WHo is able to complete this discussion?

Chapter 13

Keegan, W. J., & Green, M. C. (2020). Global marketing (10th ed.). Retrieved from https://www.vitalsource.com

13-1 Global Advertising

13-1 Define global advertising and identify the top-ranked companies in terms of worldwide ad spending.

The environment in which marketing communications programs and strategies are implemented varies from country to country. The challenge of effectively communicating across borders is one reason that global companies and their advertising agencies are embracing a concept known as integrated marketing communications (IMC). Adherents of an IMC approach explicitly recognize that the various elements of a company’s communication strategy must be carefully coordinated.1 For example, Nike has applied the IMC concept across a variety of marketing communication channels. As Nike president Trevor Edwards noted in the mid-2000s:

We create demand for our brand by being flexible about how we tell the story. We do not rigidly stay with one approach . . . . We have an integrated marketing model that involves all elements of the marketing mix from digital to sports marketing, from event marketing to advertising to entertainment, all sitting at the table driving ideas.2

Advertising is one element of an IMC program. Advertising is any sponsored, paid message that is communicated in a nonpersonal way, often through mass media. Some advertising messages are designed to resonate with consumers in a single country or market area. By comparison, regional or pan-regional advertising is created for audiences across several country markets, such as Europe or Latin America. Global advertising may be defined as messages whose art, copy, headlines, photographs, taglines, and other elements have been developed expressly for their worldwide suitability.

Companies that have used global themes include BASF (“We create chemistry”), Chevrolet (“Find new roads”), Coca-Cola (“Taste the feeling”), IBM ("Let's put smart to work"), McDonald’s (“i’m lovin’ it”), and Philips (“Innovation and you”). In Chapter 10, we noted that some global companies simultaneously offer local, international, and global products and brands to buyers in different parts of the world. The same is true with advertising: A global company may use single-country advertising in addition to campaigns that are regional and global in scope.

A global company possesses a critical marketing advantage with respect to marketing communications: It has the opportunity to successfully transform a domestic advertising campaign into a worldwide one. Alternatively, it can create a new global campaign from the ground up. The search for a global advertising campaign should bring together key company and ad agency personnel to share information, insights, and experience.

McDonald’s “i’m lovin’ it” tagline is a case in point; it was developed after global marketing chief Larry Light called a meeting of representatives from all McDonald’s ad agencies. Global campaigns with unified themes can help to build long-term product and brand identities and offer significant savings by reducing the costs associated with producing ads. Regional market areas such as Europe are experiencing an influx of standardized global brands as companies position themselves for selling their products and services in a united region by making acquisitions and evaluating production plans and pricing policies. From a marketing point of view, there is a great deal of activity going on that is making brands truly pan-European. This phenomenon is accelerating the growth of global advertising.

The potential for effective global advertising also increases as companies recognize and embrace new concepts such as “product cultures.” An example is the globalization of beer culture, which can be seen in the popularity of German-style beer halls in Japan and Irish-style pubs in the United States. Similarly, the globalization of coffee culture has created market opportunities for companies such as Starbucks. Marketing managers also realize that some market segments can be defined on the basis of global demography—youth culture or an emerging middle class, for example—rather than ethnic or national culture. Athletic shoes and other clothing items, for instance, can be targeted to a worldwide segment of 18- to 25-year-old males.

William Roedy, former global chairman of MTV Networks, suggests that such product cultures have clear implications for advertising. MTV is just one of the media vehicles that enable people almost anywhere to see how the rest of the world lives and to learn about the latest electronic gadgets and fashion trends. As Roedy noted in the early 1990s, “Eighteen-year-olds in Paris have more in common with 18-year-olds in New York than with their own parents. They buy the same products, go to the same movies, listen to the same music, sip the same colas. Global advertising merely works on that premise.”3

According to data compiled by various industry groups, worldwide advertising expenditures in 2012 passed the $500 billion milestone. Because advertising is often designed to add psychological value to a product or brand, it plays a more important communications role in marketing consumer products than in marketing industrial products. Frequently purchased, low-cost products generally require heavy promotional support, which often takes the form of reminder advertising. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, consumer products companies top the list of big global advertising spenders. Procter & Gamble, Unilever, L’Oréal, and Nestlé are companies whose global scope can be inferred from the significant proportion of their advertising expenditures that are devoted to areas outside their home-country markets (see Exhibit 13-2).

Overall, emerging markets are posting solid growth numbers in terms of advertising expenditures; 2014 ad spending in Brazil totaled nearly $17 billion; Russia, $10.1 billion; India, $8 billion; China, $45.5 billion; and South Africa, $4.2 billion.5 In fact, in 2014 China passed Japan as the world’s number 2 advertising market. A close examination of Table 13-1 provides clues about the extent of a company’s globalization efforts. For example, packaged-goods giants Procter & Gamble and Unilever spend significant amounts in all major world regions.

Global advertising also offers companies economies of scale in advertising as well as improved access to distribution channels. Where shelf space is at a premium, a company has to convince retailers to stock its products. A global brand supported by global advertising may be very attractive because, from the retailer’s standpoint, that brand may be less likely to languish on the shelves. Landor Associates, a company specializing in brand identity and design, recently released its first-ever Global Agile Brands Study, in which the metrics included “Adaptive,” “Principled,” and “Global.” Topping the ranking was Samsung; arch-rival Apple came in at number 6. However, standardization is not always required or even advised. Nestlé’s Nescafé coffee is marketed as a global brand, even though advertising messages and product formulation vary to suit cultural differences.

Global Advertising Content: Standardization versus Adaptation

Communication experts generally agree that the overall requirements of effective communication and persuasion are fixed and do not vary from country to country. The same is true of the components of the communication process: The marketer is the source of the message; the message must be encoded, conveyed via the appropriate channel(s), and decoded by a member of the target audience. Communication takes place only when the intended meaning transfers from the source to the receiver. Four major difficulties can compromise an organization’s attempt to communicate with customers in any location:

The message may not get through to the intended recipient. This problem may result from an advertiser’s lack of knowledge about the appropriate media category or media vehicle for reaching certain types of audiences.

The message may reach the target audience but not be understood or even be misunderstood. This difficulty may reflect an inadequate understanding of the target audience’s level of sophistication or improper encoding.

The message may reach the target audience and may be understood but still may not compel the recipient to take action. This problem could result from a lack of cultural knowledge about a target audience.

The effectiveness of the message may be impaired by noise. Noise, in this case, is an external influence, such as competitive advertising, other sales personnel, or confusion at the receiving end, that can detract from the ultimate effectiveness of the communication.

The key question for global marketers is whether the specific advertising message and media strategy must be changed from region to region or from country to country because of environmental requirements. Proponents of the “one world, one voice” approach to global advertising believe that the era of the global village has arrived and that tastes and preferences are converging worldwide. According to this standardization argument, people everywhere want the same products for the same reasons. This means that companies can achieve significant economies of scale by unifying advertising around the globe.

Advertisers who prefer the localized approach are skeptical of the global village argument. Instead, they assert that consumers still differ from country to country and must be reached by advertising tailored to their respective countries. Proponents of localization point out that most marketing communication blunders occur because advertisers have failed to understand—and adapt to—foreign cultures. Ad industry veteran Nick Brien is currently CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network Americas and U.S. As Brien observed in the late 1990s, the local/global debate does not necessarily have to be framed as an “either/or” proposition:

As the potency of traditional media declines on a daily basis, brand building locally becomes more costly and international brand building becomes more cost-effective. The challenge for advertisers and agencies is finding ads that work in different countries and cultures. At the same time as this global tendency, there is a growing local tendency. It’s becoming increasingly important to understand the requirements of both.6

Nils Larsson, an external communications executive at IKEA, echoes Brien’s view, but leans more toward the localized side of the debate:

If we could find one message on a global basis it could be effective, but so far there are different needs in different countries. We have been in Sweden for 60 years and in China for only 4 or 5, so our feeling is that retail is local. It is important to take advantage of local humor, and the things on people’s minds.7

And consider this quote from Michael Conrad, former chief creative officer at Leo Burnett Worldwide:

I can think of very few truly global ads that work. Brands are often at different stages around the world, and that means there are different advertising jobs to do.8

During the 1950s, the widespread opinion among advertising professionals was that effective international advertising required assigning responsibility for campaign preparation to a local agency. In the early 1960s, this idea of local delegation was challenged repeatedly. For example, Eric Elinder, head of a Swedish advertising agency, wrote: “Why should three artists in three different countries sit drawing the same electric iron and three copywriters write about what, after all, is largely the same copy for the same iron?”9 Elinder argued that consumer differences among countries were diminishing and that he would more effectively serve a client’s interest by putting top specialists to work devising a strong international campaign. The campaign would then be presented with insignificant modifications that mainly entailed translating the copy into language well suited for a particular country.

The “standardized versus localized” debate picked up tremendous momentum after the 1983 publication, noted in earlier chapters, of Professor Ted Levitt’s Harvard Business Review article “The Globalization of Markets.” Recently, global companies have embraced a technique known as pattern advertising, which is analogous to the concept of global product platforms discussed in Chapter 10. Representing a middle ground between 100 percent standardization and 100 percent adaptation, a pattern strategy calls for developing a basic pan-regional or global communication concept for which copy, artwork, or other elements can be adapted as required for individual country markets (see Exhibit 13-3). For example, ads in a European print campaign for Boeing shared basic design elements, but the copy and the visual elements were localized on a country-by-country basis.

Exhibit 13-3

These print ads from U.K.-based TwoSides advocate for sustainable use of paper for printing magazines and books. The ads are a textbook example of pattern advertising. Overall, the layouts are consistent. The dominant visual elements are similar, but the references to a football pitch in the U.K. version and to a football field for the U.S. version are talking about two different sports. The subheads and body copy have been localized.

Much of the research on this issue has focused on the match between advertising messages and local culture. Researcher Ali Kanso surveyed two different groups of advertising managers, those adopting localized approaches to advertising and those adopting standardized approaches. One finding was that managers who are attuned to cultural issues tend to prefer the localized approach, whereas managers who are less sensitive to cultural issues prefer a standardized approach.10 When Bruce Steinberg was ad sales director for MTV Europe, he discovered that the people responsible for executing global campaigns locally often exhibit strong resistance to a global campaign. Steinberg reported that he sometimes had to visit as many as 20 marketing directors from the same company to get approval for a pan-European MTV ad.11

As Kanso correctly notes, the long-standing debate over advertising approaches will probably continue for years to come. Kanso’s conclusion: What is needed for successful international advertising is a global commitment to local vision. In the final analysis, the decision of whether to use a global or a localized campaign depends on recognition by managers of the trade-offs involved. A global campaign will result in the substantial benefits of cost savings, increased control, and the potential creative leverage of a global appeal. It is also true that localized campaigns can focus on the most important attributes of a product or brand in each nation or culture.

As a practical matter, marketing managers may choose to run both global and local ads rather than adopt an “either/or” stance. For example, marketing and advertising managers at DuPont Pioneer frequently use both global and localized advertising executions. It is management’s belief that some messages lend themselves to straight translation, whereas others need to be created in a way that best suits the farmers, marketplace, and style of the particular country or region.

The question of when to use each approach depends on the product involved and a company’s objectives in a particular market. The following generalizations can serve as guidelines:

Standardized print campaigns can be used for industrial products or for high-tech consumer products. Examples: Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

Standardized print campaigns with a strong visual appeal often travel well. Example: Johnny Walker Scotch (“Keep Walking”). Similarly, no text appears in the assembly instructions for IKEA furniture. Picture-based instructions can be used throughout the world without translation.

TV commercials that use voice-overs instead of actors or celebrity endorsers speaking dialogue can use standardized visuals with translated copy for the voice-over. Examples: Gillette (“The best a man can get”); GE (“Imagination at work”); UPS (“We ♥ Logistics”).

13-2 Advertising Agencies: Organizations and Brands

13-2 Explain the structure of the advertising industry, and describe the difference between agency holding companies and individual agency brands.

Advertising is a fast-paced business, and the ad agency world is fluid and dynamic. New agencies are formed, existing agencies are dismantled, and cross-border investments, spin-offs, joint ventures, and mergers and acquisitions are a fact of life. The industry is also very mobile, and executives and top talent move from one agency to another. The 20 largest global advertising organizations ranked by 2016 worldwide revenue are shown in Table 13-2. As you can see, there is considerable geographic diversity; agency companies can be found in China, France, Great Britain, Japan, and elsewhere (see Exhibit 13-4)

Selecting an Advertising Agency in the Era of Digital Disruption

Companies can perform some advertising functions in-house, use one or more outside agencies, or combine both approaches. The advantages of using in-house marketing and advertising staffs for creative work or media planning can include greater control, superior product and brand knowledge, and lower cost. Boeing, Coca-Cola, Lego, and Nestlé are some of the global companies that rely on in-house talent for at least some of their marketing communications. When outside agencies are used, they can serve accounts on a multicountry or even global basis. It is possible to select a different local agency in each national market or a global agency with both domestic and international offices.

Sometimes, multiple agencies collaborate on a given account. For example, in 2007, Ford Motor Company created a consortium of five different agencies to work together in Detroit on the Ford account for the United States, Canada, and Mexico. J. Walter Thompson, Mindshare, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, Wunderman, and Young & Rubicam are all units of WPP. In 2010, three other WPP agencies—Mindshare, Ogilvy & Mather, and Wunderman—formed a European agency named Blue Hive that was styled after Team Detroit. In 2016, Team Detroit, Blue Hive, and a third unit, Retail First, were brought together as GTB (“Global Team Blue”); the new entity provides Ford and other clients with unified global services.12

“Even in the digital era, there will always be two things that differentiate agencies from other players: the ability to understand consumers and to identify the levers that can change behavior, and the capacity to translate this intelligence into strategic and creative achievements.”13

Mercedes Erra, Executive President, Havas Worldwide

The digital revolution that is disrupting a wide range of industries is having an impact on the advertising business as well. Global companies such as McDonald’s and Unilever are seeking new agency partners that offer digital expertise. The traditional world of the advertising agency—including approaches to advertising creativity, long-standing communication channels, and media-buying processes—is being upended as clients seek to leverage “big data” and take advantage of social media opportunities to improve segmentation and targeting strategies.

In response to the changing environment, WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, and other advertising holding companies are snapping up digital-marketing agencies and other tech specialists. One challenge facing top management in these companies is bridging the cultural divide between staff “creatives” and newer hires from the tech world.14

Google and Facebook now account for more than three-fourths of new online ad spending, and Snapchat is gaining traction as an advertising forum. In the United States, digital media are on track to surpass television as the biggest source of advertising revenues. It is not surprising, then, that print advertising revenues are dropping in key markets such as the United States and the United Kingdom, as print advertising budgets are shifted to digital media. As is clear from Exhibit 13-5, this state of affairs has prompted industry groups to promote the value of print-based media. Moreover, the MPA (formerly known as the Magazine Publishers Association) is promoting the value of real news from trusted print sources at a time when “fake news” is proliferating in social media.

Exhibit 13-5

With these changes and challenges in mind, the following are some considerations that come into play when an advertiser selects an advertising agency:

Company organization. Companies that are decentralized typically allow managers at the local subsidiary to make ad agency selection decisions.

National responsiveness. Is the global agency familiar with the local culture and buying habits in a particular country, or should a local agency be hired?

Area coverage. Does the candidate agency cover all relevant markets?

Buyer perception. Which kind of brand awareness does the company want to project? If the product needs a strong local identification, it would be best to select a national agency.

Digital expertise. Does the agency have in-house computer engineering and coding talent with a proven ability to work with staff from traditional functions such as creative services and account services?

Despite an unmistakable trend toward using global agencies to support global marketing efforts, companies with geocentric orientations tend to adapt to the global market requirements and select the best agency or agencies accordingly. Western agencies still find markets such as China and Japan to be very complex; Asian agencies find it just as difficult to establish a local agency presence in Western markets. One notable exception is Japan’s Dentsu Inc; the Dentsu Aegis Network extends beyond Asia to North America and Europe.15

Advertising professionals face escalating pressure to balance the desire for creative freedom with emerging data-driven approaches. Some critics of advertising complain that agencies sometimes try to create advertising that will win awards and generate acclaim and prestige rather than advertising that serves clients’ needs. Meanwhile, agency creatives are finding themselves at odds with digital talent who may be more attuned to building brands via social media than going “on location” to film a TV campaign.

The search for fresh answers to promotion challenges has prompted some client companies to look to new sources for creative ideas. For example, McDonald’s historically relied on American agencies for basic creative direction. However, when Larry Light was McDonald’s global marketing chief, he staged a competition that included agencies from all over the world. A German agency devised the “i’m lovin’ it” tagline.16 Leo Burnett China’s ideas included a hand signal for the McDonald’s global campaign. As Light noted, “China just blew our minds. We didn’t expect that kind of expression and joy. Our expectation was for more conservatism, much less individuality, and more caution.”17

The Cultural Context

Smokers Fume about Limits on Tobacco Advertising

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 5 million people die each year as a direct result of consuming tobacco products. A total of 172 countries are signatories to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), which aims to reduce global tobacco production as well as the consumption of tobacco products. The treaty entered into force in February 2005.

Even before the WHO FCTC, policymakers in various countries had taken steps to reduce the extent to which tobacco companies could promote their products and brands. In China, tobacco advertising has been banned from television and radio since 1994; the ban also extends to newspaper, magazine, and cinema ads.

With a population of 1.3 billion people, including one-third of the world’s smokers, China is a massive potential market for cigarette manufacturers at a time when Western markets are shrinking. The ban was part of China’s first law regulating advertisements. WHO asked Chinese leaders to launch antismoking campaigns and impose tougher controls on cigarette smuggling and higher taxes on domestic cigarette producers. China agreed to ratify the WHO FCTC. On June 1, 2015, a stronger antismoking law took effect in China, which prohibits smoking in all indoor public spaces as well as in schools and maternal health facilities.

With 100 million smokers, India ranks number 2 in the world in terms of number of smokers. A report by India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare puts the annual economic cost of tobacco use at nearly $25 billion. In 2009, the government introduced a rule that health warnings had to cover 40 percent of the front of each cigarette pack. Effective April 2016, the government revised the law, mandating that graphic labels cover 85 percent of each cigarette pack. However, most of India smokers buy a cheaper product known as the bidi. Packs of bidi are taxed at a much lower rate than regular cigarettes, and warning labels have to appear on only one side of each pack.

The European Union (EU) spends approximately €16 million ($21 million) annually on antismoking initiatives. A tobacco ad ban proposal was introduced in mid-1991 with the aim of fulfilling the single-market rules of the Maastricht Treaty. This directive would have prohibited tobacco advertising on billboards as of July 2001; newspaper and magazine advertising was slated to end by 2002, with sports sponsorship banned by 2003 (such “world-level” sports as Formula One racing would be excluded until 2006). Not surprisingly, tobacco companies and advertising associations opposed the proposed ban. The European Commission justified the directive on the grounds that various countries had, or were considering, restrictions on tobacco advertising and that there was a need for common rules on cross-border trade. In 2012, the European Union was set to revise tobacco regulations; among the proposals was the introduction of plain packaging.

In December 2012, Australia implemented some of the world’s most stringent antismoking regulations. Measures included a ban on brand logos and prominent placement of graphic photographic images of smoking-related illnesses and disfigurement on cigarette packs. Uniform packaging is required for all brands, although brand names can still appear in a standard typeface (see Exhibit 13-6).

13-3 Creating Global Advertising

13-3 Identify key ad agency personnel and describe their respective roles in creating global advertising.

As suggested earlier in the discussion of the adaptation versus standardization debate, the message is at the heart of advertising. What an advertising message says, and the way it is presented, will depend on the advertiser’s objective. Is the ad designed to inform, entertain, remind, or persuade? Moreover, in a world characterized by information overload and multitasking, ads must break through the clutter, grab the audience’s attention, and linger in their minds. This requires developing an original and effective creative strategy, which is simply a statement or concept of what a particular message or campaign will say.

Advertising agencies can be thought of as “idea factories”; in industry parlance, the Holy Grail in creative strategy development is something known as the big idea. Legendary ad man John O’Toole defined the big idea as “that flash of insight that synthesizes the purpose of the strategy, joins the product benefit with consumer desire in a fresh, involving way, brings the subject to life, and makes the reader or audience stop, look, and listen.”18 In his book about Subaru of America, Randall Rothenberg describes the big idea in the following way:

The Big Idea is easier to illustrate than define, and easier to illustrate by what it is not than by what it is. It is not a “position” (although the place a product occupies in the consumer’s mind may be a part of it). It is not an “execution” (although the writing or graphic style of an ad certainly contributes to it). It is not a slogan (although a tagline may encapsulate it).

The Big Idea is the bridge between an advertising strategy, temporal and worldly, and an image, powerful and lasting. The theory of the Big Idea assumes that average consumers are at best bored and more likely irrational when it comes to deciding what to buy.19

Some of the world’s most memorable advertising campaigns have achieved success because they originated from an idea that was so big that the campaign offered opportunities for a seemingly unlimited number of new executions. Such a campaign is said to have legs because it can be used for long periods of time. The print campaign for Absolut Vodka is a perfect example: Over the course of two decades, Absolut’s agency created hundreds of two-word puns on the brand name linked with various pictorial renderings of the distinctive bottle shape. Other campaigns based on big ideas include Nike (“Just do it”) and MasterCard (“There are some things in life money can’t buy”). In 2003, McDonald’s executives launched a search for an idea big enough to be used in multiple country markets even as the company faced disapproval in some countries from consumers who linked it to unpopular U.S. government policies (see Case 1-2 in Chapter 1).

The advertising appeal is the communications approach that relates to the motives of the target audience. Ads based on a rational appeal depend on logic and speak to the audience’s intellect. Rational appeals are based on consumers’ needs for information, and typically contain a great deal of copy. Prescription pharmaceuticals and financial services are two examples of this approach.

By contrast, ads using an emotional appeal may tug at the heartstrings or tickle the funny bone of the intended audience and evoke an emotional response that will reinforce brand attitudes and direct purchase behavior. For example, a global campaign for IKEA, the Swedish home furnishings retailer, positioned houses as homes: “It’s a place for love . . . a place for memories . . . a place for laughter. Home is the most important place in the world.”20

Or, consider the advertising tagline that the Minneapolis, Minnesota–based Carmichael Lynch agency developed for Subaru. “Love—it’s what makes a Subaru, a Subaru,” omits any reference to the auto brand’s most salient functional attribute—namely, its dependable Symmetrical AWD (all-wheel drive) system. Plus, who can forget Subaru’s “Puppy Bowl” ads that tied in to Super Bowl Sunday? And, of course, Subaru vehicles play a prominent role in the cable television comedy Portlandia.21

The message elements in a particular ad will depend, in part, on which appeal is being employed. The selling proposition is the promise or claim that captures the reason for buying the product or the benefit that ownership confers. Because products are frequently at different stages in their life cycles in various national markets, and because of cultural, social, and economic differences that exist in those markets, the most effective appeal or selling proposition for a product may vary from market to market.

Effective global advertising may also require developing different presentations of the product’s appeal or selling proposition. The way an appeal or proposition is presented is called the creative execution. In other words, there can be differences between what one says and how one says it. Ad agency personnel can choose from a variety of executions, including straight sell, scientific evidence, demonstration, comparison, testimonial, slice of life, animation, fantasy, and dramatization. The responsibility for deciding on the appeal, the selling proposition, and the appropriate execution lies with creatives, a term that applies to art directors and copywriters.

Art Direction and Art Directors

The visual presentation of an advertisement—the “body language”—is a matter of art direction. The individual with general responsibility for the overall look of an ad is the art director. This person typically has a staff who choose graphics, images, type styles, and other visual elements that appear in an ad. Some forms of visual presentation are universally understood; others speak to specific demographics. In either case, the way information is presented shapes the way that it is perceived.

For example, the IBM logo, designed by legendary graphic artist and art director Paul Rand, conveys a sense of modernism and corporate stability. The logo design of Monster energy drink is perfectly aligned with the brand’s target demographic of youthful “experiencers.”22 In 2017, when Advertising Age magazine was rebranded as Ad Age, the company commissioned a new logo to signify reinvention at a time of seismic industry change. Interest in typography has also been fueled by the recent success of the Netflix paranormal series Stranger Things with its now-iconic glowing red logo.

The global advertiser must make sure that visual executions are not extended inappropriately into certain markets. In the mid-1990s, Benetton’s United Colors of Benetton campaign generated considerable controversy. The campaign appeared in scores of countries, primarily in print and on billboards. The art direction focused on striking, provocative interracial juxtapositions—images such as a white hand and a black hand handcuffed together. Another version of the campaign, depicting a black woman nursing a white baby, won advertising awards in France and Italy. However, because the image evoked the history of slavery in the United States, that particular creative execution was not used in the U.S. market.23

Copy and Copywriters

The words that are the spoken in broadcast advertising or that constitute the written communication elements in advertisements are known as copy. Copywriters are language specialists who develop the headlines, subheads, and body copy used in print advertising and the scripts containing the words that are delivered by spokespeople, actors, or hired voice talents in broadcast ads.

As a general rule, copy should be relatively short and should avoid slang and idioms. Languages vary in terms of the number of words required to convey a given message—thus the increased use of pictures and illustrations. One straightforward approach to copywriting is to find a way to incorporate the brand’s name into an advertising slogan. That’s the approach Illy uses for its coffee (“Live Happilly”). The “I Feel Slovenia” national branding campaign mentioned in Chapter 10 cleverly capitalizes on the fact that the four-letter sequence “love” is part of the country name!

Some global ads feature visual appeals that convey a specific message with minimal use of copy. The low literacy rates in many countries seriously compromise the use of print as a communications device and require greater creativity in the use of audio-oriented media.

In many areas of the world, certain languages are used in multiple countries (e.g., the European Union, Latin America, and North America). Capitalizing on this fact, global advertisers can realize economies of scale by producing advertising copy with the same language and message for these markets. The success of this approach will depend in part on avoiding unintended ambiguity in the ad copy. Then again, in some situations, ad copy must be translated into the local language. Translating copy has been the subject of great debate in advertising circles. Advertising slogans often present the most difficult translation problems. The challenge of encoding and decoding slogans and taglines in different national and cultural contexts can lead to unintentional errors. For example, the Asian version of Pepsi’s “Come alive” tagline was rendered as a call to bring ancestors back from the grave.

Advertising executives may elect to prepare new copy for a foreign market in the language of the target country or to translate the original copy into the target language. A third option is to leave some (or all) copy elements in the original (home-country) language. In choosing one of these alternatives, the advertiser must consider whether the intended foreign audience will be able to receive and comprehend a translated message. Anyone with knowledge of two or more languages realizes that the ability to think in another language facilitates accurate communication. For a message to be understood correctly after it is received, a person must understand the connotations of words, phrases, and sentence structures, as well as their translated meaning.

The same principle applies to advertising—perhaps to an even greater degree. A copywriter who can think in the target language and understands the consumers in the target country will be able to create the most effective appeals, organize the ideas, and craft the specific language, especially if colloquialisms, idioms, or humor are involved. For example, in southern China, McDonald’s is careful not to advertise prices with multiple occurrences of the number four. The reason is simple: In Cantonese, the pronunciation of the word four is similar to that of the word death.24 In its efforts to develop a global brand image, Citicorp discovered that translations of its slogan “Citi never sleeps” conveyed that Citibank had a sleeping disorder such as insomnia. Company executives decided to retain the slogan but use English throughout the world.25

Additional Cultural Considerations

Knowledge of cultural diversity, especially the symbolism associated with cultural traits, is essential for creating advertising. Local country managers can share important information, such as when to use caution in advertising creativity. Use of colors and man–woman relationships can often be stumbling blocks. For example, in Japan intimate scenes between men and women are in bad taste; they are outlawed in Saudi Arabia. Veteran adman John O’Toole offers the following insights to global advertisers:

Transplanted American creative people always want to photograph European men kissing women’s hands. But they seldom know that the nose must never touch the hand or that this rite is reserved solely for married women. And how do you know that the woman in the photograph is married? By the ring on her left hand, of course. Well, in Spain, Denmark, Holland, and Germany, Catholic women wear the wedding ring on the right hand.

When photographing a couple entering a restaurant or theater, you show the woman preceding the man, correct? No. Not in Germany and France. And this would be laughable in Japan. Having someone in a commercial hold up his hand with the back of it to you, the viewer, and the fingers moving toward him should communicate “come here.” In Italy it means “good-bye.”

Ads that strike viewers in some countries as humorous or irritating may not necessarily be perceived that way by viewers in other countries. American ads make frequent use of spokespeople and direct product comparisons; they use logical arguments to try to appeal to the reason of audiences. Japanese advertising is more image oriented and appeals to audience sentiment. And, while Hollywood celebrities such as Brad Pitt and Arnold Schwarzenegger would never appear in American television ads, they can often be seen as television pitchmen in Japan.

In Japan, what is most important frequently is not what is stated explicitly, but rather what is implied. For example, the Aflac duck puts in an appearance in the insurance company’s Japanese TV ads but, unlike its U.S. counterpart, the duck is not disruptive. Instead, in one spot, the duck does a gentle song-and-dance routine with a cat.

Nike’s U.S. advertising is legendary for its irreverent, “in-your-face” style and relies heavily on celebrity sports endorsers such as Michael Jordan. In other parts of the world, where soccer is the top sport, some Nike ads are considered to be in poor taste, and its spokespeople have less relevance. Nike has responded by adjusting its approach; as Geoffrey Frost, former director of global advertising at Nike, noted more than a decade ago, “We have to root ourselves in the passions of other countries. It’s part of our growing up.”27

Some American companies have canceled television ads created for the Latin American market portraying racial stereotypes that were offensive to persons of color. Nabisco, Goodyear, and other companies are also being more careful about the shows during which they buy airtime: Some very popular Latin American programs feature content that exploits class, race, and ethnic differences.28

Standards vary widely with regard to the use of sexually explicit or provocative imagery. Partial nudity and same-sex couples are frequently seen in ads in Latin America and Europe. In the U.S. market, however, network television decency standards and the threat of boycotts by conservative consumer activists constrain advertisers. Some industry observers note a paradoxical situation in which the programs shown on U.S. TV are frequently racy, but the ads that air during those shows are not. As Marcio Moreira, the former worldwide chief creative officer at the McCann-Erickson agency, once noted, “Americans want titillation in entertainment but when it comes to advertising they stop being viewers and become consumers and critics.”29

Of course, it is certainly not the case that anything goes outside the United States. Women in Monterrey, Mexico, once complained about billboards for the Playtex unit of Sara Lee Corporation that featured supermodel Eva Herzegova wearing a Wonderbra. The campaign was created by a local agency, Perez Munoz Publicidad. Playtex responded by covering up the model on the billboards in some Mexican cities. French Connection UK made waves in the United States with print ads that prominently featured the British company’s initials, that is, FCUK. Public outcry prompted the company to tone down the ads by spelling out the name.

Food is the product category most likely to elicit cultural sensitivity, so marketers of food and food products must be alert to the need to localize their advertising. A good example of this is the effort by H. J. Heinz Company to develop the overseas market for ketchup. In the early 1990s, marketing managers at Heinz formulated a strategy that called for adapting both the product and the advertising to target country tastes.30 In Greece, for example, ads showed ketchup pouring over pasta, eggs, and cuts of meat. In Japan, they instructed Japanese homemakers on using ketchup as an ingredient in Western-style foods such as omelets, sausages, and pasta.

Barry Tilley, who was general manager of Heinz’s Western Hemisphere trading division based in London at the time, noted that Heinz uses focus groups to determine what consumers want in the way of taste and image. Americans like a sweet ketchup, but Europeans prefer a spicier, more piquant variety. Significantly, Heinz’s international marketing efforts are most successful when the company quickly adapts to local cultural preferences. In Sweden, the made-in-America theme is so muted in Heinz’s ads that “Swedes don’t realize Heinz is American. They think it is German because of the name,” said Tilley.

Conversely, American themes worked well in Germany. Kraft and Heinz tried to outdo each other with ads featuring strong American images. In one of Heinz’s TV ads, American football players in a restaurant become very angry when the 12 steaks they ordered arrive without ketchup. The ad ends happily, of course, with plenty of Heinz ketchup to go around.31

In 2018, Heinz was still experimenting with the global/local taste trade-off: Managers at the Pittsburgh-based company had to decide whether to introduce a blend of mayonnaise and ketchup, which was popular in the Middle East, to American consumers. A @HeinzKetchup_US Twitter campaign with a # mayochup hashtag generated 1 million responses. The verdict? More than 500,000 people voted “Yes!”

Much academic research has been devoted to the impact of culture on advertising. For example, Tamotsu Kishii identified seven characteristics that distinguish Japanese creative strategy from its American counterpart:

Indirect rather than direct forms of expression are preferred in the messages. This avoidance of directness in expression is pervasive in all types of communication among the Japanese, including their advertising. Many television ads do not mention what is desirable about the brand in use and let the audience judge for themselves.

There is often little relationship between ad content and the advertised product.

Only brief dialogue or narration is used in television commercials, with minimal explanatory content. In the Japanese culture, the more a person talks, the less others will perceive the individual as trustworthy or self-confident.

Humor is used to create a bond of mutual feelings. Rather than slapstick, humorous dramatizations involve family members, neighbors, and office colleagues.

Famous celebrities appear as close acquaintances or everyday people.

Priority is placed on company trust rather than product quality. Japanese tend to believe that if the firm is large and has a good image, the quality of its products should also be outstanding.

The product name is impressed on the viewer with short, 15-second commercials.32

Green, Cunningham, and Cunningham conducted a cross-cultural study to determine the extent to which consumers of different nationalities use the same criteria to evaluate soft drinks and toothpaste. Their subjects were college students from the United States, France, India, and Brazil. Compared to the French and Indian respondents, the U.S. respondents placed more emphasis on subjective, as opposed to functional, product attributes. The Brazilian respondents appeared even more concerned with the subjective attributes than the Americans were. The authors concluded that advertising messages should not use the same appeal for these countries if the advertiser is concerned with communicating the most important attributes of its product in each market.33

13-4 Global Media Decisions

13-4 Explain how media availability varies around the world.

The next issue facing advertisers is which medium or media to use when communicating with target audiences. Media availability can vary from country to country. Some companies use virtually the entire spectrum of available media; Coca-Cola is a good example. Other companies prefer to utilize one or two media categories. In some instances, the agency that creates the advertising also makes recommendations about media placement; however, many advertisers use the services of specialized media planning and buying organizations. The Mindshare Worldwide unit of WPP, Omnicom’s OMD Worldwide, and WPP’s Mediacom are three of the top media specialists.

The available alternatives can be broadly categorized as print media, electronic media, and other. Print media range from local daily and weekly newspapers to magazines and business publications with national, regional, or international audiences. Electronic media include broadcast television, cable television, radio, and the Internet. Additionally, advertisers may utilize various forms of outdoor, transit, and direct-mail advertising. Globally, media decisions must take into account country-specific regulations. For example, France bans retailers from advertising on television.

Global Advertising Expenditures and Media Vehicles

Each year, more money is spent on advertising in the United States than anywhere else in the world. As noted previously, U.S. ad spending in 2017 totaled more than $200 billion. To put this figure in context, consider that 2017 ad spending in China, now the world’s second-largest advertising market, was approximately $80 billion. In addition, as one might expect, the largest per capita ad spending occurs in high-income countries.

Today, much of the geographic growth in advertising expenditures—as much as one-third—is occurring in the BRICS countries. Russia is the exception. Although top advertisers in Russia include Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Mars, declining oil revenues and geopolitical tensions are among the factors contributing to relatively flat advertising revenue growth in that country.

Advertisers can choose from a variety of media, including broadcast (e.g., television and radio) and print (e.g., magazines and newspapers). Within each of these categories, various media vehicles are available to reach a given target audience with marketing communications. Among cable channels, BBC America and ESPN are examples of media vehicles. Likewise, The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times newspapers represent individual media vehicles.

For years, television—including broadcast, cable, and satellite—was the number 1 advertising medium, capturing between 40 percent and 50 percent of global expenditures. Newspapers ranked second on a worldwide basis, accounting for approximately 25 percent of advertising spending. Now, however, media consumption patterns are changing at a rapid pace. Spending on newspaper advertising has fallen sharply and, as noted previously, digital advertising expenditures are on track to surpass television advertising spending for the first time. In one sign of the times, Amazon recently announced that it has 100 million subscribers to its ad-free Prime Video streaming service.

The availability of media and the conditions affecting media buys also vary greatly around the world. In Mexico, an advertiser that can pay for a full-page ad may get the front page, whereas in India, paper shortages may require booking an ad 6 months in advance. In some countries, especially those where the electronic media are government owned, television and radio stations can broadcast only a restricted number of advertising messages. In Saudi Arabia, no commercial television advertising was allowed prior to May 1986; currently, ad content and visual presentations are restricted.

Worldwide, radio continues to be a less important advertising medium than print and television. However, in countries where advertising budgets are limited, radio’s enormous reach can provide a cost-effective means of communicating with a large consumer market. Also, radio can be effective in countries where literacy rates are low. One clear trend is gaining traction throughout the world: Spending on customer relationship management (CRM) and Internet advertising is gaining ground at the expense of TV and print advertising.

Media Decisions

As noted previously, newspaper advertising has been in decline for several years; many papers have ceased publication or merged with others. India represents a bright spot on the global media scene: Print media are enjoying a revival as redesigned newspaper formats and glossy supplements lure a new generation of readers. India is home to hundreds of daily newspapers, including two Hindi-language titles, Dainik Jagran and Dainik Bhaskar. Other popular newspapers include the English-language Hindustan Times and The Times of India. The price per copy is as little as 5 rupees—about 10 cents.34 An additional factor in India’s evolving media environment: One-third of the population can access the Internet using mobile phones.

Billboards are a popular advertising medium in Moscow. As Thomas L. Friedman has pointed out, Moscow is a city built for approximately 30,000 cars; during the 2000s, the number of cars grew from 300,000 to 3 million.35 The result is massive traffic jams and commuting delays. In turn, affluent businesspeople spend hours in traffic and have little time to read the newspaper or watch TV.

Even when media availability is high, its use as an advertising vehicle may be limited. For example, in Europe, television advertising is very limited in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Regulations concerning the content of commercials vary; Sweden bans advertising to children younger than 12 years of age. In 2001, when Sweden headed the European Union, its policymakers tried to extend the country’s ban to the rest of Europe. Although the effort failed, Sweden retained its domestic ban. This helps explain why annual spending on print media in Sweden is three times the annual spending for television.36

As noted earlier, cultural considerations often affect the presentation of the advertising message. One study comparing the content of magazine advertisements in the United States with those in the Arab world found the following:

People are depicted less often in Arabic magazine ads. However, when people do appear, there is no difference in the extent to which women are depicted. Women appearing in ads in Arab magazines wear long dresses; their presence generally is relevant to the advertised product.

U.S. ads tend to have more information content; by contrast, brevity is considered a virtue in the Arab world. Context plays a greater role in interpreting an Arab message than in the United States.

U.S. ads contain more price information, and are more likely to include comparative appeals than Arabic ads.37

Of course, cultural change is always possible. Recently, for example, Saudi Arabia lifted its ban on cinemas. In 2018, for the first time in 35 years, Saudis were able to enjoy popcorn and a movie in a movie theater in their home country. The first film to be shown, at an AMC theater in the capital city of Riyadh, was the global blockbuster Black Panther (see Exhibit 13-8). As more theaters are opened, opportunities for cinema advertising may become available.

13-5 Public Relations and Publicity

13-5 Compare and contrast publicity and public relations and identify global companies that have recently been impacted by negative publicity.

In 2011, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) launched Public Relations Defined, an initiative to update the definition of public relations. As part of this initiative, the PRSA sought input from industry professionals, academics, and members of the general public. More than 900 definitions were submitted; according to the winning entry, public relations (PR) is a “strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”38 Public relations personnel are responsible for fostering goodwill, understanding, and acceptance among a company’s various constituents and stakeholders. Along with advertising, PR is one of four variables in the promotion mix. One of the tasks of the PR practitioner is to generate favorable publicity. By definition, publicity is communication about a company or product for which the company does not pay. (In the PR world, publicity is sometimes referred to as earned media, and advertising and promotions are known as unearned media.)

PR professionals also play a key role in responding to unflattering media reports, crises, or controversies that arise because of a company’s activities in different parts of the globe. In such instances, and especially if a company’s reputation is on the line, it is good PR practice to respond promptly and provide the public with facts. The basic tools of PR include news releases, newsletters, media kits, press conferences, tours of plants and other company facilities, articles in trade or professional journals, company publications and brochures, TV and radio talk show interviews, special events, social media, and corporate Web sites.

Caterpillar’s activities in China provide a textbook example of the power of public relations. The Chinese market for industrial machinery is booming because the government is spending billions of dollars on infrastructure improvements. Caterpillar hopes to sell giant wheel tractor-scrapers that are more efficient to operate than the hydraulic excavators and trucks currently in use. However, a business intelligence team that contacted 100 customers and dealers across China found low levels of awareness and acceptance of Caterpillar’s machines. Survey respondents were not persuaded by data from other countries about the machines’ cost savings.

To gain traction, Mike Cai, Caterpillar’s man in China, staged product demonstrations—road shows—around the country. “Word-of-mouth is the best form of publicity for the construction industry in China,” he says. Scott Kronick, president for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide/China, agrees. “Chinese customers are being introduced to a lot of products and services for the first time, so you can’t advertise something that’s intangible,” he said. Reporters from the local and national media were invited to the demonstrations; in one instance, China Central Television ran a story that featured a clip of the tractor-scraper at work.39

Senior executives at some companies relish the opportunity to generate publicity. For example, Benetton’s striking print and outdoor ad campaigns keyed to the “United Colors of Benetton” generate both controversy and widespread media attention. Richard Branson, the flamboyant founder of the Virgin Group, is a one-man publicity machine. His personal exploits as a hot-air balloon pilot have earned him and his company a great deal of free ink. Even so, the company continues to employ traditional media advertising. Over a long career at Virgin, Will Whitehorn’s jobs included head of brand development and corporate affairs and president of Virgin Galactic. As he noted in the 1990s, “PR is the heart of the company. If we do things badly, it will reflect badly on the image of the brand more than most other companies.” At Virgin, Whitehorn has said, “Advertising is a subset of PR, not the other way around.”40

Not surprisingly, the importance of a social media presence as a PR tool is growing at many companies. PR professionals point to increasing consumer “engagement with the brand” on Facebook, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 platforms. Consider, for example, that as of mid-2018, Adidas Originals had 33 million Facebook “likes,” and Heineken had 24 million.

FedEx’s “I am FedEx” Facebook page features “Team Member Stories from FedEx.” This communication channel allows the company’s 285,000 employees to share stories about their work and home lives. Joe Becker, an executive at Ketchum Digital, believes that the conversations that take place on Facebook can be leveraged as content that can be used to enhance the FedEx brand. He says, “The primary goal is about enabling employees to tell and create stories, which influences public opinion about the brand.”41 Another advantage: Because visitors to social media sites can immediately click on a link to an e-commerce site, it is easy to track return on investment (ROI). We discuss social media in more detail in Chapter 15.

As noted earlier, a company exerts complete control over the content of its advertising and pays for message placement in the media. In contrast, members of the media typically receive many more press releases and other PR materials than they can use. Generally speaking, a company has little control over when, or if, a news story runs, nor can the company directly control the spin, slant, or tone of the story. To compensate for this lack of control over the ultimate outcome of their PR efforts, many companies utilize corporate advertising, which, despite the name, is generally considered part of the PR function.

As with “regular” advertising, a company or organization identified in the ad pays for corporate advertising. However, unlike regular advertising, the objective of corporate advertising is not to generate demand by informing, persuading, entertaining, or reminding customers. Instead, in the context of IMC, corporate advertising is often used to call attention to the company’s other communications efforts. In addition to the examples discussed in the following pages, Table 13-4 summarizes several instances of global publicity involving well-known firms.

Table 13-4 Negative Publicity Affecting Global Marketers

Company or Brand (Home Country)

Nature of Publicity

Facebook (United States)

A privacy scandal erupted when personal data for about 87 million of Facebook’s 2 billion users were shared with Cambridge Analytica, a firm that allegedly used the data to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Volkswagen (Germany)

The “Dieselgate” emissions cheating scandal involved illegal software defeat devices installed on millions of vehicles.

Samsung Electronic Co. (South Korea)

Batteries on the flagship Galaxy Note 7 overheated and in some cases caught fire. Samsung announced a massive global recall and urged all Note 7 owners to turn their phones off immediately.

Sony Corporation (Japan)

In a massive security breach, North Korean hackers leaked data, memos, and films stolen from Sony in retaliation for Sony Pictures Entertainment’s The Interview. The Hollywood comedy, starring Seth Rogan and James Franco, concerned a CIA plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jung Un.

Petrobras (Brazil)

Officials at Brazil’s state-owned oil company and top politicians were accused of collaborating with contractors to receive billions in kickbacks. The scandal was dramatized in the Netflix series The Mechanism.

Image advertising enhances the public’s perception of a company; creates goodwill; or announces a major change, such as a merger, acquisition, or divestiture. In 2008, for example, Anheuser-Busch InBev placed full-page ads in the business press to announce the companies’ merger. Global companies frequently use image advertising in an effort to present themselves as good corporate citizens in international markets.

BASF uses advertising to raise awareness about the company’s innovative products that are used in the automotive, home construction, and pharmaceutical industries. Boeing uses consumer advertising in Europe to build awareness and create goodwill. Similarly, a recent campaign from Daimler AG was designed to raise awareness of the company’s eco-friendly electric drive vehicles (see Exhibit 13-10). The ad positions Daimler both as an innovator and as a responsible corporate citizen. Because the message and the associated image have worldwide appeal, this ad lends itself to an extension strategy.

In advocacy advertising, a company presents its point of view on a particular social, environmental, or cultural issue. The point of such communication is not to sell a particular product or service. Rather, it is to express the company's point of view or ask for support on issues that management believes are important. Examples of this type of communication include the MPA advertisement shown in Exhibit 13-5 and the New Balance ad shown in Chapter 17.

Sometimes a company generates publicity simply by going about the business of global marketing activities. For example, Nike, Walmart, and other marketers have received a great deal of negative publicity regarding alleged sweatshop conditions in the factories run by their subcontractors. Today, Nike’s PR team is doing a better job of counteracting the criticism by effectively communicating the positive economic impact Nike has had on the nations where it manufactures its sneakers (see Exhibit 13-11).

Exhibit 13-11

When making public appearances, Nike chairman Phil Knight and other executives frequently defend labor practices and policies in the Asian factories where the company’s shoes are made. In the late 1990s, a protester filed a lawsuit against Nike alleging that the company’s public assertions about working conditions constituted false advertising. After the California Supreme Court ruled against Nike, the company appealed. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case as protesters gathered outside. The Court later dismissed Nike’s appeal, and the case was sent back to California. In the end, Nike settled the suit by agreeing to pay $1.5 million to worker rights group with no admission of wrongdoing.

Any company that is increasing its activities outside its home country can utilize PR personnel as boundary spanners between the company and employees, unions, stockholders, customers, the media, financial analysts, governments, or suppliers. Many companies have their own in-house PR staff; others may choose to engage the services of an outside PR firm. During the past few years, some of the large advertising holding companies discussed previously have acquired PR agencies. For example, the Omnicom Public Relations Group consists of three agencies: FleishmanHillard, Ketchum, and Porter Novelli.

The Growing Role of PR in Global Marketing Communications

PR professionals with international responsibility must go beyond media relations and serve as more than a company mouthpiece; they are called upon to simultaneously build consensus and understanding, create trust and harmony, articulate and influence public opinion, anticipate conflicts, and resolve disputes.42 As companies become more involved in global marketing and the globalization of industries continues, company management must recognize the value of international PR. Today, the PR industry faces a challenging business environment with a mixture of threats and opportunities. A decade ago, many PR firms saw revenues and profits decline as a result of the global recession. At the same time, the recession also increased the demand for PR services. Edelman Worldwide chief Richard Edelman recently noted that PR’s status as a key input to corporate decision making has been improving. Edelman says, “We used to be the tail on the dog.”43

Europe has a long-standing PR tradition; for example, the Deutsche Public Relations Gesellschaft (DPRG) recently commemorated its 60th anniversary. Many European PR practitioners and trade associations, including the DPRG, are members of the Confédération Européenne des Relations Publiques (www.cerp.org). The U.K.-based International Public Relations Association (www.ipra.org) has an Arabic Web site, an illustration of the way PR’s importance is recognized in all parts of the world.

An important factor fueling the growth of international PR is increased governmental relations between countries. Governments, organizations, and societies are dealing with broad-based issues of mutual concern, such as the aftermath of the recent global recession, trade relations, the environment, and world peace. The technology-driven communication revolution that has ushered in the Information Age makes public relations a profession with truly global reach. Smartphones, broadband Internet connectivity, social media, satellite links, and other channel innovations allow PR professionals to be in contact with media virtually anywhere in the world.

In spite of these technological advances, PR professionals must still carry out some traditional aspects of public relations—that is, they must build good personal working relationships with journalists and other media representatives, as well as with leaders of other primary constituencies. Therefore, strong interpersonal skills are needed. One of the most basic concepts of the practice of PR is to know the audience. For the global PR practitioner, this means knowing the audiences in both the home country and the host country or countries. Specific skills needed include the ability to communicate in the language of the host country and familiarity with local customs. A PR professional who is unable to speak the language of the host country will be unable to communicate directly with a huge portion of an essential audience. Likewise, the PR professional working outside the home country must be sensitive to nonverbal communication issues so as to maintain good working relationships with host-country nationals. Commenting on the complexity of the international PR professional’s job, one expert noted that, in general, audiences are becoming more hostile, more organized, more powerful, more skeptical, and more diverse. International PR practitioners can play an important role as “bridges over the shrinking chasm of the global village.”