Page 189 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

Capital, Technology and the US in an 'Open Market' 179

broadcasting has been the general economic slow-down of relatively
developed economies that began in the late 1980s. This economic
downturn, coinciding with the introduction of new television services,
produced a general slowing in the annual growth of advertising
expenditures. 57 As with other information-based corporations, the
world's largest advertising and market research firms also were
involved in new partnerships, mergers and takeovers. The ongoing
58
internationalization of a range of consumer goods and services has
encouraged an increasing number ofTNCs to use a single advertising-
marketing firm in order to minimize expenses. Moreover, the increas-
ing availability of mass-market transnational media, such as DBS,
itself has encouraged TNCs to create and disseminate more and
more advertising for a global audience. As Les Margulis of interna-
tional advertising firm BBDO Worldwide explains, 'more and more
clients in the USA and Europe are looking to develop products and
advertising products over a broader geographic area.' Margulis
explains that companies in the past, when marketing in Europe and
Asia, 'may have had one product that they would advertise in thirteen
different countries.' However, 'because of the various signals in Eur-
ope that are trans-geographic,' thanks in large part to DBS systems,
there now exists greater flexibility in the option of funneling resources
into a far smaller number of distribution outlets. 'Clients,' explains
Margulis, 'are looking to save money, to reach the audience with less
work.' 59 Comparing this emerging perspective 'with the old days,' he
explains the activities of one of his clients - Gillette:

Gillette used to have marketing groups in each of the countries [in
which it sold its products] .... They would do their own
manufacturing, do their own distribution .... You had to produce
different ads. Do you know how much it costs to produce an ad
of that quality, times twelve? So now, they do it times one. All
they do is put the voice track on a separate audio channel, they
strip the voice track and drop down the local language. It doesn't
cost a whole lot of money to do voice tracks, but it costs a whole
lot of money to get a camera crew of twenty people to shoot
[twelve different ads]. 60

To reduce costs further, a range of additional strategies are being
pursued. One involves efforts to sell advertising and distribute promo-
tional material across a coordinated range of mass-media outlets. In
return for relatively large-scale commitments, advertisers pay lower