundamental human freedom, and war propaganda.

Pepsi has been ordered to pull a TV advertisement in India. The ad shows an Indian boy is carrying drinks to the Indian national cricket team during a break of a match. The human rights group said it promoted child labor which is illegal and they lodged a complaint with the court in Hyderabad, which resulted in an order to withdraw the commercial. [Ethical Corporation 2009]

Under the cultural and social content the involvement of obscenity, violence, or horror are noted. A final problem might arise in connection with differing laws on libel, right to privacy, etc., where programmes lawful in the country of origin might be unlawful in receiving countries.

In India advertising alcohol and tobacco via any TV commercial is banned due to ethical issue of the society, there fore those liquor and cigarette manufactures promotes their brand through other product. Like in the following advertising Bagpiper is promoting themselves via some surrogate advertising keeping the ethical concern in their mind.

With regard to the commercial problems, the main focus here is advertising and it’s financial and trade effect. The most serious limitation of television advertising is the extremely high cost of producing and running commercial. (C. M. Dalfen et al 1970)

The controversy over the advertising approaches will probably continue for several years to come. Standardized and Localised advertising both have their position and both will continue to be used. Both of them have their own advantages and drawbacks. What is most important for the success of an international advertisement is global commitment to local vision. In reality of global advertising the most acceptable school-of-thought is the compromise/combination school that not only recognizes local differences but also recognized that some degree of advertising standardization is not only possible but also desirable. At the end the decision of whether to use a global; or localised campaign depends on the recognition of the managements. On the one hand, a global campaign has the advantages of cost savings, increased control and potential creative leverage of global appeal. On the other hand, localized campaigns have the advantage of appeals that focus on the most important attributes of a product in each nation and culture. The question of when to use each approach depends on the product involvement and company’s objectives in a particular market. But the style of the advertisement might have to be adjusted as preference differs between countries.

Whereas to over come those broadcasting problems companies has to follow the rules and regulation of the norms of broadcastings, and should make all the programme keeping the cultural, religion and other sentiment issues of different courtiers in their mind.

Recommendation

Below mentioned points are some of the recommended suggestion regarding standardization and adaptation of advertisement elements:

• The central subject matter of the advertisement must be remains the same.
• The appeal can be standardized if the need of the product is global.
• The style of the advertisement might require adaptation to match with the local demand.
• Voice and texts should have adapted due to linguistic reason.
• Advertisements may be developed in a manner that demands very little adaptation but should make a local sense of acceptance.

And last but not the least – Advertisement should not violate any countries culture, religion believes and legal issue.

1. Hite ,R.,Fraser,C. (1998), ‘ International advertising strategies of multinational corporations’, Journal of Advertising Research , Vol. 28 No 4, pp.9-16

2. Hite, R., Fraser, C. (1990),’ Configuration and coordination of global advertising’, Journal of Business Research, Vol.21.

3. Kanso, A. (1992), ‘International advertising strategies: global commitment to local vision’, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol 32 No. 1, pp. 10-14.

4. Kirpilani, V.H., Laroche, M., Darmon, R.Y. (1988); Role of headquarter control by multinationals in international advertising decision’, International Journal of Advertising, Vol. 7, pp. 323-33.

5. L. Lindgern., E.Dahlberg. A. Rosendahl (2003), "Standardization and Adaption in International Advertising of Consumer Goods- A case study of Libresse”.

6. Michael R. Solomon. (2002) ‘Consumer Behavior’, (5th edition), New Jersey, Prentice Hall.

7. Melewar, T.C., Turnbull, S., Balabanis, G. (2000), "International advertising strategies of multinational enterprises in the Middle East",International Journal of Advertising, Vol. 19 pp.529-47.

8. Onkvisit, S., Shaw, J.J, (1990), ‘Global advertising: revolution or myopia’, Journal of International Consumer Marketing, Vol.2 No.3, pp. 97-112.

9. Tai, H.C. (1997), "Advertising in Asia: localize or regionalize?”International Journal of Advertising, Vol. 16 pp.48-61.

10. Tai, H.C. (2004), "A review, reassessment and recommendation”International Journal of Advertising, Vol. 42 No 7 pp.863-881.

11. SFN’s World Digital Media Trends 2009 report.

12. W. William., S. Moriarty., J. Burnet. (2007), ‘Advertising Principles and Practice’, (7th edition), New Delhi, Prentice Hall.

13. W.J.Keegan. (2007). ‘Global Marketing Management’, (7th edition), New Delhi, Prentice-Hall.

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