The reflections of globalization on advertisements and the advertising strategies in the context of globalization

Removing the barriers to the global flow of the human-being, product, service, information, capital and culture through the utilities developed by the transportation and internet technologies, globalization leads to many advances, changes and transformations in the political, economic, and cultural life as well. Making a significant influence on the components of culture like language, lifestyle and rituals, globalization also shapes the advertisements which affect and are affected by these components. Today, when the companies facilitate in the foreign markets either for more profit or due to the narrowing of the local markets, there are some academicians and practitioners who have the opinion that the advertisements should meet the consumers in a standardized style since the globalization has homogenized consumers, while there are others who claim that globalization brings different cultures together and lead to the cultural diversity, so the advertisements should be adapted to the needs and requirements of the cultures in the foreign market. In this regard, the purpose of this thesis is to reveal to which strategy Turkish Airlines as a global Turkish company apply in terms of its global advertisements by using what kind of elements. In line with this purpose, the advertisements of Turkish Airlines in its magazines uploaded to its website Skylibrary are downloaded. Afterwards, twenty magazine ads are selected by judgment sampling, and analysed through semiotics by using the Cultural Onion Model of Hofstede et al. As a result of the analysis, it is concluded that Turkish Airlines utilize the celebrities, a special globe shape and the standardized copy for the standardization strategy while it pays regard to the cultural differences mostly while constructing its advertisement copies. Keywords: Globalization, Advertisement, Standardization, Adaptation, Strategy, Semiotics