Last month, the United States elected the first African American ever to the office of President. He was not elected because of his race, but because he ran a campaign that was so disciplined, broad and deep that it touched the culture, emotions and context of people's lives in a way that had not been seen since FDR. Brand Obama was perhaps that best executed campaign that we have seen in the last half century. Period. Its architecture, messaging, imagery and sheer reach, using both traditional and new media, was breathtaking. Its ability to energise people and to call them to action was the dream of any Madison Avenue executive. Across the articles in this issue, you will find clarion calls for innovation and imagination in the way that we approach understanding consumers and citizens in these unsettled times.
The Middle East region has seen significant changes over the last few years, and these extraneous factors have shaped the lives and values of Arabs. A number of contradictions have occurred, behaviour that is difficult to explain at the outset, but of immense interest to marketers. This paper aims to provide insights into the Middle East Arab consumer in terms of the core consumer values at a socio-cultural level. It also identifies key trends and changes in society, as well as the psychographic segments that have emerged, consequent to these changes. It provides cues for marketing, positioning and brand communication strategies that are in synch with the cultural milieu and therefore have more impactful consumer appeal.
This paper calls for a reading of advertising discourse in the context of this overwhelming cultural specificity. It is proposed that, to create semiotically relevant discourses, advertising will have to invoke the cultural backdrop and build it into its communication strategy. This paper is based on the central hypothesis that advertising in India cannot escape the context-sensitivity that is so deeply intrinsic to Indian culture. It argues for strong diachronic analysis. It conceptualises modern advertising as one of the communicative variants on a parallel plane with classical literature, folklore, religion, etc. This paper proposes that, as advertising shares a base with other discourses, some significant psychological and thematic continuities should exist. It also calls for a culture-specific sensitivity to the modes of communication.
If Corporate Communications firms are to survive in the network economy they must offer their clients solutions for communications strategy. They must also create stories and experiences for the clients of their clients, integrated in a creative business strategy. Firms must rise to the challenge of Human Talent and develop entrepreneurs and attract and retain talented employees, or, as summarised by one CEO: "I have only two priorities: One for Human Talent and one for Corporate Communications with Creative Business Ideas."
Drawing on U.S. census data and primary research recently conducted among Hispanic consumers in the United States by TNS Market Development, this paper uses a systematic transcultural marketing approach to highlight critical demographic, sociographic, marketing and psychographic determinants of this niche of almost 34 million consumers. Discussion is provided of the various adaptations a marketing focused approach of this sort would require of communications strategies in order to target relevant and persuasive communications against an ethnic market with the consumer characteristics that are presented. The paper concludes that a systematic transcultural marketing-focused approach such as the one presented can serve as a model for developing programs in other countries in which ethnic marketing is a potential market opportunity.
This paper discusses what some cynics in the United States call the Internet, the World White Web. Much has been said about the perceived American stereotypical netizen: is Caucasian, upper-income, and college-educated. Is the Internet about race, is it segregation in cyberspace or like America, is it becoming a digital melting pot?
This paper presents the innovative strategy of GWK, an important Dutch banking business. It demonstrates that small target groups can also be beneficial if there is a good combination between a specific product, like Western Union, and a specific promotional campaign. It gives a view of the aspects of the sales structure, promotion and communication strategy, results thus far and internal struggles.
Complex theories of how advertising works in terms of response, repetition and decay have been merged and confused with the audience- delivery-based media planning concepts of reach and frequency. This paper discusses distinctions that should be made in media scheduling between the strategic theories of how advertising works (response functions, decay rates) to deliver aggregate sales effects and the tactics of media buying to determine repetition and cover criteria. While the paper explodes both the myths of effective frequency and once is enough, it also suggests a practical, multi-dimensional framework to deal with both ideas, better linking overall brand communication strategies to media buying tactics.
The case presented here is that of Glenfiddich, a single malt scotch whisky. The production of Glenfiddich dates back to 1887. The brand has been introduced to number of markets outside its home market - Scotland - in the last thirty years. Four of those countries are considered in this paper: England, France, USA and Japan. The scotch market is at different levels of development in these countries. By far the most developed market is England and this will be used to show the development of communications strategy over time. Comparison will then be made to the other three countries.
This paper describes the psychographics of the Indian youth and child. The results are based on a study carried out in a sample size of over 8000 respondents across twenty centres in India. The findings can be used to study the shifts in values among youth and children. In addition marketers can use the data when positioning their products among various segments. A suitable communication strategy can then be designed to reach the appropriate target audience in an effective manner.
The ideal of targeting and promotional effectiveness is to deliver to those individuals who are most open to brand switching the message or benefit that most satisfies their preferences, and to do this in the most appropriate executional and media context. The validated principles of disaggregated choice modelling are used to focus on individual differences in motivation and how consumers can be aggregated according to their probability of switching brands in response to different promotional messages. Consumer responses vary also according to the communication strategy adopted. A finite number of individual product motivational patterns are revealed that can vary in their distribution, regionally and nationally as well as by the more usual social demographics, lifestyles and product usage patterns. The degree of similarity between countries determines the extent to which products and advertising campaigns can be "globalised". By taking this individual approach to determining product motivations across cultures, solutions to international product design and promotion opportunities can be specified for maximum effect and least compromise. Examples are taken from several markets.
The paper covers an experimental study that looks at an alternative methodology for pre-testing television commercials. Current methodologies appear to prejudice the utility of Ad response data by imposing an environment on respondents that may do much for the demonstration of research technique but little to put advertising in its normal context. The study concentrates on allowing respondents to set their own agenda for response in familiar surroundings. A panel of families were talked to in their own homes. Emphasis was given to conversation not interrogation. The data, which is semi-quantatitive, was then assessed in terms of types of response producing Response Profiles. The individual commercial response profile was then assessed alongside its advertising strategy. Responses can ultimately be described as left or right brain. However the details of types of response should not be overlooked (Positive affect, negative affect, tonal, pictorial/descriptive, no product link, meaning and no response). Advertisement are created to make connections with consumers. Those connections may involve learning, emotions, or simply remind them of how they feel about the brand. This study shows that consumers can respond as clearly in an emotional manner as in the more traditional rational manner that arises from most pre-testing. The author believes that such an approach produces data that offers a clear view of the strategic value of the advertisement, as opposed to the ability of advertising to clear artificial hurdles that are surrogates for communication.