Managing Globalization: Selling Globally, Pitching Locally

There is a familiar refrain in debates about globalization: Multinational companies, by spreading the same products everywhere, are overwhelming the local cultures in the countries where they do business. In the companies' marketing around soccer's World Cup, however, exactly the opposite may be occurring.

The global domination of brands like Coca-Cola has led some critics to worry that the entire world is being homogenized or, in many cases, Americanized. But in their advertising for the World Cup, U.S. multinationals have been trying to lose their own cultural identity, exchanging it for that of the countries where they do business.

The results are on display in northern Argentina. Turn on the television, and you're likely to see a Coca-Cola advertisement declaring, "Everyone and everything, crazy for Argentina!" Flip through the channels, though, and you may pick up a signal from across the border. You will see the same ad, except this time it will say, "Everyone and everything, crazy for Paraguay!"

None of this comes as a surprise to Irving Rein, a professor of communications studies at Northwestern University who is co-author of a coming book on sports marketing.

"Coca-Cola is a global company that has a great reach and can cater to various countries," he said. "I doubt if they can see themselves as an American company, no more than Adidas sees themselves as a German company."

The replacing of national identities by global identities has happened in the past couple of decades, Rein said, and xenophobia about foreign brands is ebbing away.

"People have just become used to the fact that these various organizations from around the world are going to appeal to them," he said.

Yet not only has Coca-Cola shed its identity as an American company, but it is actually trying to assume new identities to match its overseas markets. In theme and message, its World Cup ads are virtually indistinguishable from those of homegrown companies: we're 100 percent behind the home team.

But how many home teams can one company sincerely support? Philipp Bodzenta, a spokesman for Coca-Cola and an ardent soccer fan, laughed when told about the crossover in northern Argentina.

"In simple terms, we never can be supporting everybody everywhere, but it's logical if we do something for a local market, then we can be a little more localized and focused for this country," he said. "We do not have, as a company, a certain preference for a single country."

In soccer, that preference certainly isn't for the United States - the one place where you are not likely to see a Coca-Cola ad based on the World Cup, at least not on an English-language channel. But the chameleon act isn't limited to American companies. "Toyota is doing it in the United States," Rein said. "They want to be seen as an American company."

Technology is making it easier for companies to tailor their messages, because it allows advertising to be duplicated and tweaked so easily.

"Companies can now digitize and change their ads at the push of a button and change colors and hats for the different countries," Rein said. "One can argue that while it's not as intimate as you might like, there's sort of a cost efficiency operating here."

Gillette, the Boston-based maker of grooming products, is certainly taking advantage during the World Cup.

"We are customizing one television ad that we shot against blue screen, so each market where we are running a World Cup promotion, those markets or those countries can go in and put their own colors or their own flags," said Eric Kraus, a spokesman for the company.

A version being broadcast in Argentina showed several countries' fans, ending with Argentine fans, and then a message from the country's star striker, Hernán Crespo.

Gillette isn't showing its World Cup ads in the United States, but the omission is merely one more reflection of adaptation to a local market, Kraus said: "It's so much bigger outside the United States. In the Boston office, I'd be disingenuous to say that the Boston Red Sox take a back seat to the World Cup in the summertime."

Over all, the campaign reflects not just a desire to make money by hitching one's wagon to a major sporting event but also the underlying reality of a globalized company.

"Seventy percent of Gillette's employees are outside the U.S.," Kraus said. "We market our products in 200 countries and territories. So if you look to sports marketing, there is not more of a universal sport than football."

That universality has only increased with top players from Africa, Asia and the Americas being drafted into Europe's top clubs.

Sepp Blatter, the head of soccer's governing body, has castigated those teams for ruining local styles of play, saying they "don't give a damn about heritage and culture." Even as soccer players and clubs begin to lose their national identity, foreign companies may be clamoring to adopt it.