Nike

• Nike faced a serious problem in Arabic-Speaking

Market place because of its logo conflicted with
local religious symbol. Religious symbol even
today convey deeply impacted symbolic
associations in people minds. The logo, as the
most common symbol in branding, therefore,
takes a risk when globalizing.
 Nonverbal
communication
• Nonverbal communication, such as
people’s gestures, varies from culture to
culture. Some gestures are culture-bound
and thus understood in very different
ways, which makes them problematic.
• Example: Guy laroche perfume Drakkar
Noir in France and in Saudi Arabia.
“The original French advertisement showed
a man’s nude forearm, held at the wrist by a
woman's hand, with the man’s hand holding a
bottle of cologne. The Saudi advertisement
showed the man's forearm covered by a suit
jacket, with only the cuff of the shirt showing,
while the woman lightly touched his hand with
one of her fingers.”
Life style

• The life style in the ad is not familiar to the Chinese. It is difficult to

predict the fate of this advertisement in countries with different life
styles. Life style, on the other hand, can hardly be unified.
McDonald’s in French has to change its brand image from a fast-food
restaurant to a place providing “cheap and pleasant food, with a modern
American image” partly because of the regularity of French meal times.
Country-of-origin
• A conventional marketing strategy is to
associate goods with their countries-of-
origin. In global branding, there is a
tendency to “erase” or at least not to
mention the brand’s country-of-origin in
order to build up a global image,
for example, “Made in the EU”.