The Final Post

Across the Universe: International Marketing was my blog that was centered around the concept of international marketing. I decided to choose advertisements and sites that were focused on the international market. A lot of the topics of my blogs dealt with the expanding of internet sites and American products to the international market.
One of my posts that exemplified the changes of American services was about McDonalds and their influence overseas. There are different names for their foods in different countries. There are even different items served depending on where you are in the world. Another aspect of McDonalds that is different, say in Europe, is the style that the stores are taking. They are becoming more of a hang out, rather than a dirty fast food joint. McDonalds in France are turning into more of a coffee shop atmosphere with wireless internet and modern furniture. Mothers with babies are going there to “hang out,” rather than just for a quick bite to eat, they are becoming the Starbucks of fast food.
Another one of the interesting highlights of international marketing is the aspect of creating sites such as Facebook and AOL to become internationally available. Facebook has recently embarked on a new campaign to promote their international version, known as their non-English version. Facebook wants to become a global phenomenon rather than just solely based in America. There is a good portion of users in London, about 2 million of the 64 million, however they want to expand to other European countries as well as just all over the world in general.
There have been a lot of developments concerning branching out to other countries. I know that especially in the facebook post and the McDonalds post I discussed this common theme, however it is also common in my post about web impressions over seas. This shows the desire to increase presence in other countries and how it is being done. I found that most of the concepts that were addressed and expanded to reach the international market and how they were advertised overseas was through the internet. Since the internet is such a globally spread medium it is an easy way to reach such a varied audience all over the world.
Another way that the internet was used overseas was for a dating site. I know that this does not sound at all strange but it is showing how marketing overseas is done very similarly to how we do it here. On this dating site there were ads for just the specific market in that area, India, since that is where the site was based.
One of the interesting things I came across was the difference in style of American commercials compared to the European commercials. European commercials are often more satirical and a little more wild than the American ads. They can get away with more in Europe, where here in American our guidelines are stricter. It has been known that European commercials try to attract customers through their innovative, sexier and more flexible approach to the advertisements created. In America it has been heard the advertising is decreasing and PR is increasing, however in Europe that is not the case. We might want to learn a lesson from this that we can be a little more flexible with our ads and maybe more obscure to attract the interest of customers rather than trying to be so strict and correct all the time.
I found this assignment to be beneficial to myself as well as the Blogosphere because I was able to research a topic, which in turn I would write a conversational yet informative entry about. I think that the fact that I chose international advertising to write about was just one more step in the direction of myself realizing how interested I am with the world of advertising and marketing as well as the international audience. I love to travel and when I do I always look at the ads around. I want to see how they differ and of course how they are similar to those that are common here in the US. By researching some corporations such as McDonalds and being able to find out how things are changed overseas sparked my interest in how other “All American” aspects would be portrayed internationally. It is definitely something that I will continue to look into.

Ciao!