Jacob It’s possible to identify differences in approach with regard to advertising around the world, simply because of the diverse consumer profiles. Erm, if you take the United States as an example … erm, life is generally pretty competitive in the US, and so you tend to find that a larger percentage of consumers are quite aspirational. There’s a strong imperative to get on and improve yourself in material terms, and that’s the message advertisers are feeding the public on a daily basis. This in turn encourages people to consume more, obviously. As there’s very little to distinguish between most competing products … cars, washing machines, whatever … advertisers have to find ways of persuading the public to buy them. This is increasingly done by focusing on what we might call the consumer’s status anxiety. It’s not enough to put forward the facts about the product, they have to use motivational language in order to persuade the consumer how much they’ll benefit from having it. This could be in terms of social status, health, youthfulness, and so on. Erm, for many people, it’s become really important to be able to keep up with their neighbours in terms of what they have, what they own and are seen to own – whether it’s a car, the latest kitchen gadget, whatever. It’s all about relative social status. Now, in contrast, if you take a country like Denmark, there are clear differences. Denmark … and, OK, I’m generalizing here, but still … overall, Denmark is a much less competitive society than, say, the US or Britain. There’s more emphasis on cooperation, on social relationships, and the gap between rich and poor is far smaller. This comparative economic equality and lack of competitiveness is reflected in the low level of conspicuous consumption. Market penetration of luxury items is relatively slow, because most Danes aren’t showy people, they’re just not so materialistic. Consumption is based more on need than on want, so there’s no imperative to own a particular product until it’s reached an affordable price. And then at the other end of the spectrum are the relatively new consumer economies like Russia and China. And here the whole concept of advertising and persuasion is completely different because most high-end consumer products are relatively new to them. This means advertisers don’t need to use those more, shall we say, exploitative strategies to hook consumers, nor do they need to focus too much on the product’s USP. The majority of new consumers won’t already own the particular product being sold, so advertisers tend to focus on facts about the product and its usefulness, rather than drawing comparisons with another similar product on the market. Now, being aware of these differences between more and less mature markets is essential for advertisers. Getting the approach right – or not – can make or break a product entering a new market …