When Is Globalization Appropriate

While globalization of advertising is viewed by many in the advertising industry as a difficult task, some progress has been made in learning what products and services are best suited to worldwide appeals:63

1. Brands or messages that can be adapted for a visual appeal, avoiding the problems of trying to translate words into dozens of languages.

2. Brands that are promoted with image campaigns that play to universal appeals such as sex or wealth.

3. High-tech products and new products coming to the world for the first time, not steeped in the cultural heritage of the country.

4. Products with nationalistic flavor if the country has a reputation in the field.

5. Products that appeal to a market segment with universally similar tastes, interests, needs, and values.

Many companies and brands rely heavily on visual appeals that are easily adapted for use in global advertising campaigns. For example, Boeing launched its first global image campaign in 2000 as part of its effort to be known as more than an airplane manufacturer. While Boeing is the world's leading manufacturer of commercial jets, a series of acquisitions has transformed the company into a major force in markets for military aircraft, rockets, satellites, and broadband communications. Boeing is setting the stage for its future with a global image and branding campaign that uses the tagline "Boeing Forever New Frontiers." The corporate campaign features TV spots as well as print ads, such as the one shown in Exhibit 20-10, that symbolize optimism and future orientation. The commercials use a steady stream of visuals—children with arms outstretched, a young boy releasing a dove, jet planes, and spinning satellites. The goal of the campaign is to leverage Boeing's strong global brand image with customers and aviation, business and government influentials as well as to create excitement among the company's employees regarding the future of the company.

Products such as jewelry, liquor, cosmetics, and cigarettes can be promoted using image advertising, the second category. Marlboro uses its cowboy/western imagery

Exhibit 20-10 Visual appeals work well in global advertising, such as that used by the Boeing company around the world, and many cosmetic companies use similar image campaigns in different countries.

Levitt, like many advertisers, believes that joy, sentiment, excitement, and many other emotions are universal. Thus, it is common for global advertising campaigns to use emotional and image appeals. One advertising executive said:

What it all boils down to is that we are all human. We share the gift of emotional response. We feel things. And we feel them in remarkably similar ways. We speak different languages, we observe different customs, but we are wired to each other and to an ultimate power source that transcends us in a way that makes us subject to a common emotional spectrum.64

Companies whose products appeal to universal needs, values, and emotions are also recognizing that they can advertise their brands with global campaigns. For example, Calvin Klein, one of the leading fashion and design companies and a brand name recognized around the world, recently launched a global campaign for its Eternity fragrance brand. The ad campaign expands the Eternity ideal of lasting love and intimacy with commercials featuring scenes of family life set to the classic Burt Bacharach song "What the World Needs Now Is Love," which is sung by Aimee Mann. The print advertising depicts life's special moments and features the tagline "Love, Sweet Love" and is designed to resemble photographs pulled from a family album. The campaign features supermodel Christy Turlington as the Eternity woman.

High-tech consumer products such as personal computers, calculators, VCRs, TVs, and audio equipment are in the third category, as are various types of business-to-business products and services such as computer systems. Business-to-business marketers like EDS and Xerox have begun using global advertising campaigns, as have Hewlett-Packard and IBM.

Products in the fourth category are those whose national reputation for quality can be the basis for a global advertising campaign. Examples include Swiss watches, French wine, and German beer or automobiles. As discussed earlier in the chapter, many U.S. companies are taking advantage of the cachet American products have acquired among consumers in Europe and other international markets. For example, Jeep promotes itself as "the American legend" in Europe and Japan. Brown-Forman has been using an American theme for its Jack Daniel's and Southern Comfort liquor brands since it began selling them in foreign markets more than two decades ago.

In the final category for which globalization is appropriate are products and services that can be sold to common market segments around the world, such as those identified by Salah Hassan and Lea Katsansis.65 One such segment is the world's elite—people who, by reason of their economically privileged position, can pursue a lifestyle that includes fine jewelry, expensive clothing, quality automobiles, and the like. Marketers of high-quality products such as Bally leather goods, Cartier jewelry, Godiva chocolates, and Louis Vuitton luggage can use global advertising to appeal to the elite market segment around the world. Well-known international brands competing in the luxury goods marketplace often present a singular image of prestige and style to the entire world.

Another segment of global consumers who have similar needs and interests and seek similar features and benefits from products and services is teenagers. There are more than 200 million teens in Europe, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim countries of Asia whose lifestyles are converging with those of the 40 million teens in the United States and Canada to create a vast, free-spending global market.66 Teens now have intense exposure to television, magazines, movies, music, travel, and global advertising from companies such as Levi Strauss, Benetton, Nike, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and many others. MTV is now seen in 136 countries. Global Perspective 20-2 discusses how the youth of the world have become an important global market segment for many companies.

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