Culture Influence on Advertisement.doc

B.A. Thesis Culture Influence on Advertisement B.A. Candidate: Liu YangAdvisor: Meng Fanyi Foreign Language DepartmentJiaying UniversityMay 22, 2008AcknowledgmentsI am greatly in debt to a number of people, without whose help this thesis could not be completed. First of all, I wish to express my thanks and appreciation to my tutor, Mr. Meng Fanyi, whose helpful suggestions have contributed greatly to the completion of this thesis. I owe him special thanks for providing me solid and abundant materials and instructions. My sincere thanks should go to all the people helping me on this work, for their constant encouragement and support throughout the course of the research. Finally, I will express my thanks to my family who have shown patience and understanding to the entire period of this work. The biggest thanks must go to my parents who, though unable to support me theoretically, encourage me spiritually.iAbstractAdvertising is one of the most important things present in our society today, like an old slogan puts it “Advertising, your right to choose”.Advertising is a form of communication whose purpose is to inform potential customers about products and services and how to obtain and use them. The main aim of advertising was believed to selling products. Advertisements are designed to generate increased consumption of those products and services through the creation and reinforcement of brand image and brand loyalty. For these purposes advertisements often contain both factual information and persuasive messages. All the major medium is used to deliver these messages, including: television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, video games, the Internet, and billboards. Advertising is often placed by an advertising agency on behalf of a company.Culture generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Different definitions of culture reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity.Culture is manifested in music, literature, lifestyle, painting and sculpture, theater and film and similar things. Although some people identify culture in terms of consumption and consumer goods as in high culture, low culture, folk culture, or popular culture, anthropologists understand culture to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning.iiMost international advertising blunders occur because of a failure to fully understand the foreign culture and its social norms. This can take many forms, ranging from blatant rejection of existing customs and tastes to innocent insensitivity to the environment.Key Words: advertisement culture cultural blundersiii摘要广告是目前我们社会重最重要的东西之一，就像一句老话说的，“广告，你选择的权利”。广告是一种以向潜在顾客介绍产品，服务以及如何拥有和使用它们的交流方式。 广告为了促进销售,巩固品牌形象和品牌忠诚度，经常包含了实际和有说服力的信息。所有的主流媒体都被用以传递这些信息，包括电视，广播，电影，杂志，报纸，电子游戏，网络和公告牌。广告通常由广告代理为公司制作。 文化通常涉及到给予这些行为意义以及重要性的人类的行为模式和符号结构。对于文化的不同定义反映了对于文化的理解的不同的理论基础。文化是由音乐，文学，生活方式，绘画及雕刻，戏剧和电影等东西组成的。虽然有些人通过消费和商品来区别文化（就像高等文化，低等文化，通俗文化，或流行文化）。 人类学家明白文化不仅仅指消费品， 还包括了制造物品和给它们赋予意义的过程。 大部分国际广告的失误是由于没有对国外文化和社会习惯充分理解而引起的。这可以有许多的形式，从大张旗鼓地抵制现有的习俗和品味到对环境的无动于衷。关键词：广告 文化 文化差异iviiiivv122223346668899101011ContentsAcknowledgements.Abstract(English).Abstract(Chinese).Contents.1Introduction.2Advertising.2.1 TheDefinition of Advertising.2.2 Trend of Advertising.2.2.1 Trend of Chinese Advertising.2.2.2 Trend of Western Advertising.2.3 The Importance of Advertising.2.4 The Aim of Advertising.3Culture.3.1 Different Aspects of Culture.3.1.1 Culture as Civilization.3.1.2 Culture as Worldview.3.1.3 Culture as Symbols.3.1.4 Culture as Stabilizing Mechanism.3.2 Cultural Blunders.3.2.1 Different Life Styles.v3.2.2 Different Understanding of Graphical Elements.3.2.3 The Way of Expressing Humor.1113163.2.4 Use of Slogans, Idioms and Phrase.4Conclusion.References.viCulture Influence on Advertisement1. IntroductionModern advertising was born in western countries. As the economy expanded during the 19th century, advertising grew alongside. Advertising entered China in 19th century with western companies. However the real development of advertising in China was beginning in 1980s. Chinese culture has deep influence on advertisement. Chinese advertisement is becoming mature and having its own style. With the globalization of economies and trade growth, companies need to find new markets to sell their goods. At the same time, with the economy growth of China there are increasing number of local corporations wants to “walk out of China” to entering international markets. When companies want to sell products in a new market with different culture, their marketing strategies need to adapt to the local culture. The influence of the local culture is very substantial in numerous countries around the globe. It is quite necessary to adapt communication to some local markets especially in countries where the cultural tradition is still very strong.Advertisement is closely related to peoples daily life in the modern days. It is attracting peoples attention more than ever. Advertisement is art, however adapting advertisement to a different culture is knowledge. For achieving ideal result, understanding and analyzing of its features is necessary.1The point of view of communicators/advertising executives who consider that communication applies for a particular public viewed as a target and known as the target audience. For them, culture is defined as the culture of a transnational group of consumers having the same life style and similar consumption habits. In this case, the study of culture influence on advertisement translation is very necessary. 2. AdvertisingAdvertising is born to sell products and services to potential customers. It is one of the most important parts in the business world. Ad market is keep growing rapidly no matter in China or western countries. It is covered all the major medias from newspaper to internet. 2.1 The Definition of AdvertisingAdvertising is a form of communication whose purpose is to inform potential customers about products and services and how to obtain and use them. It is not only a marketing tool but also a social actor and a cultural artifact. As a social actor, advertising stages “a powerful social drama (Dyer, 1982) that transforms symbols and ideas, and bonds together images of individuals and products. As a cultural artifact, advertising serves as a mirror for deeper cultural tendencies, reflecting certain attitudes, behaviors and values, and reinforcing certain lifestyles and philosophies that help sell commodities.2.2 Trend of Advertisement2.2.1 Trend of Chinese Advertisement2With the rapid growth of Chinese economy, the development of Chinese Advertisement is having a bright future. China is now tied with the U.K. as the worlds third-largest ad market, after the U.S. and Japan. Total advertising spending in China is 312 billion CNY in 2007, according to CTR Market Research, the leading market research company in China, up 9% of 2006. TV advertisement grew 12%. At the same time internet advertisement grew 48%, total spending is 11.6 billion CNY. CTR said that the China advertising market will keep rapid growth in the coming years. 2008 Beijing Olympics will be positive for TV advertisement market (Net.1). In this satiation Chinese corporations are trying to develop new markets in foreign countries. 2.2.2 Trend of Western Country AdvertisementAdvertising spending has increased dramatically in recent years. According to a report titled Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2006-2010 (Net.2) issued by global accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, worldwide advertising spending was $385 billion. The accounting firms report projected worldwide advertisement spending to exceed half-a-trillion dollars by 2010.While advertising can be seen as necessary for economic growth, it is not without social costs. Unsolicited Commercial Email and other forms of spam have become so prevalent as to have become a major nuisance to users of these services, as well as being a financial burden on internet service providers. Advertising is increasingly invading public spaces, such as schools, which some critics argue is a form of child exploitation.2.3 The Importance of AdvertisingAdvertising is one of the most important things present in our society today, like an old slogan puts it “Advertising, your right to choose”.Advertising helps to keep the consumers informed about whatever new products or services are available in the market at their disposal. It helps to spread awareness about products or services that are of some use to consumer and potential buyers. 3The main aim of advertising was believed to selling products. These are the kind of people who vehemently oppose anything that make advertising seem unethical. Advertising on the whole helps business as well as the economy to prosper and makes the consumer aware of the various choices that are available to him. Spending on advertising is huge. One often quoted statistic by market research firm ZenithOptimedia estimates that worldwide spending on advertising exceeds (US) $400 billion (Net.3).This level of spending supports thousands of companies and millions of jobs. In fact, in many countries most media outlets, such as television, radio and newspapers, would not be in business without revenue generated through the sale of advertising. While worldwide advertising is an important contributor to economic growth, individual marketing organizations differ on the role advertising plays. For some organizations little advertising may be done, instead promotional money is spent on other promotion options such a personal selling through a sales team.For some smaller companies advertising may consist of occasional advertisement and on a very small scale, such as placing small ads in the classified section of a local newspaper. But most organizations, large and small, that rely on marketing to create customer interest are engaged in consistent use of advertising to help meet marketing objectives. This includes regularly developing advertising campaigns, which involve a series of decisions for planning, creating, delivering and evaluating an advertising effort.2.4 The Aim of Advertising4Advertisements are designed to generate increased consumption of those products and services through the creation and reinforcement of brand image and brand loyalty. For these purposes advertisements often contain both factual information and persuasive messages. All the major medium is used to deliver these messages, including: television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, video games, the Internet, and billboards. Advertising is often placed by an advertising agency on behalf of a company.Advertising is a non-personal form of promotion that is delivered through selected media outlets that, under most circumstances, require the marketer to pay for message placement. Advertising has long been viewed as a method of mass promotion in that a single message can reach a large number of people. But, this mass promotion approach presents problems since many exposed to an advertising message may not be within the marketers target market, and thus, may be an inefficient use of promotional funds. However, this is changing as new advertising technologies and the emergence of new media outlets offer more options for targeted advertising.Advertising had a history of being considered a one-way form of marketing communication where the message receiver，is not in position to immediately respond to the message. This is changing at the same time. For example, in the next few years technologies will be readily available to enable a television viewer to click a button to request more details on a product seen on their favorite TV program. In fact, it is expected that over the next 10-20 years advertising will move away from a one-way communication model and become one that is highly interactive.Advertisements can also be seen on the seats of grocery carts, on the walls of an airport walkway, on the sides of buses, heard in telephone hold messages and in-store public address systems. Advertisements are usually placed anywhere an audience can easily and/or frequently access visuals and/or audio and print.5Organizations which frequently spend large sums of money on advertising but do not strictly sell a product or service to the general public include: political parties, interest groups and religion-supporting organizations. Additionally, some non-profit organizations are not typical advertising clients and rely upon free channels, such as public service announcements.3. Culture Culture is hard to define. Scholars have tried to define culture in a satisfactory manner, but each is dissatisfied with the others definitions. As a result, we now have over 150 different definitions as reviewed by Kroeber and Kluckhohn in their book Culture, A Critical Review of Concept and Definition (1952).Culture from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning to cultivate (Harper, 2001), generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Cultures can be understood as systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another (Findley, 2006:14). Different definitions of culture reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity.3.1 Different Aspects of CultureCulture is manifested in music, literature, lifestyle, painting and sculpture, theater and film and similar things (Williams, 1976:87). Although some people identify culture in terms of consumption and consumer goods as in high culture, low culture, folk culture, or popular culture (Berger, 1971), anthropologists understand culture to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning, and to the social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded. For them, culture thus includes art, science, as well as moral systems.63.1.1 Culture as civilizationIt is believed that the idea of culture was developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. This notion of culture reflected inequalities within European societies, and between European powers and their colonies around the world. It identifies culture with civilization and contrasts it with nature. One can classify some countries and nations as more civilized than others, and some people as more cultured than others. Some cultural theorists have thus tried to eliminate popular or mass culture from the definition of culture. Theorists such as Matthew Arnold or the Leavisites regard culture as simply the result of the best that has been thought and said in the world” (1882). Arnold contrasted mass/popular culture with social chaos or anarchy. Therefore, culture links closely with social cultivation: the progressive refinement of human behavior. Arnold consistently uses the word this way: . culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world(1882).In practice, culture referred to elite activities such as museum-caliber art and classical music, and the word cultured described people who knew about, and took part in, these activities. These are often called high culture, to distinguish them from mass culture or popular culture.From the 19th century onwards, some social critics have accepted this contrast between the highest and lowest culture, but have stressed the refinement and sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure and distort peoples essential nature. Therefore, folk music, as produced by working-class people, honestly expresses a natural way of life, and classical music seems superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrays Indigenous peoples as “noble savages” living authentic unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly-stratified capitalist systems of the West.7Today most social scientists reject the monadic conception of culture, and the opposition of culture to nature. They recognize non-elites as just as cultured as elites and non-Westerners as just as civilized - simply regarding them as just cultured in a different way.3.1.2 Culture as worldviewDuring the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially those concerned with nationalist movements such as th