This week, I can hear the word “Halloween” everywhere. Everyone is talking about this coming Halloween weekend plan. Every store sells Halloween products or promote products relating to Halloween. For example, restaurants decorate inside and outside the restaurant as Halloween. Make it dark and put scary dolls on the wall. Also waiters and waitresses wear Halloween custom. To make the restaurant different from others, they promote lots of event and provide gifts for Halloween. But this common Halloween Party is totally new to me because we don’t celebrate Halloween in Korea. I know Halloween because I have seen this culture in movies or dramas. I’m so excited that I can experience new culture this time. But at the same time I thought the importance of culture in marketing.

Therefore understanding culture is important for marketing. Depend on how well you understand the culture and make proper strategy, the result can be totally different.

After I came to Canada, I watched TV and realized that the advertisements are much different from Korea. In Korea, most of advertisements are shown by celebrities. Pretty actresses advertise cosmetics, clothes, even food, and appliances. But in Canada, usually by normal people, and feel like they are more focus on sending information about products.

This is Korean version of by Yuna Kim who is famous Korean figure skater.

Actually we learned about the power of using celebrities on advertisements. They have social influence, so they have bigger power to affect people. But more than this, the company try to make their brand image by celebrities. For example, one actor in Korea has great reputation like kind, honest, and sincerity, so he gives image of good friend, nice son, and great boyfriend. For these reasons, he is modeling for more than 5 different companies, like cosmetic, appliance, food, bank, and clothes. By buying these product advertised by him, people feel like they can be like him. I think this is connect with ‘self-concept’ which is mentioned by Kelsey Ingham(https://blogs.ubc.ca/kelseyingham/), one of our classmates. She mentioned that by wearing a brand clothes, she get self-concept from the brand. I think this is company’s goal of using celebrities on their advertisements. Using celebrities is good way to express their company’s ‘mission statement’ because celebrities already have their own images, so they just have to choose the right celebrity who fits to their company’s image or the image company want to get. For these reasons, lots of companies sponsor celebrities in Korea. Especially they sponsor on drama, so that people can see their product naturally during watching drama. Besides, the actors and actresses have their own characteristic, so it is more easier to get image from them. For instance, by sponsoring the rich, handsome, perfect guy in the drama, company gives people the image that ‘this product is used by perfect guy, so if you buy this product, you can be like them.’

Canada also has celebrities advertisement but not as much as Korea. I just guess that this is cultural difference. Maybe Korean people get more social influence. So it is important for them to know how others think. By wearing the special brand advertised by popular actress,they feel like they can be like the girl in the TV and follow the current trends. Because of this, celebrities advertisements are more effective in Korea.