In Conslusion...

After writing this blog on international marketing for the semester I have concluded that international marketing is an extremely immense topic that covers an extremely wide range of subjects all relating to marketing and advertising. The thing that makes them specific to international marketing is the fact that they are just that, international. That is what makes it such a broad category. That is part of the reason I chose international marketing as my blogging assignment. Because it encompasses the whole world I felt there would be an abundance of information to write about as well as learn a lot about the marketing throughout the world. After this semester, I’d say I was right, I feel as if I have learned a lot about the topics I wrote about in my blog.

While I was looking over my blog post over the past few months I noticed a few recurring themes that I would like to talk about. One theme that was covered repeatedly in the blog was regulations in marketing abroad. Regulations have been particularly relevant in regards to cigarettes, alcohol, sex in advertising, and junk foods. Two countries that I wrote about, Australia and England are taking great strides to ban the advertising of junk foods in an effort to promote a healthier life for their citizens. These bans are put in place for a number of obvious reasons, one of them being to protect children from the advertising of junk foods. This is because children are particularly impressionable and are therefore very susceptible advertisements. This can be dangerous when children are being exposed to advertisements of products that are unhealthy. The Obesity Task force in London states that several billion pounds that are spent each year advertising food or soft drinks are at least partly to blame for increasing levels of obesity in many countries

There are many international organizations as well as governments that are working to put these bans and regulations in place to make a difference in the health of people around the world in regards to eating habits. The chairman of the London-based International Obesity Task Force, Professor Philip James, said: "It is vital that, as well as governments, food industry leaders support the new standards we propose.” The World Health Organization is trying to pass a code that will control the advertising of food to children. This code will outlaw the use of popular cartoon characters to sell foods that are high in fat, sodium, and sugar on both television and the internet. Codes will also prevent celebrities from being used to promote unhealthy foods. Some countries around the world have gone as far as a total ban of certain forms of advertising as opposed to passing restrictions and regulations. In Norway and Sweden, any advertisement targeted at children age 12 and under is banned completely.

Obesity is a problem that is affecting many countries throughout the world. The fact that advertising and marketing of unhealthy foods across the globe has had an affect on the rising cases of obesity is shocking.

Cigarette advertising is another major issue facing the international marketing community. The World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) is designed to make it easier for national governments to implement tobacco controls, including a ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship. Organizations like the WHO are working extremely hard in place regulations bans on the advertising of tobacco products. Bans such as the ones the WHO is passing, could prevent millions of people from starting smoking because they will not be influenced by tobacco marketing. It is important that strides are being taken to regulate unethical marketing practices as well as the marketing of unhealthy products.

Around the world advertising is pushing to clean up the advertising and marketing industry in terms of banning harmful advertisements as well as using the industry to better society. The IAA(International Advertising Association) is now supporting the production of the "One Minute of Responsibility" program. This has been organized by ACT Responsible, and features spots for non-commercial, social and environmental causes. The program is currently being broadcasted daily on Euro News. According to Joseph Ghossoub, Chairman and World President IAA, "Since inception, the IAA has cared about promoting social responsibility." With that being said, it makes sense that the IAA would support an organization like ACT Responsible. It is good to see the International Advertising Association using their vast resources to produce public service announcements in Europe to benefit global causes and efforts.

Another topic I feel I learned quite a lot about was marketing campaigns for cities. In my blog I wrote about Berlin and South Africa and how they that are trying to rebrand themselves in an effort to increase tourism and general awareness of what they have to offer. Both places are trying to overcome hardships and try and reposition themselves in the mind of people throughout the world. Berlin is still trying to overcome a stigma from the holocaust as well as an image of strictness and seriousness. South Africa is a rather impoverished country and is trying to use this marketing campaign to help the countries financial situation. It is fascinating to see how in these cases the countries or cities are almost looked at as products or brands in regards to developing a marketing campaign.

Aside from themes such as these, a lot of my blogging was spent on reporting news on international marketing. There a lot of international marketing conferences, events, and awards. Using my blog to report on these events was fun because the events were very current and made me feel like this blog had a purpose. Letting viewers see what is happening in the world of international marketing.

After learning at the international marketing arena from this blog I feel like it will benefit me as I begin my career in the industry. I will potentially start working at an advertising agency or working for a company that marketing internationally and it will be a good asset to know what is happening in the international marketplace. Additionally, before this class I never really used blogs and now I see how they can be an asset to any business. For example a company could use blogs to update consumers about what is happening within the company. Obviously, the sky is the limit with blogs and anything one could think of could be used for blogging. This assignment made me feel proficient with blogging and I now feel like I have another skill that can be applied to my career, whatever that turns out to be.

Glocalization

According to an article in zeenews.com, a new Coke advertisement in India featured the Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan. Coca-Cola advertisements in India are classic examples of the current trend in the Indian branding and advertising industry - "think globally, act locally". People in the industry refer to this as "Glocalization." Global organizations are seeing a lot of success in India by using Indian celebrities and make the advertisement seem more local. The purpose of advertisements like these is to make a global organization seem more local and appeal to the Indian people. Glocalization is a result of globalization and how the local markets respond to it.

"I would say glocalisation really took off over the last five years. Most global brands now have local execution. At the end of the day, the needs and the wants of people are pretty similar. But if we use local idioms for a global brand, it makes sense to the local audience," Nirvik Singh, CEO, Southeast Asia, Grey Worldwide Advertising said. As a result, distinctions between the national, local and international advertising are blurring, especially in developing markets.

Russian Vodka Global Marketing

According to an article in the Brand Republic, Stolichnaya, the russian vodka has contacted London agencies to put together pitches for the business. The winning agency will be asked to create a campaign that will initially run in the US and the UK before it spreads internationally. The work on this new advertising campaign is supposed to prompt a change from the companies current advertising strategy, which is currently based around Soviet and Russian style themes. This new campaign will focus on more contemporary communications, which will help it compete with some of the other vodka brands such as Skyy and Absolut that have a more modern approach to their marketing strategies.

Through this campaign the company is looking to extend its consumer base into new markets by going after different target markets. This will be accomplished with the more modern approach to their marketing strategy. They also aim to increase customer loyalty among users who already drink Stolichnaya. Last year, SPI doubled its digital marketing budget to £1.5 million, so that coupled with this new global marketing campaign should have a significant effect on the companies performance.

Is Advertising Working?

According to an article in the Business Spectator only 50 percent of advertising is effective, and no one knows which half. This is leading people to question whether or not advertising is even worth it. The London based marketing group has done market research on the topic. Two surveys of 3,000 global marketers in January and March, found that the effectiveness of marketing has fallen to an all-time low and that increasingly sophisticated consumers turn off advertising.

75 per cent of marketers in the UK told Fournaise that they didn’t know if they could trust the visitor and traffic profiles claimed by online media owners and publishers. Thats unfortunate that owners of websites are not being honest with advertisers. The global marketing firm Synovate recently launched a market tracking tool in Asia designed to enable marketers to analyse the barriers they face to getting their products to market effectively. Scott Lee of Synovate said, "One of the things we have been doing is to work out the impact that physical market barriers are having on distribution, visibility, pricing availability and other issues,” He also added that he has, "seen cases where we have pre-tested advertisements and they looked great, but they had a questionable impact because of marketing barriers, particularly physical barriers and particularly on smaller brands.”

Everybody is trying to figure out how to deal with the Internet, and most recently the new genre of viral marketing, which used to be called word-of-mouth. Before information was passed on from one person to another somewhat slowly. Now with social networking tools like facebook and youtube, information about products, companies, and virtually anything can be passed on to millions of people instantly.

With all these problems and uncertainties in the marketing world, marketers are now moving to less traditional media for their marketing and advertising efforts. These media include various social networking websites.

Banning the Sexualization of Children

According to an article in the Herald Sun in Australia, the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) announced changes to the Advertising to Children Code. After these changes go into affect, advertisements for kids' products must not include sexual imagery or imply that children are even sexual beings. Additionally, ads must not state or imply that owning a product will enhance a child's sexuality. This part of the codes kind of boggled my mind because i have never heard of a product that implied that it enhanced a child's sexuality. That just seems extremely messed up. Although, if there are products that are trying to claim that they enhance sexuality among children, I am glad these codes are preventing them.

AANA Chair, Ian Alwill said that the changes would meet the expectations of the Australian community. These new codes are being put into affect because of a growing concern for premature sexualization of children in the main stream media.

These new codes for advertising in Australia are clearly a very important step to protect children from inappropriate advertising and marketing. One thing that comes to mind is the media's effects on body image among younger teenage girls. Eating disorders have become a huge problem throughout the world among girls this age and many people point fingers at the media for creating a need to be thin.

OMD Worldwide Is The Best

OMD Worldwide, the global media communications agency, was named the most awarded media agency in the world for the fourth year in a row by the just released 2007 Gunn Report for Media. Gunn evaluates global media creativity, ranks the most-awarded campaigns agencies and advertisers in media competitions across the world. The Report rates agencies on a point system based on awards won in annual award competitions worldwide and also recognizes the role that innovative, creative and effective media have in building brand engagement and demand with consumers. Since the report began in 2004, OMD Worldwide has maintain its position at number one.

Smoking in Russia

The Russian News and Information Agency recently wrote an article about Russia's house of parliament that recently ratified on a global convention against smoking, which the World Health Organization (WHO) says kills 5 million people across the world annually.

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) is designed to make it easier for national governments to implement tobacco controls, including a ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship. Such steps on banning advertising could prevent millions of people from picking up the smoking habit. Which clearly is a good thing.

Under this new convention, tobacco advertising will be banned completely within five years from. In addition heath warnings should occupy at least 30% of cigarette packaging within three years.

In recent years, tobacco producers have shifted their focus on the developing world, where about 70% of tobacco is now consumed. It is good to see the World Health Organization working to fight tobacco companies and banning their advertising in Russia and throughout the world.