Marketing communication: principles and practice

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
1 Which brands 
are
apparently consistent across intercultural divides?
Why is this so?
2 Communication can be thought of as a form of industrial production.
Explain this point of view.
3 There is no such thing as international marketing, only local marketing
around the world. Do you agree, and why?
4 Take the example of a product which is familiar to you and which has
been ‘imported’ from another culture. What adaptations, if any, have
been made and how successful have they been?
5 Can you find an example where international marketing efforts went
I N T E R C U L T U R A L C O M M U N I C A T I O N
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By continuing to pursue the business objective of brand leadership through very efficient
high-volume production (avoidance of niche markets) and strong advertising, Mars has built
Snickers into a sponsorship (stand-alone) brand. By adopting a single brand identity,
economies of scale are possible in sharing the promotion investment world-wide and in
intensive product distribution. Mars do not seek corporate growth through innovation, but
rather through global expansion. On Thanksgiving Day 1990, during the Gulf War, for
example, frozen Snickers bars were to be found on every US soldier’s plate, along with the
turkey and reconstituted potato.
In Russia, on the other hand, things didn’t go so well for a while. The brand name became
the butt of comedians’ routines after a series of poorly dubbed US advertisements were
heavily scheduled on TV. At the time, people in Russia simply were not comfortable with
TV advertising, and the poor quality of the presentation caused more irritation than
amusement. Today, Snickers is the number-one selling candy bar in Russia. In Peru, also,
Snickers is very popular.
A study by Lavenka (1991) showed that the name Snickers has considerable brand equity.
When given six different unwrapped, unlabelled chocolate bars to taste, the Snickers bar
was by far the preferred product on the basis of flavour. When the brand names were
revealed, the rating increased considerably. When the bar was revealed in its point-of-sale
wrapping its rating increased again, although only marginally. The (Cadbury’s) Bounty bar
was actually downrated when its name and wrapper were revealed.
So, does a global brand communication programme work for Mars? According to David
Badger (Mars), ‘There is no question in my mind [now] that our major brands, Mars, Snickers,
Twix, M&Ms, know no boundaries. The consumer demand for sweets is universal’ (quoted
in Brenner, 1999: 286).
One thing is clear. Snickers is a successful product. With annual sales of $400m, Snickers
is big! The brand is still the best-selling candy bar in the USA, despite consistently losing
market share since 1994. A witty new advertising campaign was launched by BBDO in autumn
1996. Sales increased as the brand advertising was made more entertaining, less didactic,
creating more emotional connection with consumers.
(See www.snickers.com and www.mars.com and Brenner (1999))

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wrong? In what ways did they say the wrong thing and did they fail to
understand the culture they were trying to connect with?
6 Discuss some practical issues around the notion of consistency and
flexibility at global and regional levels of marketing communication.
7 Coca-Cola, Unilever, Toyota, and others, are successful around the
world. How do they manage this?
8 From a communication perspective, distinguish ‘international’ from
‘global’.
9 Communication may be explained as ‘informational’ and ‘transfor-
mational’. Consider the issues raised when these conceptions of
communication are applied in intercultural marketing communication.
10 Since marketing is simply a purposeful system of communication, why
do textbooks on marketing rarely deal with intercultural social
interaction?