Page 89 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Brand ng the Globe

ConCLusion
Multinational corporations and their advertising agencies have a growing and
essential role in the continued success of global capitalism. Globalization helped
corporations spread the messages of consumption through global advertising
and the global mass media have helped manufacturers and service providers to
penetrate markets around the world. Global advertising spreads lifestyles and
values along with the products being marketed. From their inception, the mass
media have been commodities to be consumed in much the same way as ham-
burgers and cosmetic surgery.
Ironically, one major unintended side effect of the rise in consumer culture is
the development of alternative markets in countries like China for locally pro-
duced “fake” branded items that are affordable to the rising masses of middle-
class consumers. Meanwhile “real brands” like Haier and Lenovo from China
are emerging on the international consumer market to challenge the Western
giants like GE and IBM. Using the branding techniques they have learned from
Western corporations, these new entrants to the marketplace can draw on over
a billion local consumers to become a major presence in the global marketplace
in the twenty-first century.

see also Advertising and Persuasion; Communication and Knowledge Labor;
Communication Rights in a Global Context; Conglomeration and Media Monop-
olies; Cultural Appropriation; Cultural Imperialism and Hybridity; Global
Community Media; Hypercommercialism; Pharmaceutical Advertising; Piracy
and Intellectual Property.

Further reading: Bagdikian, Ben H. The Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon, 1997; Cappo,
Joe. The Future of Advertising: New Media, New Clients, New Consumers in the Post-
Television Age. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003; Frith, Katherine T., and Barbara Mueller.
Advertising and Society: Global Issues. New York: Peter Lang, 2003; Herman, Ed-
ward S., and Robert W. McChesney. The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corpo-
rate Capitalism. London: Cassell, 1997; Khermouch, Gerry. “Special Report: The Best
Global Brands.” Business Week Online, http://www.Businessweek.com/magazine/con
tent/02_31/63945098.htm; Klein, Naomi. “The Tyranny of Brands.” The New Statesman 13,
no. 589 (January 24, 2000a): 25; Klein, Naomi. No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bul-
lies. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2000b; Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization of Society: An
Investigation Into the Changing Character of Contemporary Society, 3rd ed. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2000; Sivulka, Juliann. Soap, Sex and Cigarettes: A Cultural
History of American Advertising. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998.
Katherine Frith