The Tribulations of Global Image Promotion

“Advertising that works in one country could very well wind up inhibiting sales in another.”
-Rodman p. 444

When a product sells well in one country because of a great advertising campaign, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will sell equally well in another country with the same campaign. This demonstrates how advertising executives need to be creative with their products and take into account many factors regarding their audience so as to streamline their message in the best way possible. Advertisers need to know their consumer demographic and understand how to manipulate that consumer demographic’s wants to sell more product.
I recently ran into an example of how advertising campaigns work differently in different countries based on conflicting projections of the “ideal beauty.” During my travels in South and Southeast Asia last year, I observed many advertisements for beauty products such as lotions, creams, deodorants, and face washes. In SE Asia, all the advertisements I saw were for “whitening” skin products. According to the advertisements, people would be able to see a considerable change in the lightness of their skin color after use. The advertisements in this region portrayed the ideal woman as having pure white skin. I thought about how this portrayal was almost a complete 180 degree turn from the ideal beauty portrayed in American advertising. In the majority of ads I see in our country the ideal beauty is bronzed from head to toe. A walk down the beauty isle in any US supermarket reveals a plethora of tanning products: tanning spray, bronzing lotion, tanning oil. Many of the whitening skin products of Asia and the tanning products of the US are made by the same company. The advertisers need to have an understanding regarding the cultural ideals of the demographic they are targeting. If the company marketed it’s whitening products in America and it’s tanning products in Asia the profit made off these sales would decrease. SE Asian people with tan skin wouldn’t buy tanning products and Americans with light skin wouldn’t buy whitening products. It seems like a revelation in body image problems: to market the ideally beautiful skin color as one that many people of a population already have. But then, advertisers and producers would never make any profit off this idea so we’ll likely never have to worry about this logical solution in the future.



Victoria's Secret Models: tans all around encourage American women to buy tanning products like this:

Tanning spray, which the women of SE Asia would never purchase. Tan skin in SE Asia is considered ugly by many. Tan skin is a likely sign that a woman is a lowely laborer and work out in the sun all day. White skin is seen as a sign of affluence, while in America tan skin is seen as a sign of luxury. A tan Western woman has the time to go frolic on the beaches of the Carribbean and spend money on her appearance.


No point in marketing this product in SE Asia. No profit = No point.


White skin is a sign of affluence in Asia. There is a huge market for whitening skin products. While a huge industry in Asia, this would never work in the West.

Whitening deodorant.

Skin whitening products on foreign shelves.