Skip to main content

Using a Well-Known Figure in Commercials

Image
By
It usually takes companies detailed legal considerations and a big price to use public figures, such as celebrities, cartoon or movie characters, and their lookalike images, in commercials. This ABC News video shows us an interesting KFC commercial that is broadcasted in Hong Kong, China. In this ad, an Obama lookalike figure is “promoting” the newly introduced soft-roll fish filet burger in KFC. I am not a lawyer. I am curious to find out whether a federal or government agent holds his/her image rights as other public figures do --- I assume they might not have as much control as those who are private entities. Furthermore, how much control do public figures have over their image rights in a global market?

In addition to the legal issues, this video also indicates that it is very important for companies to adapt to a local “favor” or culture when doing business internationally. Many Chinese love seafood. It sounds natural to me that KFC is promoting a fish sandwich instead of deep-fried chicken. Next time when you dine in an American restaurant in an overseas location, please do not feel surprised when you find something “unusual” or “abnormal” on the menu. What are your opinions on adapting to a local culture in today’s global market?

Labels:

Comments

  1. Lilian ChanFebruary 20, 2011 at 5:23 PM

    I think that adapting to the local culture in today's global market is extremely brilliant. When one is opening a business in a country, one should be mindful of the culture that is practiced there. Everybody is a potential customer so one needs to remember that one is catering to the people. In my home country, Malaysia, there are no pork served in McDonald's because it is a Muslim country. I was very surprised when I went to China and saw that the McDonald's there served pork burgers. In the McDonald's in Malaysia, there is also a porridge dish to cater to Malaysians as rice is our staple food. While the porridge option may not sell well at all in other countries like America, it is very popular in Malaysia and is a regular item on the menu. In Egypt, there is the 'McArabia' in their McDonalds which is basically a burger wrapped in a pita with tahini. These different options cater to the people's culture and has proved to be successful. Therefore, I think that it is a smart marketing plan to create things that are parallel to the people's culture in that particular country. Although people enjoy new and different items, a lot of people also like sticking to what is familiar to them and what makes them comfortable.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Social media engagement is immune to COVID-19 (by Steven Valenzuela)

By
In the unparalleled world of COVID-19, individuals are flooded with choices: whether it be what to eat or what church service to watch. While there are marketing strategies to get consumers to purchase products to immediately increase sales, it may be a more beneficial to engage with low spending consumers in the short term, so that businesses can keep them for the long term.   Social media game strong   During this time, it is crucial to keep social media posts constant and consistently more than ever before. A recent podcast by eMarketer reports that social media outlets such as Facebook have seen a significant rise in usage. The reality is that individuals have more time on their hands, which is why it is important for businesses to utilize their free time to create content for their social media channels. In a recent interview with the hospitality net, Leland Pillsbury stated  “Customers are going to come back...And if you allow your competitors to reengage with the guests before
Post a Comment
Read more

The 7 Ps marketing mix of home-sharing services: Insights from over one million Airbnb reviews

By
The 7 Ps marketing mix framework is a widely used managerial tool that helps businesses identify the principal components of a service product. The 7 P elements include Product, Promotion, Price, Place, Participant, Physical Evidence, and Process.   The 7 Ps framework can assist marketers in making decisions regarding segmentation, positioning, and differentiation. Even for the same type of products with different brands, marketers can still drive higher sales through the improvement of a product’s marketing mix.     The empirical study about 7 Ps of home-sharing services   Building upon the 7 Ps marketing mix framework, I led a research team in a big-data, supervised machine learning analysis of over 1.14 million English reviews of 37,092 Airbnb listings in San Francisco (SFO) and New York City (NYC). We aimed to discover new meaningful business intelligence through the analysis of an immense quantity of online review information that is created by consumers in the cyber marketplace
Post a Comment
Read more

The repositioning of Ten Ren’s Tea Time (by Eddie Long)

By
Ten Ren’s Tea was founded in 1953 and now operates one hundred retail stores globally, providing the finest teas to their loyal customers worldwide. Ten Ren’s combines modern technology and traditional methods when processing tea leaves to provide customers with the highest quality tea that aids in improving the quality of life and health for their customers. Ten Ren’s Tea Time, the restaurant, has a total of nine locations in the Southern California area. New Image: Ten Ren’s Tea Time recently changed its logo, as shown below. We can say that the marketing team wanted a change of the company’s logo to regain customer’s attention and regain their sales.  Just like they changed their logo, they also updated the website to fit the new theme. Their website appears more modernized than their previous design s, which can attract potential customers and returning customers. The company wanted to show its target market that they know what customers want and can accommodate any customer’s
2 comments
Read more