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Part Seven Special Topics and Perspectives
Belch: Advertising and
Promotion, Sixth Edition
Exhibit 20-15 Häagen-
Dazs used sexy ads to get
attention in Britain
VII. Special Topics and
Perspectives
20. International
Advertising and Promotion
© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2003
An important factor in the development of creative strategy is the issue of global
versus localized advertising. If the standardized approach is taken, the creative team
must develop advertising that will transcend cultural differences and communicate
effectively in every country. For example, Tropicana Products Inc. uses a global
advertising campaign for its pure premium orange juice. Its ads, though tailored a bit
for each market, stress the superior, nearly fresh-squeezed taste of its juice over local
brands that are often reconstituted from concentrates.
When companies follow a localized advertising strategy, the creative team must
determine what type of selling idea, ad appeal, and execution style will work in each
market. A product may have to be positioned differently in each market depending on
consumers’ usage patterns and habits. For example, General Foods found that in
France, people drink very little orange juice and almost none at breakfast. Thus, when
the company decided to market its Tang instant breakfast drink in France, the agency
developed ads positioning the brand as a refreshment for any time of day rather than as
a substitute for orange juice (the approach used in the United States).
Marketers must also figure out what type of advertising appeal or execution style
will be most effective in each market. Emotional appeals such as humor may work well
in one country but not in another because of differences in cultural backgrounds and
consumer perceptions of what is or is not funny. While humorous appeals are popular in
the United States and Britain, they are not used often in Germany, where consumers do
not respond favorably to them. German advertising typically uses rational appeals that
are text-heavy and contain arguments for a product’s superiority. 82 France, Italy, and
Brazil are more receptive to sexual appeals and nudity in advertising than are most
other societies. The French government recently stepped up its efforts to convince
advertisers and their ad agencies to tone down the use of sexual imagery and violence
in their advertising. 83 France’s Truth in Advertising Commission, which is the main
self-regulatory body, has issued new standards regarding the presentation of human
beings in advertising. However, several of the French fashion houses such as Dior and
Yves Saint Laurent set off a new controversy in 2002 with the use of provocative sexual
imagery in ads for their perfumes. YSL was criticized for using full-frontal nudity in a
print ad featuring martial-arts-champion-turned-male-model Samuel de Cubber. 84
International marketers sometimes find they can change consumer purchasing patterns
by taking a creative risk. For example, Häagen-Dazs broke through cultural barriers
in Britain, where ice cream consumption is only a third as great as in the United
States and consumers usually purchase low-grade, low-priced local brands. A sexy
advertising campaign showing seminude couples feeding each other the ice cream
helped get British consumers to pay premium prices for Häagen-Dazs. The company
also used an avant-garde billboard campaign in Japan showing a young couple kissing in
public, a near-taboo. The posters were so popular that many were stolen (Exhibit 20-15).