Global Brand Identity as a Network of Localized Meanings

In this article, we develop a semiotic model to analyze advertisement glocalization. This model focuses on the mental representations that local audiences build of a ¡°global¡± brand identity. We demonstrate how this model fills up gaps left by a popular marketing model for global advertising. We argue that the seemingly linear three- step marketing model implies several reciprocal processes in which meaning is developed and determined. This semiotic reinterpretation of the marketing model explains how a global brand identity maintains a dynamic relation with the actual brand identity that local customers construe. To illustrate the dynamics of the semiotic model, we analyzed localizations in the Snickers campaign ¡°You¡¯re not you when you¡¯re hungry.¡± Because the semiotic model elaborates the dynamics between the professionals¡¯ discourse used in developing a campaign and the localized ¡°global¡± brand identities brought about in receiving the campaign, the model helps to explain anthropological dynamics in designing campaigns, the arising of locally differentiated ¡°global¡± brand identities that are the result of global campaigns and the dynamic development of global campaigns.