Abstract

This article aims to research how global and local

brands managed their image according to traditions and

values shared by Romanian target during the Christmas

Holiday, a special time for everyone all over the world.

Our research focuses on TV ads broadcast (40 spots) in

Romania in December 2010, namely winter campaigns

developed before Christmas and dedicated to the

Christmas spirit. The questions we will answer in the fol-

lowing study regard some important aspects such as:

which product categories and brands use this special time

of the year to get closer to the consumers’ life, which val-

ues are promoted by these brands, which characters and

heroes of the commercials better express these values,

which Christmas symbols are emphasized and what is the

balance between global and local features in these cam-

paigns. We are interested to see how brands mark out this

special time of year, according to two important criteria:

their strategic global values, on the one hand, and the

consumers’ insight strongly influenced by tradition and

local events, on the other hand.

The research method applied here is the content analysis.

We defined it based on previous values (product categories,

brands, values, symbols, advertising heroes) as quan titative

terms, and on the relationship between global and local

features in the chosen campaigns, as qualitative terms.

The main hypothesis of this research is based on the

relationship between two important terms, globalization

and glocalization, their influence reflects how global and

local features interweave in order to adapt both to the cus-

tomer’s needs and to the evolution of the market. What we

are trying to demonstrate in the following study is that

hybridization has become the only way to appeal to con-

sumers as local target, because they do not have to give up

their cultural values, but they need to internalize the global

ones. Even if Romanian advertising market is a young

one, it grows in a way that seems to rapidly recover the

gap between the global and the local, sometimes by

importing external models or by blending them with spe-

cific values. Nowadays, the border between these influ-

ences and genuine pattern tend to be more and more dif-

fuse, thanks to the market evolution.

Key words

Glocalization, advertising, consume culture,

Christmas time, tradition.

Zusammenfassung

Das Ziel dieses Berichtes besteht darin die Art und

Weise zu untersuchen in der die Welt-und Lokalmarken ihr

Image verwalten in Bezug auf die Traditionen und Werte,

die während des Weihnachtsfestes, einer sonst überall auf

der Welt als vornehm angesehene Zeit, auf dem rumäni-

schen Markt gepflegt werden. Das vorliegende Studium

konzentriert sich auf Fernsehwerbungen (insgesamt 40)

die im Monat Dezember 2010 in Rumänien gesendet wur-

den, genauer gesagt die Winterkampagnen um

Weihnachten und in dessen Geist. Die Fragen die wir im

vorliegenden Studium beantworten möchten, zielen auf

manche wichtige Aspekte: die Produkt- und

Markenkategorien die dieses Intervall auswerten um dem

Verbraucher näherzukommen, die Werte die von diesen

gefördert werden, die Spothelden die bestens diese Werte

zum Ausdruck bringen, die Weihnachtssymbole die her-

vorgehoben werden und das Verhältnis zwischen den glo-

balen und lokalen Zügen in diesen Kampagnen. Wir sind

daran interessiert herauszufinden wie diese Marken

diese spezielle Jahreszeit unterstreichen, indem wir auf

zwei Kriterien Bezug nehmen: einerseits ihre globale stra-

tegische Werte und andererseits, der Einblick des von den

lokalen Traditionen und Ereignissen tief beeindruckten

Verbrauchers.

Die benutzte Untersuchungsmethode ist eine

Inhaltsanalyse, welche anfänglich mengenmäßig in

Funktion von den vorher erwähnten Variablen (Produkt-

und Markenkategorien, Werte, Symbole, Spothelden) und

nachher, qualitätsmäßig durch die Erstellung der

Zusammenhänge zwischen lokal und global angesprochen

wird.

Die dabei angesprochene grundlegende Voraussetzung

stützt sich auf das Verhältnis zwischen zwei wichtigen

Begriffen, nämlich der Globalisierung und der

Glokalisierung, deren Einfluss die Art und Weise in der

die globalen und lokalen Züge sich ineinander verflech-

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Global and Local Features in Romanian Commercialsbroadcast at Christmas Time Mãdãlina MORARU (BUGA), University of Bucharest, Romania

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ten, um sich an die Bedürfnisse der Verbraucher und der

Marktentwicklung anzupassen, wiederspiegelt. Im nach-

folgenden möchten wir den Beweis erbringen, dass die

Hybridisierung die einzige Möglichkeit der Sensi bi -

lisierung der Verbraucher auf dem Lokalmarkt geworden

ist, da diese nicht auf ihre eigene kulturellen Werte ver-

zichten, aber sich die globalen aneignen müssen. Obwohl

der rumänische Werbemarkt noch jung ist, hat dessen

Entwicklung eine rasche Einholung des Unterschiedes

zwischen Global und Lokal bewirkt, einerseits durch die

Einfuhr fremder Modelle, andererseits durch deren

Vermengung mit den einheimischen Werten. Heuer zeich-

nen sich die Grenzen zwischen globalen Einflüssen und

lokalen Mustern immer diffuser ab, eine Tatsache die von

der Marktentwicklung angezeigt wird.

Kernwörter

Glokalisierung, Werbung, Konsumkultur, Weihnachten,

Tradition.

Introduction

Christmas time meaning grew richer along with the

competition between European St. Nicholas and

American Santa Claus, when Coca-Cola decided to asso-

ciate its image with this celebration, during the campaign

created by Haddon Sundblom in 1931. Even if Christmas

cards were sold everywhere and customers flooded mar-

kets all around, Santa was the authentic symbol of happi-

ness and hope that gave a special aura not only to the

drink, but to the entire American culture for ever. Karal

Ann Marling believes that Santa was a sign of a new era

of celebrations in America: “In fact, Santa in general

underwent a major revival in the 1930s, offering reassur-

ance in the dark night just before the dawn of Christmas

day.” (2001: 215) This was the real moment when the

American Christmas was initially connected only to a

brand, but soon spread over all around the world by inter-

weaving with other cultural and religious customs. What

was the fact that helps so much to share the same values

on the markets at Christmas time? To answer this ques-

tion, we should go deeply inside the concepts of globaliza-

tion and glocalization which broadly explain Santa’s dis-

semination.

Before we scientifically approach these terms, it is

essential to point out, that Christmas is only an example,

followed by many other celebrations, which let a brand

become global by conquering other local markets. The

reaction to the Coke Santa, as a symbol of Christmas,

depended on multiple factors which represent the back-

ground of this way to celebrate winter holidays as it was

imported from United States.

Researchers approached globalization in different

manners. George Ritzer was one of those interested in

explaining this concept in connection with other terms, as

the next definition underlines: “Globalization is a trans-

planetary process or set of processes involving increasing

liquidity and the growing multidirectional flows of peo-

ple, objects, places and information as well as the struc-

tures they encounter and create that are barriers to, or

expedite those flows.“ (Ritzer, 2010: 2) The liquidity

metaphor develops a stylistic image of what dissolving

differences mean, by transforming solid specificity into

fluid and common reality. Solidity is related to the age

before globalization, when people did not easily accept to

stay away from their home, to cross the border or to

change their customs just for the sake of variety.

Everything relied on the transition from national consume

to the transnational one, by borrowing and adapting values

which did away with consumers’ rigidity.

This concept has been understood and defined from

multiple different angles, considering that its approach

became involved in various research areas such as: poli-

tics, sociology, anthropology, communication sciences,

semiotics. Scholte analyzed the most well-known percep-

tions in regard to globalization, by bringing to light five of

its accepted meanings: internationalization, liberaliza-

tion, universalization, westernization or modernization

and respatialization (2005: 16). The first one is the easiest

way to understand content, because it regards the process

of crossing-borders and establishing relationships

between countries. To liberalize has to do with removing

restrictions generated by political regimes, while to uni-

versalize is a term connected with sharing similar values

all over the world. The fourth concept comes very close to

the McDonaldization process or Americanization, because

it relies on consumer culture. To re-space is nothing else

than to open of spatial borders and the giving up of geo-

graphic space very well mapped in the past. Of course, all

these aspects were progressively and variously developed

in time, along with globalization earning the scientists’

interest. Going further with his approach, Scholte pays

attention to another concept, globality, which represents

“the sense of trans-world connectivity, manifested across

multiple area of social life, including communication trav-

els, productions, markets, finance .“ (2005: 49) The meaning

of his perspective emerges from making the association

between global values and their spreading across different

social and economical spheres.

The question we should ask now is this : “What is hap-

pening to local values”? Have they been swallowed up by

global movement or did they find a way to survive by

assimilation or integration into new frames? It is unlikely

to believe that culture, tradition, history may be compro-

mised by marketing or political interests, considering the

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consumers’ insight and their life representations. Pieterse

argues that these aspects are based on the idea that global-

ization is a plural process which cannot be reduced to a

single approach, generally available in any field of action

(2009: 65-70). The main point emphasized here by him

consists in making a difference between many views on

the globalization, according to its impact in many areas.

According to Pieterse, international relationships, socio-

logical sciences, communication sciences, political glob-

alization should be conceived in a different way because

their global features focus on divergent aspects. There -

fore, we can talk about this concept as a multidimension-

al process, otherwise it is likely that its perception may

generate confusion and may cover other significant phe-

nomena of modernity. The researcher strongly believes

that “In cultural studies, the focus is on global communi-

cations and worldwide cultural standardization, as in

Coca-colonization and McDonaldization, and on post-

colonial culture”. (2009: 66) This is why, hybridization is

another concept derived from globalization, as a result of

the syncretism between global and local dimensions of

each culture. Cultural hybridization refers to the mixing of

universal values with local ones, by preserving national

identity and importing external consumers models and life

styles. Using a metaphorical definition Pieterse claims

that “hybridization is the making of global culture as a

global mélange.” (2009: 83) Advertising became the core

of the whole world by developing general brand strategies

and creating compelling messages disseminated all over

the world. The way a brand image gets to international

markets asserts hybridization as the most effective solu-

tion. Moreover, commercials seem to be creative because

they are free of any restrictions in regard to using cultural

references, choosing the most suitable symbols and

enriching consumers’ mind by new meanings of everyday

life. Any commercial may be viewed as a land of promise,

taking into account the appeal to the consumers’ psycho-

logical and social needs.

The opinion above implies a very challenging concept,

namely global culture that should be immediately con-

nected with cultural identity. To deal with the consumers’

life, advertising has to find a way to glocalize a brand by

adapting it to the cultural identity of the market, even if

this requests some changes. There are some dangers when

working on these aspects which may compromise a brand,

if the hybridization does not strike a balance between the

local and the global for the sake of the customers’ loyalty.

The most important aspect could be identifying the profile

of every market that should not be associated with other

regional features that might be similar. A global brand eas-

ily travels all over the world, crossing geographical

borders, catching up values and delivering hybridized

messages.

The next questions we are interested in is how identity

and globalization survive together and which are the pat-

terns developed by advertising according to this symbolic

marriage. According to Arnett, there are four possible

relationships between cultural identity and globalization,

and their relevance may be obviously marked out in cam-

paigns both for global and local brands. The first one

refers to bicultural identity, which explains how people’s

identity is divided between local and global characteris-

tics. The second aspect focuses on identity confusion, aris-

ing from people’s difficulty to make the difference

between global culture and their local roots. The reason

for this mix-up may be the assumed ignorance of genuine

values, considering that the external ones are more attrac-

tive, or trying to replace local culture by the global one in

a chaotic way. The confusion comes up from the feeling of

belonging to the global world in which people usually

include specific features of regional or local identity. The

third aspect regards what Arnett called “self-selected cul-

tures”. This concept is understood as a way of rejecting

both types of culture, local and global in favour of a par-

ticular one, especially created to feel differently and to

lose their identity in the masses. The last type of relation-

ship between culture and globalization relies on the belat-

ed looking for identity , and being influenced by econom-

ic globalization, which generates disruption and isolation

of traditional landmarks. This approach creates various

new identities built in such a way that globalization can be

fully understood.

Coming back to terms related with advertising , we

believe that the first relationship which can be easy iden-

tified is bicultural identity. It is often discovered, because

emerging global brands on the local markets implies cre-

ating a double personality, and this is the main principle of

appealing to the consumers. By comparison, the second

type could be generated by adopting global values without

making the difference between them and the local ones,

involving identity confusion. In this situation, consumers

like to copy external values and to internalize them as if

they had always represented their genuine nature. The last

one is closely connected with niche identity, consisting of

identifying him/herself with the goods that people con-

sume as a sign of self-image. In the beginning, this was

the way McDonaldization was perceived before it became

a globalized consume culture.

How a brand wins the war against other brands all over

the world and imposes its values is very well explained by

Nigel Hollis, whose definition points out the relationship

between countries, consumer and culture: “I define a glob-

al brand as one that has transcended its cultural origins to

develop strong relationships with consumers across differ-

ent countries and cultures.” (Hollis, 2010: 25-26) There

are no doubts that communicating their old values, those

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brands were immediately assimilated by local markets and

created consume cultures such as: McDonald and Coke.

Sometimes, this process of globalizing a market implies

surpassing various impediments, sometimes it is helped

by the power of its values, that the world already shared

by for different reasons. In the first case, advertisers face

cultural paradoxes like product rejection, and religious

restrictions, so they should appeal to consumers focusing

on their local identity. As Marieke de Mooij emphasized

that “There may be global products, but there are no glob-

al people.” (2010:5), cultural diversity cannot be easily

standardized at all. The second situation brought to light

basic universal values effectively associated with brand

image and cultural appurtenance. History and religious

traditions speak always to the consumers’ heart and draw

their loyalty, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, they

may offer another cultural dimension to the practical rep-

resentations of life. John Tomlinson strongly argues that

culture may be understood according to its purpose, and

everything becomes a symbol while gradually connecting

to daily life. In his opinion, marketing and advertising

developed symbolic representations, that mark out com-

mune cultural affiliation and the same view upon life: “On

the other hand, many of the symbolic representations

found in marketing, whilst having ultimately and instru-

mental (economic) end, are for many purposes, very prop-

erly cultural.” (1999: 18)

We can conclude that brands successfully reach global

markets by creating an image whose starting point relies

on consumers’ perspective upon life, on their way of cel-

ebrating it, especially when it comes to old and immutable

values. Coca-Cola has a very interesting and dynamic his-

tory precisely because the brand created a cultural monop-

oly by reinventing the way people enjoy celebrating

Christmas. Between 1923 and 1943, the Coca-Cola’s life

stage was called the Golden Age, because the brand

brought up a lot of innovations which is still on the mar-

ket. One of them is the symbolic positioning, for which a

very familiar and popular character was coined, no other

one than Santa Claus. Since 1931, Santa became the

image of every Christmas campaign, due to the colors’

significance, which was inspired by the Coca-Cola logo-

type. Therefore, at this point, we can speak about two

important marks of the brand: logo and emblem. When it

came with the message: There is a magic night each year

when a man of great renown…the soda was almost

mythologized and became a symbol of Christmas.

According to Marling, “Santa in general underwent a

major revival in the 1930s, offering reassurance in the

dark night just before the dawn of Christmas Day.” (2001:

215) In fact, the brand changed the religious character

directly connected with offering gifts, being generous and

sharing love. All these were earlier identified with nobody

else than St. Nicholas, sometimes also called Saint Nick.

The religious stories created around his personality very

well preserved by the orthodox and catholic traditions

made him known all over the world as the Gift Giver, the

saint who helps poor children and families, before

Christmas celebration.

Santa Claus was created to represent not only Coke’s

image, but also to bring to light people’s hopes and

dreams. Santa ended up being the most famous character

of winter holidays and helped the brand expand its king-

dom. Nowadays, there are not many people who really

follow the history line to discover that Santa Claus was a

Coca-Cola creation, because they believe in his associa-

tion with Christian values. Giving birth to a symbol, Coke

enriched its image for ever and made its power intangible

by revitalizing Christmas values on the market and having

the monopoly on them. Creating an aura around it is the

most important aspect a brand should strive for, because,

according to Van Gelder: “A brand’s heritage also consist

of the brand’s typical or symbolical products”. (20010:

36) Even if in the beginning the main purpose was to bet-

ter promote the brand, the Santa Claus’s dream for Coke

later represented the starting point of Christmas culture

which has no more to do with Americanization, because it

was already swallowed by the globalization phenomenon.

Moreover, Coke succeeded in not adapting to the local

market, in this case, rather standardized it, by imposing a

symbol that cannot be changed or rejected by another cul-

tural influence, at least in the Christian world. The

hybridization does not affect the Santa culture, on the con-

trary, it unfolds additional values around the same symbol,

making it more powerful and increasing the brand effect

on consumers.

The Romanian market, obviously a traditional one

from the religious point of view, got into the Santa dream

land at the same time when doors opened to the global

brands, after the abolition of the Communist regime in

December 1989. People who grew up in Ceausescu‘s time

had never met Santa Claus before for two reasons: firstly,

the religious rituals and any other connection with church

were firmly prohibited and secondly, parents replaced him

with a local figure, called Santa Frosty. His role was the

same as Santa ‘s and the entire script followed similar

principles, even the color of his clothes – red and white –

were faithfully preserved, despite the lack of awareness of

symbolical Coca-Cola. By that time, people did not have

access to global brands and products, because of the

Romanian isolation in Europe, and celebrating Christmas

generally meant only enjoying winter’s beauty. Children

were taught traditional songs, whose main characters were

Jesus Christ and Santa, despite all restrictions. Their

image about the man who brought presents was either a

religious one preserved in the family, or a Communist one

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imposed by the regime, not even allowing his being called

by his real name. Nowadays, there are no differences

between Romania and other countries and the advertised

Santa regained his authority on the market, and is very

welcome by local consumers.

Method Specificity

The method I used for checking out and proving my

hypothesis is the content analysis. Even if we did not

intend to pay attention to the entire evolution of this

method over the ages, we need to specify that the perspec-

tive considered important for us is the one belonging to

Werner Früh in his paper Inhaltsanalyse, Theorie und

Praxis published in 1998. According to him, “content

analysis is an empirical method used for iterative, system-

atic, inter-subjective depiction from the point of view of

content and formal observations of the given papers.“ (1).

(apud Rössler, 2005:20) As for us, this definition seems

more relevant in comparison with others, because the

autor’s view is in favour of its more flexible application.

The most important advantage of this method is that it

approaches the research problem from many perspectives,

usually interdisciplinary. The second advantage lies in the

possibility of applying it in many research fields including

Communication Studies. This method works in two direc-

tions highlighting its efficiency: the quantitative analysis

and the qualitative one. I used the first one as a basis for

the second one, as I am interested in how the story is said

in advertising using myth’s structure.

The quantitative approach relies on the frequency cri-

teria which gives the opportunity to quickly reach a con-

clusion based on the number of registrations. The evalua-

tive criteria are useful in the present research due to the

opportunity of establishing connections between commer-

cials’ topics, in this case, and the values they involve. The

evaluation consists in finding a way to organize messages

provided by the selected commercials according to the equi -

valence between their semantic features and social pro ces ses,

values, positioning types, family and gender representations.

Thinking about the generosity of this method, this

study points out the qualitative research and its meaning

by using a special mechanism of analysis, which consist

of: firstly, summarizing content analysis and secondly,

structuring content analysis. This distinction belongs to

Ph. Mayring, alongside with another one, not significant

in the present research: explicative content analysis (Apud

Agrabian, Mircea, 2006: 111) The sumarizing content

analysis reflects how the essential information can be dif-

ferentiated from non-essential one, how similar para-

graphs can be organized according to the same criteria.

The structuring content analysis helps a lot in giving an

appropriate structure to the symbolic representations.

Research corpus

Our research corpus consists of 40 commercials select-

ed according to two important criteria: first, the time they

were broadcast on the Romanian market and, second, the

channel used for sharring the message to the customers.

The commercial campaign we are interested in was

around the Chrismas holidays -between December 9th

2010 and January 9th 2011. Regarding the other criteria,

our research focuses on TV Romanian commercials, espe-

cially broadcast on private channels such as: PROTV,

PROTV cinema, Antena 1, Realitatea TV. All the spots

watched were broadcast in prime time, namely between

8pm and 11pm, considering that the audience higher dur-

ing news, movies, and talk shows. The TV spots provid-

ed us various clues regarding Christmas time, based on

the syncretic way of delivering the message: both visual

and verbal communication.

The hypothesis strongly influencing the lines of our

research is connected with the keywords we think are

really representative of this article: glocalization, adver-

tising, consumption culture, Christmas time, traditions.

Therefore, we intend to verify how much Romanian com-

mercials are related to global ones, by launching special

campaigns at the given time. The next assumptions regard

how we come to terms with some aspects:

• The global brands definitely rely more on traditional

Christmas symbols than the local ones.

• There are some local features interweaving with the

global ones, encouraging the hybridization phenomenon.

• Globalization is represented by well-known marks all

over the world and the message is standardized.

• The family, women and children are the characters

often met in commercials’ script.

• This research is interested in a range of values that

focus on the attributes of Santa and Christian attitude.

During our research, we are going to answer some

important questions, and their role is to organize the quan-

titative data by using frequency criteria, on the one hand,

and, on the other one, to help us check previous assump-

tions. In addition, the results strongly depend on the accu-

racy of these questions, considering they are variables of

the content analysis applied in the present study:

• Which are the promoting brands broadcast on

Romanian TV channels and what product categories do

they belong to?

• What kind of values were often brought to light in the

commercials watched?

• What are the Christmas symbols provided by the

commercials’ messages?

• Who are the main characters/ heroes of the analyzed

commercials who convey the Christmas message?

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Quantitative resultsWhich are the promoting brands broadcast on

Romanian TV channels and what product cate-gories do they belong to?

The first issues this research focuses on are related to

the product categories and their brands that developed

campaigns during the time dedicated to collect the neces-

sary data for the study. Some people would believe that

any product category represented by various brands are

equally interested in promoting their values at this time,

because Christmas suits all wishes and hopes of the con-

sumers. The next chart will strongly make out a case

against this idea, by showing a different Romanian market

perspective:

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As the previous table indicates, there are 8 product cat-

egories, differently represented on advertising market,

according to their number of commercials broadcast

around Christmas. We broadly organized the products in

general categories in order to offer a better view on the

Romanian market at that time. There is no balance

between them, because commercials were oriented to

three specific directions: first, communication, second,

food- chocolate, drinks and, thirdly- coffee, banks, super-

markets. This classification revealed us that mobile phone

communication, whose market has been quickly devel-

oped in Romania in the last 20 years, intensively commu-

nicated the brand values, because they perfectly suit con-

sumers’ insight. Everyone shares their good wishes at

Christmas and New Year and what else may be the easiest

way to do it than making a simple call? Mobile phone pro-

motions specially appealed to two types of users: the con-

servative people connected to friends and family, on the

one hand, and the young users interested in entertainment

and spending winter holiday together, on the other hand.

Chocolate, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks are

tightly related to the Christmas spirit consisting of making

gifts and celebrating throughout parties. Food products

referred to traditional consumers, deeply interested in

cooking the Christmas meals for guests and family. This

short analysis of the most often product categories and

brands, whose commercials were broadcast before

Christmas time, show us that consumers were touched by

specific values, and this is the subject of the following

question we are going to answer to.

What kind of values were often brought tolight in the commercials watched?

To deal with this question, first we have to explain how

we decided to investigate this problem, in which the main

difficulties consist in finding a way to count the results.

Obviously, values are abstract and various as well, and, this

is the way we organized the data provided by our corpus,

choosing a few keywords that helped us make the things

clearly. In the beginning, we identify three important values

shared to the consumers in each commercial, coming to a

very long list that would have not helped the study at all.

The next step was to organize all values collected from the

first stage of investigation in categories, in order to apply

the research principles and work out this problem created

because of too many data analyzed at the same time. After

all, we chose a few keywords that describe very well the value

classes, based on general characteristics, such as: generosity,

history and traditions, love and care, healthy living, imag-

ination freedom, pragmatism and perseverance. Before we

individually present product categories, it is necessary to

explain the meaning of each of them. Generosity arises

from making presents, helping people, being grateful for

different things, showing respect toward the old aged.

History and traditions regards either the way people pre-

serve their customs in family over the years or how a brand

has been developing in time, without giving up its genuine

image. Love and care emerge from the way people take

care of each other inside their families, are responsible,

friendly and enjoy living life every minute. Health is a

keyword that covers many aspects revealed by this

research such as: eating natural (ecologic) products, being

beautiful and showing the power of body. The next cate-

gory cannot be easily described as long as it refers to deep

feelings like mind and imagination freedom, living under no

restrictions and having the power to come back to the past

or to jump to the future. Pragmatism seems to be related

to rational behavior, control overtake and good investment

of money or time. Perseverance is nothing other than

tenacity that people should always lay out (express) no

matter the activity they are involved in. Obviously, we

allocated a single value for every commercial, related to

one of previous identified classes. The following chart

provides the possibility to draw a comparison across the

values that came from the spots:

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These results reveal that there are four categories of

percentage, because the values are distributed two by two.

The previous table distinctly indicates that generosity

appeared more often in the sample, with 30%, followed

not so close by tradition and love, each of them covering

15% of the whole corpus. Healthy life and freedom are

placed on the next level, that sums up 12.5% of the com-

mercials researched. Finally, we come to the values indi-

cating pragmatism and perseverance, equally allocated in

the chart with 7.5%. Even if we identified 8 product cate-

gories represented by different brand in our corpus, it does

not mean that it is any correspondence between data. What

we try to clear up is that a value category do not make a

connection to a specific brand or products. However, if we

take a look at generosity, for example, we discovered that

it has been found in the message created for mobile phone

(Orange, Vodafone, Cosmote), supermarkets (Real),

chocolate (Milka, Raffaelo) and banks (BRD), while love

and care were developed by spots dedicated to mobile

phone (Orange), non-alcoholic drinks (Nestea, Coca-

Cola), alcoholic drinks (beer-Goldenbrau), chocolate

(Milka), coffee (Jakobs). The other reference values fol-

low a various distribution as well. The fact that a brand

(no matter how many services or products it provides to

the consumer) used different creative strategy in different

spots is very relevant for this study, because it brings to

light interesting way to appeal the target, especially at this

time of year.

What are the Christmas symbols provided bythe commercials’ messages?

Answering this question means to get us much closer

to the topic of the present study, by bringing Christmas

signs to light. The research relies on both visual and ver-

bal communication for providing more data connected to

this religious and cultural event. Because we analyzed all

commercials broadcast for Christmas, we noticed that a

couple of them were not especially dedicated to this time,

so the visual symbols are absent in 9 of the spots. These

commercials were broadcast before December 2010 and

the message was not changed or specially adapted to

Christmastime. For the rest of the sample, examples were

generous and quite easier to classify due to their homo-

geneity and strong connection with Christmas. Almost all

visual symbols identified during the research describe

Santa’s celebration in a global way, except from specific

winter landscape (Romanian landscape), parties, meals,

religious traditions, and songs. The next chart will be rel-

evant for this research question, according to the balance

between local and global features that explains the title of

this study:

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As the table above points out, house decoration on

Christmas is at the top of the list, considering the informa-

tion provided by visual symbols, such as Christmas tree,

lights, Santa representations, and snow balls. Their main

purpose is to specifically appoint the time when the mes-

sage reaches the consumers. The next two levels strive for

the same goals, meaning to create the Christmas atmos-

phere by involving Santa’s presence and his particular fea-

ture of giving presents for people. Traditional culinary

reflect the association of Christmas party with special

meals, cooked at home, based on the traditional old

recipes. Parties show us how Romanian people spend their

time together, reminding themselves their childhood and

having a particular style of entertainment (they drink

boiled wine, sing Christmas songs, pay visit to their rela-

tives). Winter images help consumer identify themselves

with familiar landscape by recognizing Romanian moun-

tains, Bucharest view and other traditional places that

mark out the specific landscape. Coming to the last aspect

of the table, we noticed that commercials do not pay atten-

tion to religious aspects, in terms of using genuine bibli-

cal scenes, but they preserve some heroes like the three

magi, the stable and the holy family.

Who are the main characters of the analyzedcommercials who convey the Christmas message?

This question should be viewed as an extension of the

one regarding the values, whose results were presented

in the second chart. Obviously, the commercials charac-

ters should speak to the heart, because they become

models and heroes thanks to their behavior and perspec-

tive upon life. In this particular time of year, people, men

and women, young and old, are equally concerned about

welcoming Santa doing their best. Under this circum-

stance, we carried out our research to discover this:

which is the hero portray that is best emphasized empha-

sized by the commercial scripts. To deal with this ques-

tion, we had to previously decide which features are

requested from a character to become the Christmas hero

in a commercial. What does a hero mean? There are a lot

of things that help to clear up this problem. A main char-

acter touched by the Christmas spirit works on preparing

everything this time assumes: cleaning the house, shop-

ping, buying gifts, helping other people. There are spe-

cial features for women and men, but all of them have to

do with making people happy, being responsible towards

the family, preserving traditions and giving love. As we

expected, the ads are not usually created around one sin-

gle character, but he/she stands out by something special

and distinctive to other people. The next quantitative

results speak for their self about the Christmas heroes in

the corpus investigated:

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The previous chart provides us the chance to distin-

guish between three character categories. The first criteria

highlighted here is the gender and age axis (male, female

and children heroes), the second is based on the balance

between individuality and collectivity, and the last one

regards non-fictional heroes in comparison with the fic-

tional ones, from animation. What predominates in this

quantitative approach is strongly connected with the first

criteria we have just described: masculinity covering 40%

of the whole corpus. Quite difficult to explain is that chil-

dren seem to be placed only on the last level, although

they are the special target of Santa magic. The only reason

we believe is important here is related to the difference

between a product buyer and its consumer. The adults

(grow-ups) are responsible to give presents to children

and make their dreams become true. However, collectivity

(including crowds of people, family and animation

heroes) and individuality (male and female hero) are

equally represented in the table above.

Discussion

Coming back to the issue focused on product cate-

gories and the brands that belongs to them, we realized

that local names are almost missing from the list of spots

broadcast at Christmas, except the phone services

Romtelecom, the beer Bucegi and Timiºoreana, the cake

Boromir and the wine Urlat. This fact helps us clear things

up regarding the balance established between the global

and local features of Romanian commercials. Another

aspect pointed out by this issue is the specificity of prod-

uct categories in order to make a connection between their

main characteristics (benefits) and Christmas image.

Comparing with other seasons, spices are very well repre-

sented given the Romanian custom to cook traditionally.

Alcoholic drinks are related to entertainment and parties,

especially because young people like spending time

together. Chocolate is not usually connected to Christmas

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time unless it is gift for children , because it always has

been considered the best way to be friendly, lovely and

polite. As we have already noticed, communication tools

reflect an increasingly globalized and globalizing world

much better, because people bring Christmas to their

homes through a single phone call. This is the main strat-

egy that Vodafone uses to promote its international mobile

phone service, choosing a time when people try to ignore

distances. The big idea this brand appealed to in one of its

Christmas commercials was to make consumers’ life eas-

ier by dissolving barriers and by converting a phone call

into a conversation, as the protagonist says: “It’s about

conversation, baby!” From this point of view, Orange and

Vodafone, the oldest competitive mobile phone services

on the Romanian market reach their customers differently.

Orange, represented only by two examples in our sample

is oriented towards the global Christmas celebration,

while Vodafone comes closer to Romanian needs, which

are more interested to communicate with their relatives

who have temporarily or definitively moved to another

country. However, this product category, which covers

30% of the entire corpus, is a strong evidence for the

weaving between the local and global.

The next question previously approached regards the

values provided by the behavior of spot heroes, and the

results do not look particularly inquisitive at all, consider-

ing generosity a bridge between everyone and everything,

no matter which country people belong to. The idea is

available for love and care, related to the similar issues:

family, friends and pets. Tradition is the only category that

makes the difference here, because it is very well contex-

tualized. In terms of looking for a relationship between

global and local, the table shows a convergent strategy of

reminding Christmas values to the customers, so we can

bring forward a standardization of the creative strategies

developed by the analyzed campaigns.

In addition to this, symbols enrich the global view on

Christmas, except traditional meals, obviously related to

local culinary customs and very important for the atmos-

phere. Christmas parties cannot be associated with any

other ways of spending free time, because they follow a

special ritual emphasized by many commercials. Party

means here nothing other than enjoying traditional cake,

listening to old songs, making gifts, given cookies and

sometimes money to the children that sing Christmas car-

ols (similar to Halloween Treating by going from house to

house for collecting candies).

Another issue we focused on this study was to research

the connection between Christmas and every gender or

age, on the one hand, and collectivity or individuality, on

the other hand. This problem brings us closer than ever to

positioning based on emotional and rational consumers

needs. This time, masculinity, that takes up the highest

percentage in our chart, does not reflect only specific val-

ues, such as power, strength, skillfulness, but also sensi-

tivity, artistic taste and interest in history. Taking into

account that Romania is still a conservative country,

where the father is the authority-figure, emphasizing mas-

culinity is another way to lend significance to local fea-

tures. Men are very often in charge of highlighting

Romanian specificity, using sports personalities such as

football players (George Hagi for BRD and Cristian

Chivu for Vodafone), tennis players (Ilie Nastase for

BRD), journalists (Daniel Buzdugan for Germanos),

artists (Ciprian Porumbescu for Timiºoreana). Christmas

spots bring to light various professional categories, such

as: sailors, secret agent, businessman, sales man, con-

struction worker. What is very clear according to the qual-

itative results is that men, women and children, even if

they are individualized or belong to a family in a spot,

build up a traditional and local image of celebrating

Christmas in Romania.

Conclusions

Considering Christmas time an international holiday,

because it is celebrated in the entire Christian world, we

cannot argue that it is a simple case of globalization. From

the consuming point of view, we think Pieterse’s opinion

about cultural standardization and uniformization “as the

global sweep of consumerism” (2009: 44) is very well

implied, based on a couple of arguments. First, commer-

cials broadcast on the Romanian market belong especial-

ly to the global brands which obviously emphasized their

strong impact on local brands everywhere in the world.

Second, these universal Christmas campaigns are surely

helped by their promoted values connected to brand histo-

ry. Nobody could change Coca-Cola positioning based on

the cultural significance of Santa, who is not only a per-

sonality, but a symbol of welcoming Christmas, especially

for the children’s sake. From another perspective, this is a

kind of profane dissemination of the Christian spirit, by

using the story of the Magi.

On the other side, the Romanian consumers, like those

in any other country, preserve the tradition and conserva-

tively follow a local ritual of enjoying the culinary

aspects, rites, cultural clues of Christmas. Commercials

do not ignore all these, even if the genuine brands did not

originally build their image based on these. According to

Hollis, this is the strategy applied by a global brand to

appeal to consumers across various cultures. We are faced

here with two relevant processes for our study: hybridiza-

tion and localization. The first one consists of weaving

global symbols of Christmas with local ones, to make the

best marriage between cultures. Associating Coca Cola,

Vodafone or Cosmote (they are only a few examples from

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many others included in the corpus) with Romanian culi-

nary customs, and Santa with drinking boiled wine convey

cultural diversity. The main values of a brand rely here on

a specific background that has to be clearly highlighted in

the commercials. Localization regards the process of

adapting global values to the ethnic markets by preserving

the general framework and adding particular elements.

This is available not only for Romania, but for every space

the ad is created for. Starting from this point, we noticed

the localization phenomena for other global brands as well.

The local brands were represented to a lesser degree in our

sample and Coca-Cola came up with a single commercial,

but the other brands accurately preserve its connotations.

This means that localization and hybridization provide

example not of diversity, but of cultural diversities. The

easiest example that clears out this fact, was offered by a

Milka spot in which Santa is helped by no one else than a

bear and a marmot, the well-known symbols of winter

campaigns. Both animals do not remind the consumer

only of chocolate, but also of the Alpine landscape, so

they preserve local features of their country of origin.

Santa entrusts them with making gifts, replacing the elf

with Milka symbols, as he said in the beginning of the

spot: Okay, guys! This year I rely on you! This is a typical

case of localization, but also of purposefully conveying a

bicultural identity. Brand symbols and images alike

(Coca-Cola and Milka) equally collaborate to make chil-

dren’ Christmas happier. The verbal and visual message

provided by the end of this spot points out this idea of

weaving global and local values for the same purpose, by

using double means: Santa Claus stops at Milka every year

and fills up his sack with surprises of the finest chocolate.

To sum up the present debate, this research proves that

Christmas time basically reveals global features of the

commercials broadcast on the Romanian market, and

emerges its specificity, which is not limited only to gen-

uine brands. Hybridization comes from enriching Santa’s

image due to traditions, celebrating rites and rituals.

Localization assumes to adapt consecrated symbols to the

Romanian market consumer insight, according to con-

sumer lifestyle at this time of year. Drawing a general con-

clusion, we are faced with another type of glocalization,

which relies on specific cultural and religious principles,

more emphasized due to the meaning of Christmas for

ages. Romanian advertising cannot be described as a spe-

cific one for sure, due to the homogeneous representations

of celebrating Christmas everywhere in the world.

References

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www. IQads.ro

Endnotes

(1) In orginal language „Die Inhaltsanalyse ist eine

empirische Methode zur systematischen, intersubjektiv

nachvollziebar Beschreibung inhaltlicher und formaler

Merkmale von Mitteilungen”.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the strategic grant POS-

DRU/89/1.5/S/62259, Project „Applied social, human and

political sciences. Postdoctoral training and postdoctoral

fellowships in social, human and political sciences”, of

the University of Bucharest, cofinanced by the European

Social Fund within the Sectorial Operational Program

Human Resources Development 2007-2013.

Assistant professor Mãdãlina MORARU (BUGA),Ph.D., Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication

Studies, University of Bucharest, Romania.

E-mail: morarumadalina@hotmail.com,

moraru_mada12@yahoo.com.

Address: Bd. Iuliu Maniu, nr. 1-3, Complex „Leu”,

Corp A, etajul 6, sector 6, Bucureºti, Romania.

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