I’ve always been fascinated to understand whether, when and why ads developed in one country are effective in another. I worked with Ogilvy on a project called 'The Flavours of International Advertising’ a long time ago. It leveraged Kantar Millward Brown’s ad effectiveness database to identify and understand which ads travel well and which don’t.
 
The analysis showed that exceptional advertising in one country is likely to perform better than average in other countries but there are no guarantees. We found that advertising travels well across countries if the category is used and seen in a similar way, when the brand has a similar positioning and status, and if it faces similar competitive challenges.

Check out 'The Smart Advertising Book' for further details.