ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines how globalisation has arisen in the advertising industry, and how it is manifested in its structure today. The profound transformation of advertising in the digital age must also be considered, along with related changes in modes of belonging, such as nationhood and minority status. Looking at the globalisation of the advertising and marketing communication industries in historical perspective, this occurred as the US- and European-based consumer goods and services corporations spread themselves into foreign markets in the 1960s and 1970s. For globalisation to occur in a meaningful sense, there needed to be a discourse about globalisation that could facilitate and legitimise the process, and a structural change which would make the world advertising industry truly internationalised. Advertising enables brands to acquire cultural meanings, such as hierarchies of status, associations with certain kinds of people, and even something like their own personalities.
