Article No. 12

Making identical audience commodities across countries by global sports:
NBA and global advertising in Taiwan and the US

Chang-de Liu
Temple University

Abstract

Sports programming of American major leagues has attracted a specific group of audiences—male adults— in many countries across the world. Consequently, using global advertising to appeal to the “global class consumers” has become popular in major leagues programming. In order to understand advertising’s degree of globalization in global sports, this study examines the advertisements in NBA programming in Taiwan and the United States through a quantitative content analysis of three levels of global advertising—product category, brand type, and the degree of globalization in content. The findings suggest that 1) global and foreign brands show similar consumer interests in both countries’ NBA programs; 2) Taiwanese NBA ads are slightly different from the American ads in terms of product category; and 3) the contents of commercials in NBA programming are “Americanized” rather than “globalized” in terms of language and model usage. In brief, the commercials of NBA programming in different countries are similar, although they are not yet totally the same. The “audience commodity” that NBA programming in Taiwan made is almost identical to its counterpart in the US.

Introduction

In Taiwan, it is usual to find teenagers playing basketball wear Chicago Bull’s sportswear, cheer by “high five,” and admire Michael Jordan and Allen Iverson as their idols.  The phenomenon results from the globalization of sports and global advertising. People in Taiwan regularly watch games of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the advertisements (‘ads’) featuring NBA stars, such as Jordan for Nike, Iverson for Reebok, and Bryan for Adidas. While people learn how these stars play and cheer, more important to the NBA and advertisers, they also learn about products endorsed by the sports-stars.

Global sports programming is the export of a country’s recorded sports program for audiences overseas.  Global sports programming on TV, such as the NBA games, not only helps professional sports organizations to expand their overseas markets and generate greater profits, but also provides advertisers a great opportunity to reach a specific demographic group of consumers across borders. Compared with other genres of TV programs, like soap opera, sports programs are much easily accepted by audiences in different cultures and societies. As a result, global advertising, which often offers the same content or often voices the same theme with somewhat localized style, appears in the ads accompanying global sports programming. Thus, global advertising on NBA offers overseas viewers nearly all the programming content watched by American viewers.  In addition, local advertisers and advertising agencies produce commercials filled with American elements in order to appeal to the Third World audiences of global sports programs. Thus, global sports programs with their global advertising seem to establish a media package of global content. Audiences around the world watch the same games and also watch the same advertising. Accordingly, they are likely to buy the commodities of the same brands. Truly, it is an amazing scene created by globalized and commercialized sports.

This paper attempts to analyze whether NBA programming has created the identical audiences groups in the US and Taiwan by examining the contents of its commercials on NBA programming in the two countries. In this paper, global advertising is identified not simply as a standardized type that uses the same image or content in every society. Global advertising is a set of strategies executed by all advertisers—particularly transnational corporations—to promote their products all over the world in a relative low-cost but not less-effective way. Through literature review, the first section explains key concepts of this paper, including the global expansion of American professional sports and the characteristics of global advertising.  The following sections provide a quantitative analysis to examine the degree of globalization of commercials of NBA programming in Taiwan and the US. The assumption of this paper is that there is a “global audience” across countries in NBA programming if advertisers produced global ads in different countries.

Literature review

American major leagues and their audiences

Television programming of American major leagues attracts not only a great number of audiences, but also those targets appeal to many advertisers. Sports programs draw affluent male consumers, which are the “most wanted” for “big” advertisers, such as automobile manufacturers and alcohol distributors (Eastman & Meyer, 1989, pp. 103-4; Bellamy, 1989). In addition, those “desirable” audiences are attracted by sports programs only (Bellamy, 1998, p. 85). For example, in 1981 the size of NFL’s affluent male audience was as six times as that of the hit television series, Dallas (McChesney, 1989, p. 63). In recent surveys, two of every three viewers of American major leagues were male. Moreover, the average age of NBA’s audiences was the youngest among American major leagues. Estimated 35% of NBA’s audiences were under 55 years old (Who watches NFL, 2002). The NBA’s 2001 playoff games attracted a large male adult audience. The playoffs helped TNT, which had the broadcasting rights, achieved the largest amount of adult viewers among all channels at that time period (NBA playoffs boost, 2001).

On the global level, sports appeal to similar targets across cultures and societies (Sparks, 1992, Bellamy, 1998, p. 86).  For advertisers and mass media, the true value of American major leagues, which are the major feature of global sports by now, is their capability to produce a lucrative “global audience commodity.” While global sports mainly serve the interests of transnational corporations, the global sports programs mainly serve the interests of transnational advertisers to reach their desired consumers. That is, global sports programming is searching for “global ‘class’ audiences more than for global ‘mass’ audiences” in order to sell its valuable “audience commodity” to advertisers (Gruneau & Whitson, 2001, p. 256).

In 1985, the NBA began to appear on Taiwanese broadcasting media (Honored air Jordan, 1999). By the end of the 1990s, Taiwanese audiences could watch about four NBA games per week on four channels (Chiou, 2002, p. 64; p. 95).  According to surveys, the demographic characteristics of NBA’s audience segments are similar in Taiwan and the United States (Liu, 2003).  However, it is still unsure that the “taste” of those male adults in Taiwan is identical to that of their counterpart in the US.  If the commercials of NBA programming shows the same degree of globalization, we could suggest that NBA’s audiences are “cosmopolitan consumers,” who are appealed to a same, global culture rather than different local cultures.

Global advertising: Local styles with a global pattern

Levitt, a guru of global advertising, claims that international markets became convergent as one “global market” since the advanced technology—what he called “the Republic of Technology.” The growth of global media stimulates the need and development of global advertising. That is, global corporations advertise their products “as if the entire world (or major regions of it) were a single entity; it sells the same things in the same way everywhere.” (1983, pp. 92-93). In other words, the trends that make this world homogenized are establishing the “universality” of the consumer and constituting a global audience across cultures, which is global or standardized advertising’s target. The differences of tastes and consuming behavior between countries are becoming obsolete (p. 93). People around the world are re-organized not by their nationality but by their incomes, hobbies, socio-economic status, occupations, or ages. Global advertising assumes that people who live in midtown Manhattan might be more similar to those who live in 7^th Arrondissement of Paris than those who live in the nearby Bronx of New York City (Mattelart, 1991, p. 53).

For example, a survey focusing on adolescents in four European countries—Britain, Germany, France, and Italy—suggests that those youth consumers are significantly similar in several dimensions, including their attitudes toward media and use of product fields (Ford & Phillips, 2000). This study has two implications concerning global advertising. First, the degree of similarity among some groups of teenagers in different nations is more significant than that within the youths of each country (p. 133). That is, teenagers in Europe can be divided into different groups by particular interests rather than nationalities. Second, it shows that there is, at least in Europe, an identical consumer group of teenagers across nations, which could be called “global youths.”

However, the concept of global advertising regardless of the difference of cultures is not convincing to many scholars. The main theme of adversaries is that the global market does not certainly lead to standardization of all products. Even though people’s incomes in different countries have become convergent to a similar level, it will not result in the same value and tastes in different cultures. The cultural differences still influence consumers’ behaviors and thus lead to diverse consuming patterns among countries (de Mooij, 2000). For example, a survey on the women’s market in ten countries shows that the demographic characteristics of women are diverse “in the levels of participation in the workforce and the extent of their ambition and aspirations.” (Bartos, 2000, p. 114) The result suggests that the same demographic targets in different countries—like women—are not really the same persons to advertisers.

The adversaries in the global advertising debate have tried to demonstrate the importance of cultural difference. In short, they reject the notion of the standardization of advertising with the same language. Yet does “global advertising” only mean the “standardization” of advertising? This concept should be explained more deliberatively and carefully. Kaynak (1989) points out correctly the need for and objective of global advertising,

The standardization of production at a global level requires a parallel standardization of consumption and cultural characteristics. Global marketing techniques are based on the necessity to create a world consumption mass who drink, eat, and smoke identical products, watch similar programs, and have similar behavioral patterns.

To be successful in global markets, international advertisers must discern the difference before they address the similarities among countries. Local understanding of the consumer and the markets is of paramount importance since sales are materialized on a client-by-client or on a country-by-country basis. (p. 15)

The goal of global advertising is to sell the identical brand to consumers in different countries by a unified strategy. For example, Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro—a global tobacco brand—crafted a worldwide strategy in advertising its product to the same target consumer while every branch of each country became responsible for the local business. The company’s rule for global advertising is “one sight, one sound, one sell.” (Mattelart, 1991, p. 55) Global advertising might speak different languages to individuals, but “at the same time its message must be universal” (p. 57). It could be called “pattern standardization,” in which the advertising’s overall theme is in uniformity, while the individual elements in each market are diverse (Vardar, 1992, p. 27).

On the practical level, global advertising could be divided into different types in terms of its brand and executive agents. Kaynak identifies six types of global advertising in terms of its forms and execution as following: 1) Fully standardized: One product or brand, display, no values; 2) Semi-standardized: One brand, one advertising form, and standard execution (voice-over and/or lip-sync; 3) One brand, one form, varying standard execution elements; 4) One or different brand names, one advertising form, different executions; 5) One or different brand names, one platform, different executions; and 6) Multi-local: Act global, think local—endorsement. (1989, pp. 296-299)

In deciding which kind of global advertising a product is fit to use, several factors come into play. In general, the most crucial factors are product category and brand. In product categories, hi-tech (computers, compact disc players, televisions) and hi-touch/hi-fashion (fashion, perfumes, jewelry), youth products (video-game), industrial devices, status-symbol brands for cosmopolitan consumers (automobile), and less culture-bound products (alcohol, tobacco) are relatively easier for global advertising (ibid, pp. 324-6; Kaynak, 1998, pp. 27-28; Vardar, 1992, p. 124). Regarding the elements of advertising or branding, research conducted in three countries—the U.S, Germany, and Japan—shows that a product’s name and packaging are more intended to standardized, while product’s attributes and the advertising theme are more likely to be culture-bound (Mueller, 1989)

Another dimension of global advertising is the globalization of advertising’s contents around the world. In developing countries, local ads utilize those values obviously imported from Western societies (Frith & Frith, 1989). For example, television commercials of multinational corporations in India tend to uses Western attributes, such as Western models, settings, music and clothing. The multinational corporations’ advertising also favors the representations of Western values, like modernity, cleanliness, and technology rather than Indian traditional ethics (Sengupta & Frith, 1997). The phenomenon of “advertising imperialism” in India “redefines, replaces or reinforces cultural categories of identity” (Wright, 2001).

Advertising in Western societies also exploits foreign elements, including some attributes from Oriental cultures. However, using exotic values or attributes in global advertising in Western countries has different implications to that in the Third World. For instance, three American commercials in 1995 appropriate Middle Eastern images to construct romantic, mystical, or abundant advertising content. However, some negative meanings of exotic images also occur in American commercials. Some commercials use foreign elements as a signifier to show how advanced or civilized American society has become (Manganaro, 1996, pp. 22-3). The advertising agencies offer various meanings depending on their and advertisers’ needs. The main objective of American commercials in utilizing foreign elements is to lure “viewers to transform, to travel, to experience romance and adventure.”(p. 26)

In short, global advertising entails not only those “standardized” ads of which most are exported from the First World to other countries, but also those “local” ones guided by multinational firms’ global strategies. The latter follow standardized or unified themes, although the execution of the advertisement might be localized to accommodate to local customs. We could envision a spectrum or continuum whose bipolar ends are “totally standardized” and “totally localized,” respectively. Every global advertisement falls on a point of this continuum in terms of its execution and strategy, such as “standardized strategy with translated executions” or “standardized strategy with modified executions.” (Moriarty & Duncan, 1990, pp. 316-8)

Research questions

There are three levels for examining the degree of globalization of the ads. In deciding to use global advertising strategies or not, as some studies that focus on this topic suggest, advertisers have two main concerns: product and brand. The product’s category and the brand’s type are the first and the second level, respectively, of global advertising. The third level of global advertising relates to the content of ads, including using the same ads, the same theme, or the same attributes in the different countries.

Given the above, the three research questions of this paper are directly according to the three levels of global advertising. If advertisers were convinced that the NBA’s audiences in Taiwan are similar to those in the U.S, it is expected that those advertisers of the same product’s category will show a similar extent of interest in buying the commercial time in two countries’ NBA programming. Therefore, the first question is that whether the patterns of product’s category of the advertising in the NBA programming between Taiwan and the U.S. are similar.

As the NBA’s fans across cultures are “cosmopolitan consumers,” they are supposed to be fascinated by global and foreign brands rather than local brands. The second research question is whether the proportion of advertising of global brands and foreign brands in the NBA programming in Taiwan is similar to that in the U.S.

The third research question is whether the ad’s contents in both countries are “global style,” which refers to using non-local elements. In this question, I focus on the commercials and exclude the sponsorships. Because each ad of sponsorship on television showed only its logo and a line for less than 5 seconds, there was not enough content for analyzing this variable. Additionally, by examining this question, this study constructed an index of “the degree of globalization in ad’s content” including two indicators: language usage and model usage. Several studies relates to international advertising (e.g. Mueller, 1989; Muller, 1992; Sengupta & Frith, 1997) used different indicators to analyze the degree of “Westernization” in ad’s contents, such as models, settings and artifacts, music, expressions, hairstyle, etc. While taking into account the visual and audio aspects of television commercials, the models and the language are the most important elements. If the ads in the NBA programming across societies are globalized, both countries’ commercials should have the same degree of globalization in terms of foreign model and language usages.

Method

Sample

I chose the NBA’s 2002 Final’s game four, which was held on 12 June 2002, as the case to study the ads. In the US, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) aired the live game from 9 pm to 12 am (Eastern Time); meanwhile, it was on ESPN channel in Taiwan from 9 am to 12 pm on 13June 2002. The ads from the beginning to the end of the game (2 hours and 25 minutes long) were recoded for analysis. There were a total of 164 ads in the two countries’ NBA programs. Among the 89 American samples, 69 were commercials (77.5%) and 20 were sponsorships (22.5%). Among the 75 Taiwanese ads, 45 were commercials (60.0%) and 30 were sponsorships (40%). The advertising time in the American programming, totaling 2,095 seconds, was about as 1.5 times as that of the Taiwanese shows, 1,340 seconds (See Table 1).

The advertising on the American NBA coverage was much more intense than that of the Taiwanese. In the U.S, the television seized and sold “every moment” to advertisers, while there were much more “self promo” of the program on the ESPN in Taiwan. One possible reason for this difference was the economic factor. Since the American audiences were wealthier than their counterparts in Taiwan, advertisers preferred to buy the commercial time of American television. The difference in rights fee could support for this argument. NBC spent $660,000,000 dollars in NBA’s 2001-2 season shows. At the same time, the Taiwanese broadcasting, China Television, paid only $200,000 in that season (Chiou, 2002, p. 64; p. 93). It implied that the value of NBC’s audience commodity of NBA games was as 3,300 times as that of ESPN’s Taiwanese audience commodity for the same programming. No wonder the number of American ads was greater than the number for Taiwan in the identical game.

Procedures of measuring

Product category

This variable, product’s category, was stemmed from the study of Stern, Krugman, and Resnick (1981). In their research, products in magazine advertising were classified by 10 types, including financial, food, electronics, and so forth (p. 43). In order to adjust to Taiwanese advertising, this study divided the products types into 8 categories, including: 1) 3Cs: Consumer electronics, Computers, and Communication devices and services; 2) Beverage: Soft drinks, Coffees & teas, and Alcohol; 3) Automobile: Cars and Motorcycles; 4) Financial: Credit cards and Financial services; 5) Food: Food manufacturers, Fast-food chains, and Snacks; 6) Movie; 7) Sports: Sneakers, Sports devices manufacturers, and Professional sports organizations; and 8) Others.

Brand type

The brands of the ads were divided into different types in terms of their national bases and scales of global expansion, including: 1) Global brand; 2) Foreign/not-global brand; and 3) Local/not-global brand. Those brands on the “100 Top Brands” list of Business Week were regarded as the first type, “Global brand.” The criteria for classification as a global brand include three indicators: First, each brand’s value had to be greater than $1 billion in 2001; Second, the brand had to derive more than 20% of sales from overseas markets; Third, the brand had to have “publicly available marketing and financial data” (“The 100 top brands,” 2002).

The rest of brands, which were not on the list above, were categorized into either the second or the third type according to their based countries. In Taiwanese ads, the brands based in Taiwan were coded as “Local/not-global brand” while others were coded as “Foreign/not-global brand.” On the other hand, in American ads, the brands based in the U.S. were coded as “Local/not-global brand” while others were coded as “Foreign/not-global brand.” To simplify the comparison, I used a dichotomy of “Local vs. Global/Foreign”—the first and second types were combined as one, “Non-local brand;” and the “Local/not-global brand” was renamed as “Pure local brand.”

Degree of globalization in content

The degree of globalization in commercial’s content was measured by the sum of two indicators—language and model. This index was a scale variable ranged from “0” to “4” points. First, the “Language” indicator was a “0-to-2-points” scale (“0”: native language only; “2”: non-native languages only; “1”: both). In Taiwanese ads, those using Mandarin or Taiwanese were coded “0”; those mixing native and foreign languages were “1”; and those using foreign languages only were “2”. In American ads, those using English were coded “0”; those mixing native and foreign languages were “1”; and those using non-English only were “2”.

Second, the “Model” indicator also ranked from 0 to 2 points. In Taiwanese ads, those depicting Taiwanese models only were coded as “0”; those mixing Taiwanese and foreigners were “1”; and those using foreigners only were “2”. In American ads, those using American models only are coded “0”; those mixing with other races were “1”; and those using totally non-American were “2”. The nationality of a model was determined by her or his appearance, speaking Mandarin/English fluently or not, costumes, settings in the commercial, narrative context, etc. For example, a man in an American commercial with an African-American-face and speaking fluently American English was recognized as an American rather than an African.

Results

Research question 1: Product category

Table 2 showed the percentages of ads’ product’s categories in each country. The difference between the two countries’ advertising in products categories was statistically significant, x² (df = 7, N = 164) = 19.54, p < .01. The result suggested that there was a difference between the two groups. That is, the American ads were different from the Taiwanese ads in their product categories. In examining the details of the data, the most noteworthy difference was in the category of “movies”. In the U.S, the percentage of movie ads was 20.2%; in contrast, the number in Taiwan was only 1.3%.

Research question 2: Brand type

Comparing the percentages of “Pure local brand” in the two groups’ ads, the patterns were similar. The percentage of “Non-local brand” in American ads was 62.9%, while that in Taiwanese ads was 54.7% (see table 3). The difference between the two groups was not statistically significant, x²(1, N = 164) = 1.148, p > .05. That is, the degrees of globalization of American and Taiwanese ads in terms of brand’s type were similar.

Research question 3: Degree of globalization in content

The result of a two-tailed t test (t (114) = 4.06, p < .001) showed that the Taiwanese commercials were significantly more globalized in the degree of globalization in content (M = 1.27, SD = 1.34) than the American commercials (M = .42, SD = .50) (see table 4). The Taiwanese commercials used more foreign languages and models than the American commercials. The sampled American commercials still stick on their native language, English, and American models in their contents. The Taiwanese commercials’ degree of globalization in language (M = .58, SD = .62) was significantly higher than American commercials (M = .02, SD = .21), supported by the t test result (t (114) = 5.56, p < .001). For the model, the result of a t test (t (114) = 3.12, p < .01) also suggested that Taiwanese commercials were more globalized (M = .69, SD = .85) than the American commercials (M = .26, SD = .44).

Conclusion

Global sports, most of which come from the First World, have attracted worldwide audiences and have generated huge revenues for professional sports organizations and global media conglomerates. In order to gain support from advertisers, creating a specific “audience commodity” that global advertisers want is an important task for global sports. The NBA programming in both Taiwan and the U.S. has reached a similar demographic target of audience—male adults. Thus, it offers advertisers a chance to use the strategies of global advertising that appeal to the “global class of consumer” and to reduce production costs of ads.

This study identifies three levels in global advertising: brand’s type, product’s category, and the degree of globalization in contents. First, it is reported that the percentages of global and foreign brands in Taiwanese and American NBA programming are very similar. Non-local brands show similar interests in both countries’ NBA programs. Advertisers are convinced that NBA fans across societies are similar in accepting global and foreign brands. However, on the second level of global advertising, the pattern of product’s category in NBA’s ads in Taiwan is to some extent different to that in the U.S. In other words, on the two levels, which are regarded by transnational corporations as the most important factors in deciding to utilize the strategies of global adverting in a specific spot, the NBA programming over the world has constructed a global audience with a converging, but not yet “the same,” taste of global advertising.

In terms of language and model usage, there is a significant difference between the two countries in the degree of globalization in content, which is the third level of global advertising. While Taiwanese commercials’ contents are mixed with foreign cultures—exactly American culture, the commercials in the US are not strongly influenced by the attributes or values from other countries. English is the only foreign language used in the sampled Taiwanese commercials, although using other foreign languages, such as Japanese, is popular in Taiwan. Therefore, putting it more precisely, the Taiwanese commercials of NBA programming are becoming “Americanized” while the American ones remain in their local style. Therefore, the contents of commercials in Taiwan and the US are similar, but they are “American” rather than “global.”

It is noteworthy that the “global contents” in Taiwanese NBA commercials are actually “American style” rather than a hybridized culture. The American corporations not only directly export the NBA, but they also directly exported some ads to Taiwan. For example, the commercials for Chrysler and Nike in the Taiwanese NBA program were identical to those in the U.S. with no re-editing or translation. On the other hand, some local advertisers use American cultural elements such as hip-hop music and street ball in their ads. The contents of the NBA’s commercials around the world are “unified,” in fact, by American culture rather than a “global culture” in which cultures from different corners mix together.

Global sports, global media, and transnational corporations have established a strong relationship by which several kinds of commodities could be sold to consumers through what is called the “circuit of promotion” (Whitson, 1998). Based on American culture rather than a hybridized global culture, the NBA in Taiwan is a good example that a global sport unites its fans around the world into a global audience commodity for transnational advertisers.

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Tables

Table 1: Overview of sampled ads

Table 2: Product’s category

x² (df = 7, N = 164) = 19.54, p < .01

Table 3: Brand’s type

Table 4: Degree of globalization in content

About the Author

Chang-de Liu is Doctoral Candidate for Mass Media & Communication at Temple University, USA.  Liu received his MA for Journalism from National Chengchi University (Taiwan) in 1996, and his master thesis, titled “The Role of Mass Media in the Commodification Process of Sports,” analyzed the development of the media-sport complex in Taiwan between the late 1980s and the mid 1990s.  Before attending the doctoral program at Temple University, he worked as a business reporter at Taiwanese newspapers for three years.  During his Ph.D. program, Liu further studied the topic of the relationship between the media and sports, particularly about the expansion of American major leagues in Taiwan.  His research interests include the political economy of communication, cultural globalization and mass media, sports and media, and theories of information society.  At present Liu is working on his dissertation, titled “Technology, Media Workers, and the Labor Process: ICTs’ influences on Taiwanese newspaper journalists and freelancers,” which examines the deskilling effects of new technologies on media workers in Taiwan.