Cross‐cultural advertising in Europe

This paper presents the findings of a survey of television advertisements broadcast on French and UK television channels. The findings show that advertisements which have elements common to both countries are still very much the minority. An analysis of the underlying spirit of national and partially standardised advertisements highlighted the difference in advertising styles between the two countries. UK advertisements continue to rely on humour or straightforward information, where their French counterparts rely on a dreamlike advertising style. These differences appear to be rooted in the individual national cultures and would seem to preclude the possibility of standardised cross‐cultural advertising for the majority of products in the short‐term.