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Friday Jun 22, 2007
Essay #5 - Christina Kellmann - Advertising Connects Communities
Research over the course of this semester has added up to seeing that although globalization is affecting the world, its pace and intensity is not as strong as it would seem. We are still a long way from becoming a true global village, but we have successfully moved on from having a set, unchanging sense of place. We now view a place as an ever-changing network influenced by other cultures and ideas. And instead of belonging to just one community, these networks allow us to be part of many. Advertising plays a significant role in forming transnational networks because it is a basis on which different communities can find a common ground, and a common ground can form new communities.
Transnationality emphasizes ?relations between things and on movements across things? (Mitchell, 2005, p. 74). Advertising is like a common thread that infiltrates all types of media in every nation across the globe. The ads that people in foreign countries see are likely to be for much of the same types of products as a majority of other nations see. Sreberny-Mohammadi (1996) says, ?Much of the original focus of images and discourses of globalization came from capitalistic marketing strategies, based on the transnationalization of capital? (p. 5) But the strategies are not necessarily as important as the effects (Sreberny-Mohammadi). The effects are what bond us as global citizens. For example, Motorola and Apple launched a campaign in 2004 linking music and mobile phones targeted at Chinese youth (Wang, 2005). This campaign effectively linked Chinese ?youth culture? with others around the world who consumed any type of music that was available on iTunes (Wang, 2005). So in effect, the advertising strategies used by Motorola helped form one part of the web that is the transnational social network.
Communities are not just based on proximity. A community can be based on similar ideas or beliefs, which makes marketing toward that specific group easier. Women are a global community in and of themselves. Social networks can be based on any types of likenesses between people or groups (Sreberny-Mohammadi). Advertising focused towards women can be based on issues that transcend any kind of language or cultural barrier, such as motherhood (Dallmann, 1999). This shows how we, as global individuals, can be parts of many different communities and thus be affected by different advertisements from any given nation; this is the true meaning of a transnational network.
Globalization and the formation of transnational networks are still a road being paved. The global village is still an idea that is being formed. As Dallmann (1999) says, ?Although the approach shows promise for the development of advertising campaigns targeting global market segments, much additional work is certainly needed before its potential for advertising research is realized? (p. 1336).
Sources:
Dallmann, K. (1999). Targeting women in German and Japanese magazine advertising: A difference-in-differences approach. European Journal of Marketing. 35(11/12) pp. 1320-1339.
Mitchell, Katharyne
(2003). Cultural Geographies of Transnationality. In K. Anderson, Kay. et al.
(Eds.), Handbook of Cultural Geography.
Sreberny-Mohammadi,
Annabelle (1996). Globalization, communication and transnational civil society:
Introduction. In S. Braman and A. Sreberny-Mohammadi (Eds.), Globalization,
communication and transnational civil society, pp. 1-19.
Wang, J. (2005). Youth culture, music, and cell phone
branding in
Posted at 11:23AM Jun 22, 2007 by KELLMANN, CHRISTINA in General | Comments[3]
Those were excellent examples of the different communities we can belong to. I feel like we've come to similar conclusions about the ways media can affect the communities we belong to, and the types of communities to which we can belong. I like the way you show that in some ways, the communities are universal, like mothers who care about their children, and in other ways they can be very specific, but in people could potentially fit into both. Just a side note, I liked the way one of your sources targets the two groups you had said you were interested in discussing at the start of class. It was nice being in the group with you this summer!
Posted by Jeff Jacobson on June 22, 2007 at 02:10 PM EDT #
Although I may agree with you, your first paragraph seems to assert that everyone now thinks about globalization in this way. I'd say that's probably not the case. I like the example of motherhood linking women across cultures. When studying this kind of thing, we often forget how humanity ties us together just because we share many of the same human experiences--love, loss, joy, pain, etc. Money is another issue that unites people and so advertising is something that is done in nearly all cultures, whether it's a TV ad campaign or a guy shouting from his table at a market.
Posted by 70.61.93.96 on June 22, 2007 at 02:27 PM EDT #
dang, i forgot my name again... ^that was me
Posted by Chris Bigelow on June 22, 2007 at 02:28 PM EDT #