GOING GLOBALAre we at the mercy of

GOING GLOBAL
Are we at the mercy of the global advertisers? This article explores some of the issues facing each one of us every day wherever we live.

World Brands
Perhaps the biggest challenge now facing the international advertising industry is that of establishing ‘world brands’ by appealing to the global consumer in all of us. For whilst there will always be national and niche markets which require specific marketing strategies, global operations call for global campaigns. Professor Theodore Levitt of Harvard Business School first put forward the theory of ‘the globalization of markets’. But the idea that there are more similarities between cultures than differences goes back to the popular image of the ‘global village’.

The best in the business
It was Coca-Cola who told us in the 70s that ‘they’d like to buy the world a Coke’ and British Airways who announced in the 80s that they were ‘the world’s favourite airline.
Their universally recognized TV and cinema advertisements invented the global advertising genre and the agencies who created their award-winning commercials are today widely regarded as the best in the business.

Simple messages
The very first global commercial Saatchi & Saatchi ran for BA featured Manhattan Island being flown across the Atlantic. As their in-flight magazine put it, “the effect was breathtaking; words were hardly needed; the pictures said it all”. The commercial was screened in 29 countries and caused a sensation in the industry. Since then, ‘the world’s favourite airline’ has become a part of the language, recognized the world over. The secret, according to BA, is that the message is straightforward, easily understood and vividly expressed.

The biggest brands
In fact, only a handful of worldwide agency networks have the capacity to take on the world’s biggest brands. McCann-Erikson, who has handled amongst others Coca-Cola, Esso and Kodak, came up with ‘the Martini moment’. Leo Burnett gave us the Seven-Up slogan ‘it’s cool to be clear’ and, perhaps most famously of all, the Marlboro cowboy – a theme which has been running for over forty years.

Minimalist approach
So what is it that makes global advertising so compelling and memorable? The answer to that lies partly in reducing the message to an absolute minimum. A lot of adverts pack in too much and end up obscuring their message. The global commercial gets its message across succinctly, with great impact and an emotional intensity which belongs to the universal languages of pictures and music. The commercials reinforce the brand-image independently of any real consideration of the product. And image outsells product every time.

Costs the earth
The beauty of a good global ad is that it can be used to great effect over a period of many years and still seem fresh. Global image-making, however, is a lengthy and costly business. Bringing together the best creative talent in the advertising industry usually ends up costing the earth. And critics of global ads point out that for the majority of brands global advertising is seldom the answer. Though the world is getting smaller by the day, few companies, even multinationals, have true global status and since most ‘mass-marketed’ products actually sell to fewer than five per cent of the masses, it doesn’t always pay to think big.