What radio station do you listen to?

Source: The Globe and Mail, June 2, 2012

Source: The Globe and Mail, June 2, 2012

At one time,  the 1980s, WTJX was a radio station in Champaign, Illinois. Now, according to the meagre research that I managed to do, it is a TV station in the US Virgin Islands.

But that is all a bit irrelevant. I saw this advertisement in The Globe and Mail. It is an ad for a new improved version of the Bose® Wave® Music System.

Among the things that this device will do is receive AM and FM radio and play CDs. So, if you are advertising this in Canada, as evidenced by the Bose.ca website, why would you use a US station's call letters to show that this can receive FM broadcasts.

In International Marketing  one of the ongoing debates has been about adaptation versus standardization. Do you standardize your marketing for all markets or adapt it to meet the needs of each market you sell in? In some cases adaptation is mandatory. Football means very different things in Europe and the United States (US). Hence, with the exception of Mexico, "The Beautiful Game" must be sold as soccer in North America.

This is one of the problems that Canadian consumers face. Far too many American marketers see the Canadian market as a seamless extension to the US market. And accordingly plenty of American marketers just take their home market advertising materials and use them in Canada. And that is why we see Bose's Wave music system shown without a Canadian station's call letters on the display.