International Advertising: Understanding Cultural Differences

In order to start off my blog about international advertising, I feel it is important to discuss the importance of cultural differences within advertising. In an article entitled, International Advertising: Understanding Cultural Differences, written by Neil Payne, he talks about how crucial it is to understand cultural differences before launching any international advertising campaign. The main focus for cross cultural communication is to help minimize the negative impact of cultural differences through building common frameworks for people of different cultures to interact within. In order to have effective international advertising, it is critical to look at cross cultural communication solutions. Services and products are usually designed and marketed at a domestic audience. When a product is marketed at an international audience, the same domestic advertising may not be as effective. What sometimes tends to happen is that when an advertising campaign goes abroad, different perceptions and values are seen and this may lead to an unsuccessful campaign.

The article further goes into techniques and important characteristics of what makes a successful international campaign. I feel that this can help anyone who is trying to make their campaign global. The first one is to make sure there is no cross cultural language mistakes. An example in the article that I found to be extremely careless but funny was when Ford introduced their new car called "Pinto" in Brazil. Mistakingly I guess, they did not research what "Pinto" means which translates as tiny male genitals. You do not want to see this type of mistake happen when advertising globally.

The second one was too understand the way in which other cultures communicate. For example in the USA, communicators often assume that listeners are unaware of background information or related issues to the topic so they provide the information themselves. However, in Japan, communicators assume that listeners are well informed on the topic so they provide no information.

Lastly, it is important to anaylze different cultural values. Is the society collectivist or individualist? Is it family oriented? Is there a dominant political or economic idealogy? All of these things are important to anaylze before advertising abroad.

Analyze the different elements of a culture, the advertisment and learn the best ways to speak to all your target audiences and you will already be a successful international advertiser. I know that after reading this, it takes careful examination of the different cultures you are trying to reach but the more research you do, the more successful it will be.

If interested in more information, please visit the website: http://www.sideroad.com/Cross_Cultural_Communication/international-advertising.html