Articulating Locality in Advertising Adaptation: The Snickers Case

Advertising is the least popular format in communication studies for analysis when related to understanding culture and society. Nevertheless, it is the most important social form of modern communication with respect to the relationships between business, marketing, customers, and consumers. According to Morris (2005: 704) “postmodern advertising indicates a qualitative turn that likewise corresponds to changes in the production and communication processes”. Postmodern consumers desire to become a part of interactive processes (Cova, 1996: 18) and postmodern advertising practitioners understand the social importance of the interpretive capacity of people (Morris, 2005: 704). Thus, one way to understand marketing from a multi-dimensional perspective in order to analyse current heterogeneous markets via an integrated marketing communication (IMC) approach, is to look at advertising adaptation. Such adaptations tend to play a significant role in the understanding of customization of media messages in national marketplaces in the postmodern era. Therefore, in this chapter, we analyse the Turkish adaptation of an advertising campaign developed by brand managers of an internationally famous and successful brand: Snickers. The first commercial of the Snickers campaign, which was broadcast in the United States during the Super Bowl in 2010, was produced by the New York branch of a global advertising agency (BBDO/New York) with a catchy slogan: “You are not you, when you are hungry”.