Introduction

It is believed by many researchers that the power of advertising is conveyed in visuals which are more concise and more easily and quickly processed than verbal language (Berger 1998; Lester 2000). On the other hand, it has been proven by psychological studies (Nisbett, 2003) that the way people interpret images is impacted by their cultural background (high-context verse low-context culture). Therefore, properly designed visuals are especially significant to the success of advertising campaigns. Moreover, the culturally localized commercials have been proven to be more effective than those “generalized” (Mueller 1994; Taylor, Miracle & Wilson 1997)

This research will take the TV commercials of three US brands aired in China as the research subject, to examine whether their visual strategies have been customized according to the Chinese society’s high-context cultural characteristics in comparison with the US versions.

Generally, this research will address this question: “Have those commercials aired in China been impacted by the high-context cultural characteristics in comparison with the US versions?” and “Does the audience prefer the commercials adopting culturally localized visual strategies?”

The first question will be further explored by justifying these 7 hypotheses associated with 6 high-context verse low-context cultural characteristics. I will conduct two experiments among Chinese and U. S. audience by showing them 6 most ads from the samples which most typically present the local cultural characteristics. And then the participants will report their feedback during the interviews and questionnaire. By doing so, I want to justify whether the culture matters to the audience when perceiving the commercials. If so, which cultural characteristics are most appreciated by the audience? Based on those findings, the research is expected to generate a model of visual representation for culturally based advertising campaign targeted at Chinese market.