Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Blog Recommendations


The blog “ New Media Impact on Students” (http://newmediaandstudents.blogspot.com/ ) done by Mark Long an especially the section “The Facebook Class” . This section describes the innovation of application on FB, I guess most of people tried at least one or some application. For instance: I was almost addicted to FarmVille, which is a game about farming, the idea is that you plant plants and you have to take care of them at least every day. These things get very addictive and take some much time from the real life. And it is not surprising that a lot of money turn in these Apps on Facebook.

The blog called “Guerrilla and Buzz Marketing” (http://guerillaandbuzzmarketing.blogspot.com/) by Veronika Vavrova is very interesting blog since it is a popular theme discussed not only by marketers but people who notice them. Guerilla marketing is a special way of marketing and it could be described as  “ unexpected and cheap” or in another word “original” not boring brochures, discounts, flayers handed out in metro.  For example McDonalds has recently done guerilla marketing at I.P.Pavlova tram stop, they came up with this McBox, which can safe you some money, and they transformed this tram stop into the Box.  The interesting thing that happened is that someone put printed images of Jews in world war to and next to them put images of ingredients that are being used in this fast food chain, so for instance you had a picture of jaws in a these bunk where there was not room at all, next to this shocking image there was a similar pictures of chickens also living in horrible conditions.  This was very bad for McDonald, and they took it down few hours. What is the lesson here, it is risky to apply guerilla marketing.

Very interesting Blog is “Art Changes “ (http://artchanges.blogspot.com/) by Christina Kneitz, Why that interesting? Because art is almost everywhere we look, not as a piece that is worth a lot but more like originality, inspiration and motivation. This blog decrbies the changes that happened and are happening and it opens ones eyes. 

Blog done by Vu Tuan Anh (Bob) about  “Media Portrayals of Vietnamese Minority”  (http://kedlubna.com/) is about Vietnamese minority portrays in Media, firstly this is in my personal interest since I do look a bit as a Vietnamese but I’m Czech, and secondly because Vietnam minority is the third larges in Czech republic recording about 60 000 people.  There has been clever documentary done about this minority done by Czech Television, call “Ta naše povaha česká, Zlaté ručičky vietnamské,” (Our Czech Temper, The Golden Vietnamese hands)  which can be founded at http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/1100627928-ta-nase-povaha-ceska/411235100011010-zlate-rucicky-vietnamske/.

Another attention-grabbing Blog is about portrayals of women in media (http://portrayalsofwomen.wordpress.com/) done by Beatrice Jahodova, it shows nice examples of women that are shown media and also it describes the influence on women, for instance the disorders that women gain as an effect of these portrayals.  

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Recent Event #2 - Skoda at IIHF Championship









     Czech car company is going international, a World Championship is a great opprutinity to go global, or at least do a great advertising for the company.  Also connecting with Britains TV Car show (popular all over the world) ,  Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson commenting on the new Skoda Yeti,

the overall impresion of the new Skoda Car Indursty which has recently modernized their logo
 is really shifting from Local (European) to a globaly scaled Company.

Here what Skoda is saying about the Championship, taken from; http://www.skoda-auto.com/COM/about/life/hockey/iihf/Pages/IIHF.aspx


During the 75th IIHF World Championship from April 29 until May 15, the world's top 16 ice hockey nations will play off the successor of reigning champion Czech Republic. Slovakia with the cities of Bratislava and Košice will be hosting the tournament for the first time. Škoda Auto is the "Official Main Sponsor" of this event in the 19th consecutive year.

The continuous support of Škoda Auto has been making a crucial contribution to firmly establishing IIHF World Championships as the world's largest annual winter sports event. This unique long-term partnership has even been awarded a GUINNESS WORLD RECORD for the "longest-lasting main sponsorship in the history of sports world championships" and it stands for a great tradition of reliability at Škoda Auto, which is reflected in every Škoda car. A good reason for the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) to choose Škoda Auto for providing a fleet of 40 cars, which will be accumulating some 250,000 kilometres of smooth service for the 2011 IIHF World Championship – carrying officials, guests and sometimes even the heavy gear of the world's best ice hockey players.
The Organizing Committee is expecting to welcome some 350,000 spectators during the 56 games in Bratislava and Košice. Approximately 700 million viewers in almost 200 countries will follow the 2011 IIHF World Championship in front of their TV screens.

Everybody at Škoda Auto is immensely proud to be part of this fascinating event. We wish the fans from all over the world exciting games and lots of fun.

Accademic Essey on Effectivness of International Advertising



Introduction
             The selection of  this topic was based on a research which was done recently, moreover it is really interesting topic since the world is coming more and more globalized and similar in ways that were imposible in the past. The internet is taking one of the mose influencial parts in this change, almost everyone is connected with the world, almost every one uses at least a little part of this globalized world, meaning that people all over the world research, look or are hit by information that they did not look for or did not have any interest in. The media and especial the advertising part seems to be changed from useful informative stage to a bombarding stage where people are exposed to tons of new producs, services and pretty much anything that is possible to sell.

A little about the research that is mentioned in the first sentence, the basis idea that draw the attention was that the ads that are done for multi-cultural publics have to be done in a dissimilar way then the once that are local and for quite specific publics.  As the study was progressing many more interesting ideas and questions came up, for instance the music that is being used in ads or the annoying parts that are often seen in television ads, like the unperfected dubbing or the super-quick warnings that are almost impossible to understand.



Comparison of International and Local Advertisements
 Firstly to clarify what is meant by international ads? “International advertising entails dissemination of a commercial message to target audiences in more than one country”1. Usually associated with world widely known companies. For instance the first world wide company that comes up to peoples mind is Coca Cola or McDonald these two fast food associated companies are very well known, for their great marketing accomplishments and people all over the world could come up with at least one of the ads related to these companies. For example almost every one know Coca Colas Christmas Trucks or Coca Colas Santa Clause.

International advertising means also getting over cross cultural differences, which is probably the biggest and possibly the only limit. Cross cultural differences are referring to language, “the issue of a language barrier can occur when advertising hence meaning that if the marketers differ in their languages, then it will be difficult for the international marketing to take place” 2 colors, images and even to numbers, it includes all sorts of differentiation among cultures, publics, audiences, genders, ages, and social statuses.
What does local advertising mean? The ads that are done for specific target audiences, lets say here in Czech Republic mostly by the language even the language barrier has changed amazingly since the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Under local advertisements belong smaller businesses that are operating with specific target audience, for instance the newspaper, magazines and this kind of media. Or Kofola (a drink that is similar to Coca Cola but it has specific taste)
 which is very popular in Czech Rep. The advertisements are usually taking place at specifically portrayed scenes and all of the ads have this Czech Culture in it, these ads would not work in other countries, for instance the US.

So the main question is what is more effective? International or Local Ads?

It is a question that cannot be answered simply, it is a question that has to be much more specified, and it really depends on the cross-cultural differences. Another aspect, which influences the answer, is the over all image that the company has built. But on the other side international ads have huge advantage, since they are globally applied and usually very quickly recognized. More to the topic for instance people immediately recognize international music hits in TV or in Radio ads, they usually drag the attention much faster than to some local music. And event in the survey that was done here in Prague shows that the outcome was aiming more towards international advertisements then local ones.

Conclusion
The international advertising is changing much faster then in the past, the world is uniting by the language and even the cultural differences are changing. It is not wrong to say that a company with the intentions of is going internationally has much better and faster chance of succeeding than a small local company that is staying with specific target audience. “So with the continuous advertising of the products you will have the consumers which will be familiar with the product hence leading to huge profits by the company.”3










1 Douglas Susan and Craig Samuel,
 International Advertising

, New York University
 Stern School of Business Section 5.2, Article 31


2 Grey, A 2004, “every market needs a different message”, IABC Communication World.
3 Albers-Miller, N 2001, designing cross-cultural advertising research: A closer look at paired comparisons. Journal of international marketing review Vol. 13(5)

Recommended Websites

            First webpage I would recommend is Advertisements of the World this webpage offers a great amount of different ideas and ads that can be selected by the type, ( TV, print, internet and etc.) continent, country and offers ratings.
It is composed of Archive of the ads, Forum where people share their opinions, Blog where more ideas, opinions and videos. It also shows „the Best“  selections of different categories.  And lastly the Research which is new future that uses easy global database  to find any kind of an advertisement. 
           
            Second is International Advertising Association  this webpage shows a company profile, but also it show variety of approaches, styles, and interesting global perspective of international advertising.
            The following links deal with similar topic as mentioned above: Advertising Intrnational - http://www.advert-int.com/ , International Advertising - http://www.intl-advertising.com/ , DDB - http://www.intl-advertising.com/ )

            Third website I would recommend is Creative Guerrilla Marketing dot com this webpage was founded in 2009 and it is dedicated to guerrilla marketing, showing many examples of this sort of marketing, also it is including other creative marketing tactics such as Viral, Ambient, Outdoor and diffrent campaigns of general advertising.

Educational Article #2




The second article I found is about cross cultural differences which have huge effect on the interpretation of the advertisement  and it is mentioning few nice examples that may distroy (or did destroy) the advertisement in another coutry but also the article nicely describes the differences among cultures. It is called;
International Advertising: Understanding Cultural Differences, written by Neil Payne 1
He says, “Culture affects everything we do. This applies to all areas of human life from personal relationships to conducting business abroad. When interacting within our native cultures, culture acts as a framework of understanding. However, when interacting with different cultures this framework no longer applies due to cross cultural differences.” 2
            Then he goes on and the next part is dedicated to Language in cross cultural advertising and then to communication style, colors, numbers and images in international advertising, and last thing the article mentions is cultural values.



1 http://www.sideroad.com/Cross_Cultural_Communication/international-advertising.html
2 Ibid.

Educational Article #1



    The first thing that comes up when you write international advertising into google search is article labled as;
Section 5.2, Article 31


International Advertising


Susan P. Douglas and C. Samuel Craig
New York University
Stern School of Business

            This article firstly describes the meaning of International Advertising and and then it separates it into different parts Int. Ads as a Communication Process where the main concern is about the use of  interantional ads in diffent cultures, the miss interpretation by languale, cultural values, images , or moods. Givig example of
 „American Dairy Association entered Mexico with its "Got Milk?" Campaign, the Spanish translation read "Are You Lactating?"” 1 .
            Next part of this article is internationa advertising as a business practice, it shortly describes the advantage of business going globaly, for instance the image they use to propagate their product to be the same so everyone can easly see the conection, the text or any additional parts can be changed but it is important to keep at least one ( the major one preferable) aspoect the same. In „means of building a strong and coherent global image”2
            Then there are two part interational advertising as a industry and international advertising as a social force-  both of them talk about primary and secundary ways of advertising and marketing strategies and include a graph from 1997 which is not really usefull unless we would like to know about the past and posiblly wanted to compare with todays numbers, and see if there is any follow up or significant change. Also both of these parts are mostly concentrated on the US outcames, since they state that yearly theres about 400 billion dollars put into andvertising and about a half is in US.

Recent event #1 - Coca Cola

         Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in the stores, restaurants, and vending machines of more than 200 countries.” [1] Coca Cola is one of the most known companies all over the world and it is possible to say that everyone knows Coca Cola. This company does really put a big involvement into their advertising strategies and does a very good job. For instance the famous Coca Colas Christmas Trucks or the Coca-Cola Santa Clause;
The logo of Coca – Cola rounded in red circle on the right side of a billboard is framed with words „drink Coca-Cola in bottles“.  But the most dominant element after the Santa Claus is the slogan „Coke Time” pictured right above the Coca – Cola logo.






           The origin of Santa Claus pictured on advertising campaigns of Coca Cola is not accidental. The company appointed Chicago illustrator Haddon Sundblom in early beginning of 1930’s to develop the image humanlike Santa Claus on the basis of Coca Cola illustrated advertisements in magazines, which were very successful. Since Sundblom presented the first picture in 1931 he influenced more than the advertisement of Coca Cola. He created a new shape of Christmas and winter creature, which influenced public appearance of Santa Claus in, global. The billboard illustrated in this survey was main picture of the winter campaign in the middle of 1950’s.
But relating to more recent tactics of Coca Colas is the campaign called the Happiness Truck-






And other recent campaign is called Happiness Machine


            Both of these examples are the exact samples of guerilla and viral marketing strategies. The theme is to make people happy share happiness, everyone likes gifts and it does not really matter what kind of gisfts they are but the point is clear. On the other side these campaings were probably the chepest ones but it was not such a big deal for Coca Cola. It is a new way how to approach people and it is exactly the kind of a video or advertisement them people like ane will share.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

What is Meant by Effectiveness of International Advertising?



This blog will examine the effectiveness of international advertising.  The basic idea behind this is to find out how effective is to do advertising for more cultures, trying to reach different target audiences at once. Also it will compare with local advertising, in another words advertising that is aimed at one target audience.
            Examples of international advertising would be companies like: Coca-Cola
, McDonald
, Shell 
and many others.
            Examples of local Ads (from Czech Republic) Kofola
, Chucks Norris spots from T-mobile
, or promotion of local businesses such as newspaper or television, and other different services that are partly limited by the language, different age groups or social levels.
            This topic is very interesting because the ways of approaching people is changing quite quickly. For instance if we look at ads that were ten years ago, still keeping in mind the contrast between international and local advertising. The biggest change is of course related to the Internet and there for viral marketing which is nowadays being largely used.
            All businesses and their approach changed recently due to the economic crises which is still taking part and the marketers and advertising companies doing things differently, the aim is to make as cheap and effective ads as possible, trying to find new ways how to share the idea and sell the products.
            Most popular strategies how to reach people and spent as little money is through Guerilla marketing (cheap and unexpected), Viral marketing (through social networks such as Facebook, Tweeter, Linkedin, MySpace and many other) both of these include high level of creativity and the biggest outcome is shared through the “word of mouth” or involving people by sharing or sending the web links.