Business Commons^™

A Different Smile, A Different Story: Global Advertising Adaptation For Chinese, Lin Shengdong, Paul Van Den Hoven

Paul van den Hoven

In the early 20th century (as well as today), global brands tend to adapt their global advertisements for Chinese consumers. A corpus of USA ads and Chinese ads for global brands of the early 20th century shows that ads originating in USA are seldom used without alterations for the Chinese market. However, the ads made in the USA do commonly serve as templates for the Chinese ad design. In these cases, there are usually more substantial adaptations than a mere ‘translation’ of verbal parts. A corpus of such obviously ‘paired’ advertisements enables us to study the ‘construction’ of the Chinese …