International Business....in the air

American Airlines has recently put together a new advertising approach to focus on their international business class passengers, known as the Flagship Experience. To promote this concept there will be a new 30 second television commercial that will at first be aired in select markets during the Academy Awards. This commercial will feature computer-generated imagery of the new features of the premium international business class. Then they will continue to create a website that includes in depth information and features that will be available in eight countries worldwide. www.aa.com/flagship
According to Dan Gorton, American Airlines Vice President of Marketing, “This Flagship Experience approach is different from what we've done in the past. It reflects how our brand is evolving, and it demonstrates that we're in tune with our customers' needs."
American Airlines is the world’s largest airline, and through this new campaign plans to showcase their international business class. The new seats are designed by Recaro, and are extremely adjustable, and also feature a bed length of 76 inches. There are privacy dividers as well as interlocking tray tables. It should be quite luxurious.


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ACT responsible

The international advertising agency (IAA) has decided to become more proactive in promoting social responsibility. There is a program entitled “One Minute Responsibility,” which the ACT organized. It is an initiative of AdForum, which features spots addressing a variety of causes. This program is made up of 25 campaigns that are part of the global ACT responsible tour.
This is said to be some of the best creative work for non-commercial causes, according to Mr. Mustapha Tabba, president of the IAA chapter in Jordan. Herve de Clerck, initiator of the ACT and IAA vice president of corporate responsibility made sure to include, “Our goal is to federate, inspire and promote great work in advertising and communication, in favour of social responsibility and sustainable development, and to show how advertising plays a significant role in raising awareness in today’s crucial world issues”.
Oliver de Montchenu, managing director of EuroNews sales (the channel that will be airing these social responsibility shorts) expressed that the staff of EuroNews is delighted to promote these ideas of social responsibility. “It shows the global capacity of the advertising industry to stimulate further the development of responsible communications”.
I think that this is a great idea for EuroNews to take on these promotions. It is definitely good to see advertising attempting to work for something beneficial to the world, such as sustainability, rather than only constant consumerism. It is definitely beneficial to attempt to inform people about these issues, and the fact that advertising agencies are taking it up internationally shows that the US should jump on this bandwagon.

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Digital Signage Sweeps Canada

The Victoria Airport Academy has just entered a contract with new advertising in its airport. There are strong ties with this group to Vancouver Island. Richard Paquette, President and CEO of Victoria Airport Authority said, “Any level of business, large or small, local or global, that wishes to communicate with our passengers and guests now has that opportunity."
There is a plan to install these digital signs, created by Immediate Images Inc., which is British Columbia’s leading provider of digital signage. This signage is installed on 27 LCD screens throughout the airport. These displays are connected to the internet, and can be updated or change their ads from any computer with internet access. "The Immediate Images system allows advertisers to schedule ads to run five minutes from now or five years from now", said Farr, of Immediate Images, "And the fact that the medium is dynamic, not static, means that ads get noticed – they are seen and remembered."
This Victoria International Airport serves all areas of Canada, as well as the U.S and Mexico. It is also the second busiest airport in the province of Birtish Columbia. This is good for these digital signs because they are a new idea that will be seen by many people that walk through the airport. There will also be connections to people from the U.S and Mexico since that is where service is common. If these are a success in Canada, it might be time we bring these digital signs to the U.S, not only in airports but all over the cities as well.

Victoria Airport Advertising

Advertising Melting Pot

The term “Melting pot” is often thought of as a good thing. New York is known as a melting pot because it has a variety of different people and different cultures all in one area. This helps create diversity and opens out minds up to other areas of the world and how they do things. Unfortunately not all people like the idea of a melting pot. In the Middle East marketing experts are calling for ad industry regulation. There is disruption of Arab culture with all of the international advertising campaigns that are invading the Arab culture. According to Al Hassan, Managing Director of Flagship Projects Marketing, "International advertising campaigns Arabised in the region are playing a big role in killing Arab culture and creating a melting pot of Western culture.”
This concept is linked to the idea of globalization and how American Culture is influencing all other areas in the world, eventually causing them to leave their original ideas and traditions in the wake of McDonalds and Nike. “Al Hasan added that advertising associations should hold responsibility for enhancing the Arab advertising industry, taking it to a new level of professionalism and innovation through a 360 approach. This approach should include creativity, efficiency, quality and value-added services provided to clients working in different industries, which are expanding both horizontally and vertically in an unprecedented manner.”
The idea that has been introduced is to stop the export of international artworks that are introduced into Arab markets. There are global trends and increased branding of international products that create the key targets to competition in 2008. The advertising messages that have, and should speak directly to Arab consumers are not proving as relevant to regional markets. “Arab brands are not able to compete on international levels according to latest studies: very finite number of Arab brands was included in the Top 100 Brands in the World list.”
It is a common fact that there are many youth internationally that would rather accept the western ways in forms of food and clothes rather than stick to their traditional culture. It is interesting to take into consideration the idea if this is our fault on the American side, since we want to bring our culture overseas or is it just the way it is. People, especially young people want to keep up with the newest products and trends. If what they are seeing on television is advertising for the new Air Jordan’s or an i-phone, that is what they will desire. That is the basis of advertising, and for America, the fact that it is spreading internationally is a goal achieved.



http://www.bi-me.com/main.php?id=17247&t=1&c=33&cg=4

Pepsi...drinks or snacks?

PepsiCo is known as one of the largest beverage manufacturers globally. It was interesting to hear that this company thought that they would end up with lower profits. According to the Dow Jones, “Pepsi's shares had fallen nearly 5% since Jan. 28, the day before Pepsi Bottling Group Inc.” There was some worry that they would not recover from this downfall.
However, of course they did. It is often forgotten that many of their products include snack foods, which internationally have a large share of the market growth. Their snacks such as Doritos and Quaker rice cakes are part of their broader international footprint. Many of Pepsi’s bottlers do not think about the food line, and just consider their beverages, which have main locations focused in the U.S, Canada, Greece, Mexico, Russia, Spain and Turkey. "The product and geographic diversification benefited PepsiCo significantly," said Todd, Portfolio Manager at Greenwood Capital Associates, which holds PepsiCo shares.
“International earnings rose 12% as revenue grew 26%, including seven percentage points from the weak dollar. Volume growth was led by the Asia Pacific region, which posted a 21% jump.”
Clearly PepsiCo has been doing well internationally, I would like to see how their ad campaigns are different compared to ours here in the U.S. Also, it would be interesting to find out why the snack products go over so well internationally while we are more focused on the beverage. Pepsi appears to be an “American” drink that you would get at a baseball game while eating a hot dog. Maybe this is why the idea of a nice cold refreshing Pepsi is not so popular overseas. They would rather have snack foods that do not have any underlying “All American” meaning behind them.

Pepsi had also recently had a competition to design your own can, this might be a way of trying to reach out to other markets. By doing this, it gets people interested in what new ideas can be brought to Pepsi and will then have Pepsi on the mind, and possibly look for the new can while browsing the beverage aisle.

PepsiCo info.

Facebook Fever

Check your Facebook! Has there ever been a day that went by when you haven’t discussed or heard someone else talking about the ever-popular facebook. The site that had originally been for college students to network, usually within their schools, and then branched out to the public is now embarking on a new campaign to attract international users.
Facebook has 64 million users, with about 2 million in the UK, however they want to introduce a new feature, a non-English version. The goal is to have this out by Easter. It is part of “an ambitious overseas expansion strategy.” The Plan here is to generate more users across Europe, in the non-English speaking countries, as well as in Australasia (a region of Oceania: New Zealand, Australia and neighboring islands in the Pacific Ocean).
According to Chandlee, Facebook’s commercial director, Facebook is also planning to expand its “Beacon platform,” which launched in October with 45 parnterships, some of them include Coca Cola and Amazon.com. Facbook is hoping to expand within the next 90 days; they want to open up to more international advertisers.
If Facebook enables people speaking and writing in other languages to access the site, it will increase this worldwide communication even more than it already has been. This is a big step for facebook, since it has only been over the past year and a half that they decided to open up their site to any users of all different networks. There has been some uproar about this feature of facebook, since it is now compared to myspace, which is creepster central. Even though facebook does allow any user to become a part of this online community, I still feel that it is not quite as trashy as myspace.
It would definitely be interesting to see how this international market changes things, with more connections to other people in other parts of the world. Also the marketing and advertising of overseas would be something to keep an eye on. Is the plan to market American products internationally, or will they then incorporate international products to America as well? I’m always interested to see different items, and how other countries promote them.

Internet International

Google has always been the top search engine in the U.S as well as internationally competing with yahoo and Microsoft. Google holds 48% of the market, where Yahoo holds 33% and Microsoft holds 38%. Yahoo and Microsoft are planning on teaming up to take over the International market, starting off with their conquer of Europe. This is frightening for Google, because if they do team up they will definitely take over the International market. According to Wayne Arnold, the chairman of the Practitioners in Advertising's digital group, "a combination of the two will make one of the most powerful display ad propositions out there - a huge growth area as search advertising also starts to plateau - but it doesn't necessarily solve the issue of Google's search dominance." This show how powerful the merger of these two will be internationally, for search engine purposes, as well as advertising in general, since there is a lot of advertising that comes out of both of these sites.
Google does hold 70% of the UK market for advertising at this point in time as well as a large portion of Australia's market, however in Japan Yahoo is the big name. The Asian countries are eventually going to be the most important to target, because of their economic growth and technological advancements, and if Yahoo and Microsoft can tackle that region, as well as have a slight influence in other international markets, they will become very successful. The merge is not definite yet, but according to experts it would make a lot of sense, because it "automatically gives scale against Google to operate as a gateway of massive size for people using the internet."

To find out more about the merge of Yahoo and Google click here


I think this merge would be very interesting, as to see how it would affect advertising globally. I have noticed that there are more advertisements on Yahoo, and they also used to have television commercials where Google never did. Maybe this would create a connection between U.S and International advertising buzz, since we would use similar search engines with influential advertising.