PR Materials

The use of publicity materials in PR campaigns such as logos, slogans, pictures, colours and designs must all be 9) …….. Pictures of seemingly innocuous things in one culture could mean something different in another. For example, a company advertised eyeglasses in Thailand by featuring a variety of cute animals wearing glasses. The ad failed as animals are considered to be a low form of life in Thailand and no self respecting Thai would wear anything worn by animals. Similarly, logos or symbols are culturally sensitive. A soft drink was introduced into Arab countries with an attractive label that had a six-pointed star on it. The Arabs interpreted this as pro-Israeli and refused to buy it.

Conclusion

The above cited areas are but a few of those that require decent cross cultural assessment by PR practitioners if they wish their international and cross cultural campaigns to succeed. The aim of implementing a cross cultural analysis in PR is to build campaigns that target the audience as best as possible, meaning appealing to their world view while avoiding offence.

After-reading tasks

I. Read the phrases below. Now read the text again and write the correct word or phrase in each gap a-i.

a) Crucial

b) a foreign audience

c) convey

d) require

e) successful

f) failure

g) the cross cultural distinctions of the target culture

h) money-orientated

i) cross culturally examined.

II. Fill in the table of adjectives, use the words under the table.

Adjectives	Synonyms	Antonyms
Inspirational
Applicable
Irresponsible
Rebellious
Credible
Innocuous
Sensitive
Factual

Inoffensive, responsible, subjective, believable, insensitive, stimulating, unbelievable, disobedient, unrelated, responsive, objective, boring, reckless, offensive, appropriate, obedient.

At home use Thesaurus to find more synonyms and antonyms and specify their meanings. You can use this reference in the Internet.

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?lextype=2