Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies

Vol. 23, No. 2, April 2009, 147–157

Strategic regionalization in marketing campaigns: Beyond the

standardization/glocalization debate
John Sinclair* and Rowan Wilken

The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

While the economic logic of globalization might impel global marketers to seek the
economies of scale and other theoretical advantages of standardization, experience
with the realities of linguistic and other cultural differences has obliged them to go
some distance towards the ‘glocalization’ of their marketing campaigns. By examining
the marketing strategies of Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Procter & Gamble over the last
decade or so, with particular attention to Asia as a region, this article suggests that
strategic regionalization in its various forms represents a kind of practical compromise
with an extreme nation-by-nation approach – that is, a means of ensuring that
campaigns are not glocalized any more than is strictly necessary. More generally, it
points up the degree to which the global– local dialectic is, in practice, mediated not
only by the national but also by the regional.

Cultural adaptation has become a fundamental strategic principle for marketers in the age
of globalization. While past decades saw campaigns for products such as Marlboro run on
a uniform, ‘standardized’ basis in every country where they were sold – ‘one sight, one
sound, one sell’ (Mattelart 1991, 55) – marketing has had to learn how to come to terms
with the realities of cultural and other differences as it has become ever more globalized.
Standardization has had its advocates, however, and wielded considerable influence
amongst global marketers in the 1980s. In particular, a Harvard management guru,
Theodore Levitt, proclaimed ‘the emergence of global markets for standardized consumer
products on a previously unimagined scale’ which had overcome ‘accustomed differences
in national or regional preference’ and now required ‘the standardization of products,
manufacturing, and the institutions of trade and commerce’ (1983, 92 – 3). The leading
British advertising agency of the 1980s, Saatchi & Saatchi, helped to build itself into a
global corporation by taking up Levitt’s doctrine (Mattelart 1991, 48– 54).
Saatchi & Saatchi foresaw a world in which there were fewer and fewer agencies
servicing fewer and fewer clients, as all industries became more conglomerated in their
ownership and management. Indeed, they helped to fulfil their own prophecy to the extent
that they fostered a now dominant trend towards ‘global alignment’. This is where a global
client will have its advertising provided by the same global agency in each and every
national market where it does business. Given that such advertising agencies are mostly
integrated into ‘global groups’, huge holding companies which also have market research,
public relations, direct marketing and other ‘marketing communication disciplines’ under
their umbrella, the very organization of global advertising, and marketing in general,
would seem to facilitate and favour standardization (Sinclair 2006).

*Corresponding author. Email: [Link]@[Link]

ISSN 1030-4312 print/ISSN 1469-3666 online

q 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/10304310802710496
[Link]
148 J. Sinclair and R. Wilken

Apart from its rhetorical and organizational fit with the nascent global era, standardization
was and is seen to have economic advantages: ‘the creation of a stronger global
international identity through consistent positioning and image across markets over
time . . . cost reduction through economies of scale in advertising production, sharing of
experience and effective use of advertising budget’ (Tai 1997, 56– 7). That is, corporations
have a strong economic disincentive against cultural adaptation and so, as Oscar Wilde
said of the dog that could walk on its hind legs, the remarkable thing is not how well it is
done, but the fact that it is done at all. Levitt’s thesis was much disputed within marketing
circles, but more influential in calling it into question were the manifest failures of certain
celebrated global campaigns during the 1980s and early 1990s.
Some of these were well documented in the trade press at the time, such as Parker pens;
others are more apocryphal, like the warnings circulated in marketing textbooks of
instances where slogans or even brand names failed to translate – for instance, that the
name Coca-Cola translated into Chinese as ‘bite the wax tadpole’ (Mooney 2008). As well
as such linguistic and cultural differences, including religious strictures and variations in
tastes, marketers were also encountering practical differences in national regulatory
regimes and distribution systems. This experience turned attention to alternative ways of
approaching global marketing, perhaps best represented by Nestlé, which for some time
had been pursuing a more localized, or ‘multidomestic’, strategy of differentially
formulating products like its instant coffee in accordance with the peculiarities of various
national markets. Standardization has continued to be attractive to global marketers, for
the reasons given, but they have had to develop adaptive strategies to cope with market-by-
market variations (Herbig 1998).
The legacy of all this has been a kind of continuum evolving in marketing theory and
practice between standardization and localization. However, by the beginning of the
1990s, some middle ground was being sought in the concept of ‘glocalization’, ‘one of
the main marketing buzzwords’ of the time (Robertson 1997, 28). This had its origins in
the strategies of Japanese marketers in Asia, notably Sony, which pursued ‘global
localization’ rather than ‘global standardization’ (Iwabuchi 2002). Just as Roland
Robertson took up this unlikely concept in the social theory of globalization to show the
fallacious dichotomization of ‘homogenization’ and ‘heterogenization’, arguing instead
that the tendencies denoted by these terms are ‘mutually implicative’ (1997, 27),
glocalization was embraced in marketing as the practical wisdom of creating the right
balance between minding the bottom line of standardization while meeting the demands of
localization – more than just a point on a continuum. Indeed, one advocate argues that
standardization is a mere abstraction, and all cross-cultural marketing requires some
degree of glocalization: it is ‘the working arm of standardization’ (Herbig 1998, 48).

Adaptation: In search of the right mix, balance and level

Yet there is the crucial question of just what it is that is being glocalized. Marketing
textbooks conventionally distinguish between the four ‘Ps’ in the ‘marketing mix’:
product, place, promotion and price. The product itself is designed with its intended
market in mind; it is made available through an appropriate system of distribution; it is
promoted in various possible ways, ranging from advertising in the media to more direct
contact with prospective consumers such as giveaways; and a suitable price point is set.
In his analysis of McDonald’s marketing mix, Vignali (2001) adds three more ‘Ps’: people
(staffing and training); process (procedures to be followed); and ‘physicals’
(the environment of the outlets). The specifics of Mc Donald’s as a case study will be
 Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 149

returned to later in the article, but the point here is that Vignali distinguishes between those
elements that are standardized – indeed McDonaldized (Ritzer 1998) – and those that are
adapted to local markets: briefly, for example, procedures remain constant, even if there
are local variations in the products and their prices. A different kind of distinction is drawn
by Banerjee (1994), who suggests that the physical or functional properties of a product
may be kept the same from one country to another, while the brand values – that is, the
cultural ‘meaning’ of the brand – can be varied according to the market. Even in
advertising, he suggests, it is possible to use a common advertising strategy and
positioning of the product, but vary the ‘execution’ (102).
A third distinction is made by Tai (1997) in her study of regional advertising strategies
in Asia (1997): strategic (that is, main campaign theme, market segmentation and product
positioning) versus tactical (creative execution and media placement). Once again, the
former tend to be standardized, but the latter localized: she refers to this specifically as an
‘adaptation strategy’ (58). Finally, and more abstractly, there is the rather old-fashioned
distinction between form and content. Robertson, in his discussion of the interpenetration
of universalism and particularism, remarks on how, whatever the differences between
national societies, ‘the form of their particularities . . . is very similar (1997, 34). When
applied to marketing, this suggests a series of elements which are constant in their
presence across markets, but are manifested in quite distinct ways. Thus, although any and
all elements within the marketing mix can be varied from one market to another,
adaptation consists of holding certain selected elements constant while varying others. In
this way, the marketer seeks a balance between the organizational and economic
advantages of standardization, and the necessities of responding to cultural and other
differences between markets. This is the practical meaning of glocalization.
There is also the issue of exactly who it is that the marketing is directed towards.
Echoing Levitt, Saatchi & Saatchi enthused about how global advertising could target
‘segments’, or similar socio-economic groups in different regions: ‘there are probably
more social differences between midtown Manhattan and the Bronx . . . than between
midtown Manhattan and the 7th Arrondissement of Paris’ (qtd in Mattelart 1991, 52 –3).
This does seem to be true for certain kinds of products, ‘especially those targeting
“transnational tribes” of affluent or style-conscious consumers’ (Banerjee 1994, 98).
These include services that are intrinsically international, like credit cards, and goods that
carry international prestige, such as designer brands (Herbig 1998, 49). Yet, as more and
more companies – usually based in the United States or Europe – enter the rapidly
developing economies of the erstwhile ‘Third World’, and the BRICs nations in particular
(Brazil, Russia, India and China), they are needing to find strategies to cope with the
cultural and other barriers that confront not elite but mass market goods and services, such
as soft drinks and other FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) categories, and food
franchise operations.
If segments are to be targeted, this suggests that adaptation might have to work at
a number of levels: the sub-national as well as the national, and perhaps also the world-
regional. In addition, to the extent that adaptation is being made on cultural-linguistic
grounds, rather than, for example, to meet national regulations, then geocultural or
geolinguistic regions come into consideration – that is, nations or even groups within
nations that are not geographically connected (Sinclair 2004). For example, even though
contemporary wisdom refers to Asia or even the Asia-Pacific as a region, as Tai observes:
‘Asia is really a series of localized markets with their own characteristics, rather than
a region’ (1997, 49). However, she argues that China (PRC), Taiwan, Hong Kong and
Singapore might form a Chinese market – that is, as a geocultural or geolinguistic region.
150 J. Sinclair and R. Wilken

In this article, we are interested in how global marketers might adapt to the different
regions where they do business, not just to the nations within them. That is, if these
companies are motivated to minimize adaptation in order to maximize organizational and
economic advantages, as has been explained, we would expect that they would attempt to
do so on a regional rather than a national or sub-national basis whenever they can. As one
marketing academic advises the ‘astute’ global marketer, they should think globally, act
locally and manage regionally (Banerjee 1994, 110). This is what we mean by ‘strategic
regionalization’ in our title. Yet when it comes to looking at such a phenomenon
empirically, it becomes apparent that in fact there are not many truly global companies.
Most ‘global’ companies have most of their sales within their own domicile of what
Ohmae called the ‘triad’ of North America, the European Union, and Asia – by the
beginning of this decade, of the whole Fortune 500, only Coca-Cola had more than 20% of
its sales in Asia, while McDonald’s had less than 14% (Rugman and Verbeke 2004, 8 –9).
To take another measure, Procter & Gamble, the world’s biggest advertiser, with over 300
FMCG brands, was spending only 20% of its global advertising expenditure in Asia, even
though it appeared amongst the top 10 advertisers of most major markets of the region
(Endicott 2005). Yet, even if only relatively so, all of these corporations are prominent
both globally and in Asia, and are taken here as case studies in the cultural adaptation of
marketing.

From Coca-colonization to Coca-localization

According to Theodore Levitt (1983), the Coca-Cola Corporation and its US and global
rival PepsiCo are the examples par excellence of his ‘globalization of markets’ thesis, as
both are ‘globally standardized products sold everywhere and welcomed by everyone’
(93). Certainly, for decades Coca-Cola was distinguished by its highly centralized control
of all features of its operation, including marketing. Marketing concepts were developed in
the corporation’s headquarters in Atlanta, and given minimal local inflections. The fact
that by the 1980s the company was deriving most of its revenue from beyond the United
States (McQueen 2003, 200) would seem to suggest that such a centralized approach was
working well. However, by the end of the 1990s, Coca-Cola was having to deal with a
slow but steady decline in the sales of carbonated cola beverages worldwide and in the
brand’s appeal (‘US brands’ appeal declines’ 2006), and as well with an increasingly
difficult struggle to keep pace with PepsiCo, especially in Asia. In response, Coca-Cola
began moving away from global, standardized ad campaigns in favour of ‘more locally
relevant executions’ (MacArthur 2000).
This shift in focus was the beginning of what would appear to be a dramatic marketing
sea-change towards localization within the company between the late 1990s and 2005.
Dispensing with Levitt’s globalization of markets approach – which might be summarized
as ‘think global, act global’ – Coke executives adopted a ‘think local, act local’ strategy
(James 2001; McIntyre 2001; Madden, Bidlake, and McKegney 2000). Led by then
worldwide CEO Australian-born Douglas Daft, Coca-Cola’s new creed became ‘there is
no such thing as a global consumer: each market is different’ (James 2001). This
conviction was the result of a growing understanding of cultural, geographic and economic
complexities both across and within markets, including market research which found that,
even in countries that seem similar, customers can have ‘diametrically opposed attitudes’
(2001).
In line with this, Coca-Cola restructured its marketing communications operations and
designated 13 countries as ‘creative hubs’ which were to make a pool of ads that could be
 Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 151

selected from and adapted to each of the 200 countries where Coke sells its products. One
of the first of the ads to be created via this system was produced in Australia and then
‘exported’ to nine other countries worldwide (McIntyre 2001). At the same time as it was
pooling its marketing resources, Coke was also busy developing a range of new product
lines for various markets, as it sought to diversify into non-cola drinks such as water
products and juices. In most cases, these were in step with its ‘think local, act local’
strategy and the company’s desire to tailor its products to suit local market tastes where
necessary (James 2001). A more ‘strategic regional’ example was a pan-Asian and
European ‘roll-out’, over 2001 – 2003, of a non-carbonated juice-based drink called Qoo
(pronounced ‘coo’). Described as a ‘regional brand with international potential’, Qoo was
first launched in Japan in 1999 before entering South Korea, Singapore, China, Thailand,
Taiwan and then Germany (Osborne 2001; ‘Coca-Cola’s Qoo to go to Germany’ 2002).
While the adoption of the ‘think local, act local’ strategy in part contains an admission
that ‘Coke’s local people know their market better than the bigwigs in Atlanta’ (McIntyre
2001), it would be misleading to think that this approach represents a total conversion to
localization. It is more an amalgamation of global, regional and local strategies, with the
emphasis on the sharing of ideas across markets and across brands. Thus, while the
company divides itself geographically into three areas – the Americas, the Asia Pacific
and Eurasia – brands are not necessarily targeted within these regional boundaries, or even
on a geocultural basis. As one Coke executive explained: ‘The reality is we know
Argentinean and French people do [things] a lot more similarly than Argentineans and
Brazilians. That’s just a fact in the way they react to the brand and the sort of messages that
are right for them’ (qtd in McIntyre 2001).
Zandpour and Harich (1996) refer to this approach as ‘country clustering’ – the
grouping of markets which exhibit a preference for similar advertising appeals. Country
clustering can be seen as a kind of standardization and is based on the idea that advertisers
‘should view standardization not as the transferability of an entire campaign across
countries, but as a strategy that makes unified themes, images and even brand names,
possible’ across countries, even if issues of campaign execution ‘still need to be decided at
the local subsidiary level’ (Sriram and Gopalakrishna 1991, 146). In light of this, Coca-
Cola’s declaration that it is thinking and acting locally is a misnomer. The slogan ‘think
local, act local’ suggests the company is operating at the extreme localization end of the
spectrum when this clearly is not the case, as the Argentina –France example illustrates.
Evidence indicates that Coca-Cola is working with cross-cultural ‘regions’ of consumer
compatibility, and that its advertising is not locally produced, only locally adapted from a
global pool. Nonetheless, Coca-Cola’s corporate approach over the past 10 years has
acknowledged and attempted to respond to various cultural differences and complexities,
and the company has committed to regionalism as part of its global marketing strategy –
just no more than it had to.

Fries with that? I’m Lovin’ It

In 2004, McDonald’s Global Chief Marketing Officer Larry Light caused a stir in
advertising circles by declaring that ‘the days of mass marketing are over’ (qtd in Cardona
2004). McDonald’s was said to have ‘ditched traditional brand-positioning marketing’ in
favour of an alternative approach which Light referred to variously as creating ‘brand
journalism’ or a ‘brand chronicle’ – that is to say, taking a narrative approach that ‘seeks
to tell as many different stories in as many different ways as it takes to reach McDonald’s
47 million consumers in 119 countries’ (2004). For Light, McDonald’s ‘I’m Lovin’ It’
152 J. Sinclair and R. Wilken

campaign has been a crucial element in this ‘brand journalism’ approach, and this
campaign has, by his own admission, ‘reinvented a brand that had lost its way’ (2004). The
origins of the slogan behind this campaign, launched in 2003, can shed light on
McDonald’s overall global marketing strategy and its position on the standardization –
localization debate.
By 2004, McDonald’s had moved away from the company’s traditional approach of
having the agency office closest to headquarters taking the lead in creating its global
campaigns (Cardona 2004). In a move not unlike the ‘country cluster’ approach adopted
by Coca-Cola, McDonald’s drew more on its agencies around the world to produce
creative ideas which it could then review for selection. In the case of ‘I’m Lovin’ It’, this
slogan emerged from a lesser known European agency, DDB’s Heye & Partner,
Hunterhaching, Germany. Once selected, however, the transformation from idea into a
fully fledged campaign was done centrally, with creative work handled on a global basis,
but with local agencies given the opportunity to adapt the campaign to suit each national
market. An example cited by Light as to how this works in practice is through the creation
of a global television commercial (TVC) ‘template’ with ‘green-screen segments’ for local
agencies to ‘insert local touches’ (Cardona 2004). So, for instance, in adapting North
American TVCs based around the ‘I’m Lovin’ It’ theme for mainland China, the American
singer Justin Timberlake was replaced by Wang Leehom, a popular local singer
performing a Mandarin version of the campaign jingle (Madden 2003). This strategy was
repeated with other minor variations in each of McDonald’s Asian markets (Liu 2003;
Madden 2003).
Just as McDonald’s picked up on the initiative of a local advertising agency and then
globalized it in the case of the ‘I’m Lovin’ It’ campaign, the corporation has shown itself
willing to expand upon local innovation in other aspects of marketing. In 1993, the
‘McCafé’ – a European-style coffee shop within a regular McDonald’s outlet – was
introduced by McDonald’s Australian management to a ‘problem store’ in Melbourne,
possibly at Victoria Market, where there is a thriving coffee culture (Jackman 2004). By
2001, it had been introduced to 17 countries, including the United States (‘McDonald’s
opens first McCafé in the US’ 2001), but can also be found in Asian countries such as
Singapore and Japan, with a special menu (‘McDonald’s McCafé coffee shops debut in
Japan’ 2007). In other words, McDonald’s has taken an innovation which was prompted
by local tastes and style in one country and, as with the TVCs, introduced it to other
countries in a glocalized form.
The overall process evident in these instances – developing a single global campaign
drawn from local sources and redesigned for local adaptation – is indicative of
McDonald’s philosophy of ‘think global, act local’, to invoke the globalization cliché of
the 1990s. This approach informs all facets of the company’s global business operations,
as well as its worldwide marketing communications strategy. All of McDonald’s
operations are in some way structured around global –local tensions. As noted above,
certain facets of its global operations are more readily standardized than others, such as
food preparation protocols, point of purchase, signage and design. In some cases, the
standardized business practices have their own modes of adaptation to the cultural
specificities of emerging markets. For instance, McDonald’s has long been committed to
utilizing local staff and promoting from within, and this has the benefit of developing
managers ‘who understand both the corporate and local cultures’ (Vignali 2001, 107;
Watson 1997, 12– 14). In other words, McDonald’s corporate training program is
considered a standardized strategy, but one that has distinctly ‘local’ outcomes and
advantages.
 Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 153

A further standard/local strategy that has been pursued throughout McDonald’s history
and across all its international markets is the company’s appeal to children. McDonald’s
has vigorously targeted children, not only through television advertising but also via
various ‘below the line’ promotional strategies such tie-in deals, in-store birthday parties,
and the provision of ‘safe’ on-site play equipment (Watson 1997, 19). In this way,
regardless of the nation in which they grew up, people come to think of McDonald’s as a
part of the local culture of their own childhood, so that McDonald’s is ‘no longer perceived
as a foreign enterprise’ (37).
Other aspects of McDonald’s operations that may require substantial adaptation to
meet local conditions include pricing structures and menu options. Pricing structures are
tailored to meet the various socio-economic capacities of consumers in each market, and
what is considered the most acceptable price is always measured against the company’s
local competitors (Vignali 2001, 101 – 3). The global variability of prices for a standard
Big Mac hamburger has in fact become an informal measure of purchasing power parity
(The Big Mac Index 2008). As to standardizing menus, although there are substantial cost
savings to be gained by doing this, McDonald’s has discovered that localizing its menus is
often crucial to its long-term success, especially to gain cultural acceptance as part of the
wider market ‘foodscape’ in emerging markets. This is one of the most interesting aspects
of adaptation in the McDonald’s case, for although McDonald’s has actively localized its
menu options, in one key feature it has maintained a consistent and highly standardized
approach.
McDonald’s regularly tailors menus to meet various cultural and religious laws and
customs, as well as taste preferences in different countries. There are numerous examples
in the marketing literature: ginger egg tarts in Taiwan, rice burgers in Hong Kong, taro
pies in China, teriyaki burgers in Japan, grilled salmon sandwiches in Norway and
poached egg burgers in Uruguay (Watson 1997, 23 – 4; White 2006; Desker Shaw 2006;
Fowler and Setoodeh 2004; Vignali 2001, 99; ‘McDonald’s puts fish on the menu’ 2003).
Even so, the ‘keystone’ of McDonald’s ‘winning combination’ is also the most
standardized item on the menu: its ‘French fries’ (Watson 1997, 24– 5). These are ‘ever-
present and consumed [worldwide] with great gusto’ by all McDonald’s customers,
‘irrespective of their religious beliefs or political stance’ (Vignali 2001, 100). Once
again, we see that although there is a necessary willingness to adapt some features, others
have to be held constant: although the Chinese, for example, want to find menu choices
which are palatable to them, they do not go to McDonald’s to eat Chinese food, and
evidently enjoy the dubious attractions of the iconic fries as much as anyone else in the
world.
Finally, there are several indications from the literature over the past decade that
McDonald’s is becoming increasingly interested in adapting standardized marketing
messages at a regional rather than local level. For instance, in 1998 McDonald’s ran its
first pan-European campaign to coincide with the France ’98 World Cup football finals
(Euronews 1998). More recently, in 2005, the company announced its ‘first pan-Asia
initiative’: the ‘Prosperity Program’ (Madden 2005; Desker Shaw 2005). This was a
program based on its ‘Prosperity Burger’, and employed the promise of good luck as an
‘insight that cuts across borders of nine very diverse markets’ (Madden 2005). Further
pan-Asian marketing programs followed in 2006 (Hargrave-Silk 2006). We have seen
that McDonald’s strives to keep certain elements of its global operations constant, while
it adjusts other elements when and where required. This has not changed over the past 10
years, but what has changed is the company’s apparent interest in doing this on a
regional basis.
154 J. Sinclair and R. Wilken

Procter & Gamble: Flexible organization and total control

As the global manufacturer and marketer of hundreds of brands of FMCGs, Procter & Gamble
(P&G) is perennially the world’s biggest advertiser, and the trade press has enthused over its
transformation from an ‘“old economy” dinosaur’ to a state-of-the-art marketer in the new
century (‘Well-balanced plan’ 2005). However, while Coca-Cola has been experimenting
with greater localization of its operations, P&G has undergone a major operational restructure,
dubbed ‘Organization 2005’ (or O-2005), which has had the effect of ‘further centraliz[ing] an
organization already more centralized than its peers’ (Neff 1998). Initiated in 1997, the
O-2005 review was ‘designed to balance global and local advantages and considerations’
(Dyer, Dalzell, and Olegario 2004, 308). Prior to the restructure, P&G was organized into four
regions – North America, Latin America, Asia, and Europe/Middle East/Africa – with
‘category managers’ functioning within each region (Neff 1998). The new corporate structure
created a ‘matrix’ with two axes: along one, P&G grouped its brand management groups into
seven global business units (GPUs), while along the other were ‘eight geographically based
market organizations (MDOs)’ (Dyer, Dalzell, and Olegario 2004, 294–5). According to
historians of P&G, this elaborate structure was intended to ‘balance global advantages of scale
with the particular demands of local circumstances’, thus: ‘The GBUs would develop and
manage strong local brands’, by developing largely standardized global products, while the
MDOs would be more responsible for the execution of marketing strategies, including
through the adaptation of standardized advertising, and to a lesser extent the products
themselves, to local conditions (Dyer, Dalzell, and Olegario 2004, 294–5).
The O-2005 plan was to simplify the structure and chain of command of the company’s
worldwide operations (Neff 1998). To this end, P&G also set about streamlining its agency
relationships through even tighter global alignment. For example, in the late 1990s the firm
consolidated its accounts globally with its ‘favoured four’ agencies: Saatchi & Saatchi,
D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, Grey Advertising and Leo Burnett Co. (Snyder and
Neff 1999). Then, in 2003, P&G approached its two main agency holding companies,
Publicis Groupe and Grey Global Group (now part of WPP), asking that they ‘pitch plans
to consolidate or re-organize its global retail marketing effort’ (Neff 2003a). On the other
hand, P&G has also actively set out to ‘decentralize’ (or ‘localize’) media buying – that is,
the strategic purchase of advertising time and space in the media, including the Internet –
seeing this as more of a nation-by-nation function of advertising (Neff 2003b).
These manoeuvres aside, the overall company philosophy on the issue of
standardization and localization (adaptation) remains unequivocal. As P&G’s former
Global Marketing Manager, Jim Stengel, put it, the ‘organization is flexible enough to
work between the extremes of standardized global brands and total local control’ (Neff
2002). According to Stengel, global branding has to be thought of as a continuum ‘that has
absolute standardization on one end, and total local adaptation on another end’ (qtd in Neff
2002). Global brands, he suggests, are flexible enough always to be somewhere on that
continuum. Consistent with the discussion earlier in this article about holding some factors
constant while adapting others, Stengel distinguishes between decisions that have to be
made on ‘hard points’ (consistencies across markets, such as manufacturing equipment)
and ‘soft points’ (elements that can be changed, like brand names, colours and patterns)
(qtd in Neff 2002). A good example of this is laundry detergent, where the company’s
long-running Tide line of products has undergone minor modifications to brand naming
and packaging, to be advertised under the Ariel label in Latin America and Europe, with
considerable success and remarkable consistency with the brand’s North American
equivalent. However, by its own admission, P&G has sometimes gone too far down the
 Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 155

standardization path. A salutary illustration of this was the company’s disastrous decision
to change the name of Escudo, a bar soap strong in Mexico, to its North American brand
name of Safeguard: sales plummeted until the product name was switched back to Escudo,
which saw volume sales return again (Neff 2002).
To summarize, the key development for P&G over the past 10 years has occurred at the
organizational level, with the company realigning its worldwide operations to achieve
greater synergy between its global brand categories and its regionally oriented market
development organizations. Despite these structural upheavals, however, the company’s
approach to branding, product development and advertising has remained relatively stable.
All are ultimately ‘glocal’ in orientation, with brands, products and campaigns developed
and set centrally and then adapted to suit individual markets.

Conclusion: Glocalization and strategic regionalization

On the basis of the cases examined here, Theodore Levitt’s prophecy of the globalization of
markets and universal standardization has not in fact eventuated, but, by the same token,
neither does universal localization exist. Rather, the dominant global marketing approach is
that of ‘glocalization’ – an amalgam of global strategy and local adaptation. Within this
model, the specific approach that each corporation takes can shift depending on which aspect
of its overall operations is involved. Thus, organization, product and advertising can and often
are globally aligned or locally adapted to differing degrees depending on the company, the
particular point in time and other circumstances. On the question of the degree to which
glocalization is being practised on a regional basis, the approach of the global corporations
under discussion here suggests what we are calling strategic regionalism, where
organizational structure, ad creation and marketing strategies have, over the past decade,
been realigned to varying degrees and in different ways around the concept of the global
region. Even the notion of ‘country clustering’ can be considered a regional strategy of sorts,
albeit one that cuts across geographical regions, working cross-culturally to identify, group
and target markets with cultural affinities, and compatible consumer behaviour and tastes.
Regionalization appears to be of continuing interest to global marketers, and, as this study has
also shown, there are many different forms of strategic regionalism that may be mobilized.
These range from the concentration of corporate operations within certain geographical
regions (P&G), to marketing efforts tailored to geographical regions (McDonald’s),
geolinguistic regions (P&G) and supra-national ‘geocultural regions’ based on ‘clustering’ of
cultural and other compatibilities (Coca-Cola).

Acknowledgement
This paper is an output from a program of research under Australian Research Council Discovery
Grant – Project DP0556419, ‘Globalisation and the Media in Australia’, funded 2005–09. The
authors gratefully acknowledge the ARC’s financial support.

Notes on contributors
John Sinclair is ARC Professorial Fellow in The Australian Centre at The University of Melbourne.
His published work over the last two decades deals with various aspects of the globalization of the
media and communication industries, with a special emphasis on advertising and television, and
covering Latin America as well as Asia and Australia.

Dr Rowan Wilken is a researcher and lecturer in media and cultural studies at The University of
Melbourne. In addition to his work on advertising, a further key strand of his present research is
156 J. Sinclair and R. Wilken

concerned with exploring the interconnections between ICT use and social and spatial theory,
especially in relation to mobile phone use.

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