Brand Morphing--Implications for Advertising Theory and Practice

Abstract Contemporary cultural conditions present many challenges to academicians' and practitioners' understandings of the ways consumers interpret brands and advertising. This article advances the concept of brand morphing, that is, the ways that brand meanings change among different groupings of consumers as facilitated by ad practitioners' efforts to accommodate, reinforce, and create diverse cultural meanings across different international markets. Depth interview data from a study of ad practitioners illustrate the ways that ad professionals accommodate, work with, and reinforce perceived foreign cultural differences that exist across target markets. Finally, brand morphing's usefulness and relevance to contemporary advertising theory and practice is discussed.