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Explore legal obstacles, cultural diversity, and media restrictions that affect promotional strategies worldwide.
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Legal challenges • Taxes • Language Barriers • Cultural issues • Media Limitations
Legal Challenges • Comparison advertising may be prohibited • “Better than the leading brand” • An ad showing chimps choosing Pepsi over Coke was banned from satellite tv • Products may be prohibited from tv ads
Australia: cigarettes, slimming products • Canada: drugs, use of cartoons in ads for children, margarine • Chile: toothpaste, aspirin • Sweden: use of fictitious characters to endorse products • Switzerland: Use of actors to represent consumers • Kuwait: indecent items, airlines, chocolates, cigarettes, lighters, alcohol ads
In the Netherlands, children may not appear in ads for candy and companies must put a little toothbrush symbol at the end of the commercials as a reminder for people to brush their teeth.
Promotions may be limited • Mail-in offers and purchase with a purchase promotions are prohibited in Germany • Cash rebates are prohibited in Italy • Sweepstakes may not be permitted in Spain, France and Italy
Taxes • Austria has a 10% tax on ad insertions, radio and tv ads
Language • Language and dialects may cause a problem • “tomato paste” was translated to tomato glue in Arabic • Coors put its slogan “Turn it loose” into Spanish, where it was read as “Suffer from diarrhea” • Among Arab countries there are at least 30 dialects which affect translation
Literacy may be a problem • Multiple languages: • Switzerland recognizes four, Israel recognizes 50 and Canada recognizes two
An outdoor ad used by a company had dirty clothes on the left, laundry detergent in the middle, and clean clothes on the right. In countries where people read from right to left, this meant that soap takes clean clothes and makes them dirty.
Cultural Diversity • Affects customer perceptions of items • Colors – white is purity (Europe) or death (Asia) • Diversity – When General Mills first introduced a cake mix, it was not popular in the U.S. because women felt guilty about not baking. It also flopped in Japan, because cakes are not a popular desert
Tradition – In China, cheese is for foreigners • Pampers tried an ad in Japan with a stork delivering diapers to new parents. The ad failed because in Japanese folklore, giant peaches that float on the river bring babies to deserving parents, not storks
Subcultures – in Hong Kong there are 10 different patterns of breakfast eating • Japan has traditionally not bought coffee, however it has become a fashionable drink for younger people who think of themselves as European and sophisticated
Media Limitations • Time/Amount • In Italy, an advertiser can have 10 showings of a commercial a year, with none closer than 10 days • In Brazil, TV commercials are shown together in a string of 10 to 50 within one station break
In Germany, TV scheduling for an entire year must be arranged by August 30 of the preceding year, with no guarantee that commercials intended for summer viewing will not be run in the middle of winter • Kuwait - Only 32 minutes of advertising per day is available and it’s all in the evening
Availability – In some parts of Africa, television and radio are not available for advertising. Companies have used boats that go up and down rivers with loudspeakers to broadcast commercials. • National coverage for some countries means using as many as 40 to 50 different media
Newspapers: Level of competition varies • Uruguay has 21 newspapers with circulation of 553,000 (population = 3 million) • Turkey has 380 newspapers which each have a political affiliation that must be considered • Japan has 5 papers but each are only 16-20 pages long • Delays – In India and Indonesia, paper shortages delay ads for up to 6 months
Magazines – many do not have reliable circulation figures • Ads may not always run due to space limitations – In Britain it is common practice for a raffle to decide which ads run in a magazine issue
Television Issues • Many countries have government influence over television stations • South Korea has two television companies, both government-owned, which broadcast only a few hours a day. They do not broadcast from midnight - 6 am, and 10 am – 5:30 pm on weekdays. Commercials are shown in clusters at the beginning and end of programs, with total advertising limited to 8 percent of air time
Direct Mail – may be helpful if there are no other media • Nestle and Dell have used this effectively in Japan • May have local issues, such as in Chile, where both senders and receivers of mail pay part of the fee
Billboards – helpful for populations with low literacy rates • Cinema is an important media for many countries • Sound trucks with loudspeakers have been used successfully in Haiti to promote products
In the Ukraine, faxing ads has been successful because the postal service is unreliable • In Romania, transit advertising on buses has become more effective that television advertising.
Famous Flops • The singing raisins
The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the California Raisin Advisory Board a $3 million grant to promote raisins in Japan. The commercials were not translated into Japanese because of their success. The result?
The misshapen figures frightened children. • People were not able to discern what product was being advertised and guessed it to be chocolate or potatoes • The promotion cost $3,000 per ton of raisins sold and U.S. producers earned $1,583 per ton
Maytag Company in Europe • Company offered free airline tickets to New York or Orlando from U.K. for customers who purchased more that $375 worth of Hoover appliances
As many as 200,000 customers responded, because the airlines tickets were more than the appliances. • Company wasn’t prepared to handle 200,000 ticket applications, which lead to customer frustration and anger • The more the company sold, the more it lost on the promotion. Total losses were estimated at 48.8 million dollars for the promotion.
Famous Successes • Nestle Baby Stops • When Nestle introduced a new infant formula, they built rest stops which had hostesses, free diapers, and samples of their foods and new formula • As people went on holiday, they got to know Nestle • Market share increased to 45% from 17%