Analysis
Discuss about globalization and advertisements, social media and advertisements and culture and advertisements.
There was a time when marketing and advertisement were considered as a secondary functions for the organizations. That was the time when competition was limited in the market and organizations used to operate in the local market. That was the time of ‘Pull Marketing’, when organizations were really in a state to push consumers. However, with the spread of technology and Internet, there has been a fundamental change in the marketing function. Today, organizations want to target the customers in the global market and this is the major driver of advertisements. For organizations, advertisement is not more a reactive function. In fact, a direct correlation could be observed between the effectiveness of marketing and target customers (Cleave, 2012). With the realization of importance of effective advertisements, the organizations and the marketers want to focus on effective advertisements.
There are various forms of advertisements like TV advertisements, print media advertisements and social media advertisements. The advertisements in these medium may not be same as the target audience differ across these mediums. At a high level, it can be said that an effective advertisement is one that could attract the targeted audience and that has the potential to hit the emotions and sentiments of consumers (Manning, 2011). The objective of this paper is to discuss the key tenets of effective advertisements. The concept of advertisements would be discussed with respect to multiple perspectives like impact of culture, impact of globalization and the impact of social media. However, the focus of this paper would be to study and analyze the impact of culture of effectiveness of advertisements.
Every advertisement should be considered as message. In fact, every advertisement convey a message. An effective advertisement is one where message is simple to understand. Typically, there are two sides of any advertisement, a creative side and a content side. The creative side focuses on the innovation and creative ideas to reach out to customers. The creativity in the advertisements would help the marketer to play with the first impression of the consumers (Neelamalar, 2011). It is possible that the consumers would be trapped in the creative side of the advertisement and would take a decision to buy the product or the service. However, the customers who are trapped only by the creative side of the advertisement may not be the lasting or regular customers. The other side of the advertisement is the content side. It is important that any advertisement should have an effective content. The content of the advertisement should have the capability to meet the needs of customers. There is an important concept of marketing that states that, ‘needs cannot be created. The organizations and the marketers cannot create the need for individuals but with effective advertisements they can realize the needs to consumers. An effective advertisement is one that can help individuals to realize their needs (Wymer, 2012). The content of an effective advertisements is based on the targeted segment. The content would not be same for multiple segments and the user behavior, attitude and perception of people in different segment differs.
Globalization and advertisements
In this era of globalization, organizations have expanded in different parts of the world. The organizations like Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Google are true global organizations. The marketers in these organizations have to focus on the advertisements in the international market. It would be correct to say that globalization and internationalization have had a deep impact on advertisements. It is important that business owners understand the basics of writing a good advertisement in an international market (Collins, 2010). The globalization has emerged as a major driver that has focused the marketers to focus on international marketing campaign and in turn the success of international marketing campaign would depend on the effectiveness of the global advertisements.
With the focus on global advertisements, the organizations are compelled to create advertisements that are more focus on the product or the services rather than the audience. For example, BMW would have a global advertisement that would project all the unique features of the car but it (the advertisement) would not describe the customers and customers’ sentiments as it differs in different parts of the world (Kennewick, 2010). Therefore, it can be said that an effective advertisement in global world is one that is focused on product features and can create an appeal in the mind of global audience.
In the current business environment, organizations have realized that social media is the powerful way to reach out to customers. In fact, the social media channels like Facebook and Twitter are the most efficient way to reach out to customers. There are certain fundamental elements that would determine the effectiveness of advertisements on social media. The first factor is the clarity of the content. It is not easy to read on the mobile devices and laptops as compared to newspapers and magazines (Baccarella, 2011). Therefore, the content of social media advertisements should simple. In fact, the advertisement on social media should have less text and more images. The images and the graphics would be a good way to attract the social media users.
The second factor is the diverse and varied audience on social media. It is important to mention that people from various backgrounds are part of social media networks. Therefore, the marketers should not create any advertisement that is sensitive to any particular group. For example, the advertisement of cosmetics product like fair skin may not appeal to black people and they might feel offensive about these advertisements (Koningstein, 2010). Therefore, the marketers have to be careful to determine the content of the advertisement on social media. The third factor is the responsiveness or the frequency of the advertisements. It is important that social media advertisements should keep customers engage. It can happen when marketers places the advertisement at a good frequency.
Social media and advertisements
It would be correct to say that culture has a much deeper impact on the advertisements. The multinational organizations that operate in global world has to focus on the diverse culture before launching any international marketing campaign. An effective organization is one that understand the culture of the targeted audience. This is one of the reasons that the advertisements for same products and services could vary across regions. For example, Samsung is a global brand for smart phones; however, it does not have the same set of advertisements for China market and American market (Nonnemaker, 2011). This difference in the advertisements could be explained from cultural perspective. The culture of America is different that the culture of China and likewise the customer sentiments and behavior also differs. The consumers in American market want the best quality product and they are willing to pay a premium price for the same. On the other hand, Chinese people are cost savvy. They would want to buy a smart phone that can provide them ‘value for money’. Therefore, the advertisements in America projects the features of the smart phone and the premium aspect of the smart phones. Whereas, the advertisements in the China projects the value for money attributes.
An effective advertisement is one that is based on the sentiments of the people within the culture. From cultural perspective, it can be said that every advertisement tells a story. The advertisement should convey the STP (Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning) and 4Ps of marketing (Jepson, 2012). It means that every advertisement should be based on a particular segment within a culture. By watching the advertisement, the STP and 4Ps should be clear to observer. There could be cases when the marketer would expose all the 4Ps of the marketing in the advertisement and there could be cases when the marketer would expose only one or two Ps of marketing (Andrade, 2013). The project of 4Ps of marketing in the advertisement would depend on the region of the culture. It would also depend on the position of the product in the product lifecycle. In closed cultures like China and India, the marketers would want to expose all the 4Ps of marketing. It would help the organization to target the customers with a bang. However, in the open culture like Australia, marketers may want to focus on different Ps of marketing individually (Eves, 2012). For example, a BMW advertisement would focus only on the ‘product’ quality and does not talk about the price, place or promotion.
Culture and advertisements
It is important that the organizations and the marketers should control the content of the advertisement based on the culture. For example, it would be offensive to show the advertisements of lingerie in Middle East and Middle East is a closed culture. The women are not allowed to flaunt their skin in Middle Eastern culture. Therefore, the advertisement of lingerie should not show the women wearing the lingerie. It appears to be a strange thing but it is important that marketers should be willing and ready to modify the content with the change in the culture.
There would be many cases when the marketers would use images and graphics in the print advertisements. It is important that the images should be based on the cultural aspects. The images and the pictures should not be offensive to any section of the society. There are cases when marketers would use flow chart to demonstrate activities (Kelley, 2013). The culture can have a deep impact on the written list of activities. For example, the advertisement of a washing powder would show the three steps or activities as dirty clothes, washing and clean clothes. In Middle East, the written things are perceived from right to left rather than the global standard of left to right. Therefore, the advertisement of dirty clothes, washing and clean clothes would be perceived as clean clothes, washing and dirty clothes. All these are small things with a big impact. Therefore, it is important that the marketers should have a full understanding of the culture before launching any advertisement in a region and this is precisely the reason that the advertisements are not re-used across different regions and geographies.
Conclusion
It is important that each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer-not just words, product puffery, or show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: “Buy this product, for this specific benefit.” The above paper discussed the impact of culture, globalization and social media on advertisements. With the above discussion it can be said that the advertising industry is a dynamic industry and it is expected that changes would continue to take place in this industry. The culture has a deep impact on the advertisements. The effectiveness of the advertisement could vary a lot across culture. It is important that an advertisement that is effective in one culture is highly ineffective in another culture. Therefore, it is recommended that management and marketers should develop and position the advertisement based on the culture and background of the targeted audience. Another attribute of effective advertisement is that it has a catchy headline. People scan things quickly. They come into contact with so many advertisements each day that they can’t possibly read each one. This is why marketers have to make sure that your advertisement actually grabs and keeps their attention.
References
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