Global brands and global advertising benefits companies by providing access to new customers. After a while, a brand has reached all of the potential customers in a given area, this is known as market saturation. At first, this will only happen in a city or state. In successful companies, their saturated market could be an entire country. If a company has reached every potential customer in a country, becoming a global company is the best way to increase revenue.
Companies have two choices when planning an advertising campaign for the global marketplace; they can either use standardized marketing, or they can tailor their advertising to meet the needs of the local market. While it may be less expensive and easier to apply, standardized advertising is one-size-fits-all and that doesn’t necessarily work for marketing on a global level. Often, people in different countries have diverse needs (Backhaus & Van Doorn, 2007) For one thing; the advertising will need to be in another language. Tastes, customs, design requirements, and laws vary from country to country as well. Countries with diverse, such as China or Africa, will expect the people in advertising to look like them.
The athletic brand Nike is one example of a successful global brand. In the article Global Brand Management, Larson (2011) described Nike’s application of five levels of customer relationship applied on a global scale. Nike adapted these five levels of their marketing pyramid: “presence, relevance, performance, advantage, and bonding,” to the global market.
Every time that Nike entered a new country, they considered the advertising needs of that country, and moved up their marketing pyramid with localized advertising at every stage. (Larson, 2011)
References
Backhaus, K., & Van Doorn, J. (2007). Consumer Perceptions of Advertising Standardization: A Cross-Country Study of Different Advertising Categories. International Management Review, 3(4), 37-49.
Larson, D. (2011). Global Brand Management -- Nike's Global Brand. ISM Journal Of International Business, 1(3), 1-14.
