Before departure in my study abroad in London, England I thought what could be so different about the U.K. and the U.S.? They both speak English! The longer I was there, the more I noticed the subtle differences between the two. For the first most obvious one everyone probably knows, they drive on the opposite side of the road! They also heavily rely on public transportation. They have the tube, the famous double-decker buses, and trains. Don’t get me wrong, there is still a lot of cars on the road, but there are even more people using public transportation. Another big difference that I noticed is that their restaurants, stores, and pubs close far earlier than ours. On weekdays their stores will close around 9 p.m. or earlier, restaurants around 10 p.m., and pubs by midnight. Another big difference is the variety of cultures. We call America a melting pot, but London indeed is a melting pot. While in London, I only met two people who were actually from London! Also, when we would go out to eat, we would see our server once when we were ready to order, when we got our food, and then when we got our check. Where in America our servers would probably check on us 5-7 times or more!

For one of our projects, we had to go to the tube and compare the differences in the advertisements we saw in London versus the advertisements in America. Some of the main differences we noticed are that ads in the tube are very wordy. They will have nearly a whole paragraph on an ad. Where in America, we are short, sweet, and to the point. We also rely a lot on visual aids to draw attention. Another large difference is they do not focus on interactive advertising as much as we do. We try to get consumers involved and interacting with us and one another. Where in the tubes they mainly used only traditional media. Our main conclusion was that London is about 5-10 years behind America on effective advertising.

My point here is that I was expecting things to be so similar to American culture, which in a lot of ways they were, but the more I explored London, the more differences I saw.