MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS - Essay Example

Relational exchanges are supported by more frequent communication activity. McDonalds is one of the largest fast food chains in the world with more than 30,000 restaurants across the world (Sweney 2004). It operates in innumerable markets, in different countries and cities and thus caters to consumers with different cultures, backgrounds, languages and tastes. Thus its marketing communication plan is not standardised and needs tailoring for different markets. Previously McDonalds focused primarily on the US and thus the marketing communication was similar in all the regions as the market characteristics were the same.

However, argue Brinkman and Brinkman (2002) as the US market saturated, challenges increased as McDonalds surged new markets abroad. Though the marketing mediums are similar in all the countries, however, as per Fill (2006), the extent to which communication medium is used depends upon the market exposure to that medium. As Brinkman and Brinkman (2002) explain, it realised that it could not appeal to all the countries together so it adopted the ‘brand globally, act locally’ strategy to communicate its messages.

For instance according to Douglas, in China, the trend is that when consumers watch TV, the in-between advertisements between programs are generally ignored. Thus keeping this in mind, McDonalds thought that it was a waste to spend large sums of money on TV commercials and thus it concentrated on print media in China. At the same time, adds Cheung (2006) the few TV commercials it ran in the country featured more male kids than female, as it is a male dominated society. In East Asia, as Schultz and Philip (1999) exemplify, McDonalds concentrates on TV commercials and features children in them to optimise the results.

To retain the attention of customers in the US, McDonalds employed the interactive method of advertising via television where the viewers could participate in a competition