Hi,
According to several dictionaries the word ‘innovative’ is stressed on the first syllable but I’ve just seen an Allianz commercial in which the ‘innovative’ was stressed on the second syllable.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, talks: A traffic report is being given on the radio[YSaerTTEW443543]
It should be stressed on the first syllable.
Maybe the announcer was the guy who used to say “Mentos – the Frrrrrreshmakerrrrrrr” on TV. He sounded American to Germans, and he sounded German to Americans. 
Allianz does some odd things when they try to make international commercials. They’re one of the German companies that has decided to use the same ad all over the world, and the result is that their ads look and sound strange in other countries. There was one commercial that was supposed to show a super-rich Formula 1 driver who really cared about his daughter, but in the States the man looked like he moved lie a marionette, and his daughter was dressed like the girls in old horror movies. Plus, nobody could figure out what the point of the ad was. The driver promises he’ll call his daughter when he’s abroad, and he does it. Then the announcer says, “A promise is a promise!” But isn’t a dad SUPPOSED to phone his children when he’s away? We were supposed to think he was a great guy just because he did the minimum that everybody’s expected to do. Needless to say, the ad didn’t work.
There’s another type of ad that’s odd in the US, and that’s the type that is conceived and written by the British but uses American actors. These ads are usually for banks, and they usually show bankers getting excited and jubilant for about 10 seconds and then going back to work. These ads aren’t funny in the US, because we can easily imagine a group of our bankers getting excited when they’re lucky, so there’s no surprise.
Contrast this with Apple Computer, which realized some of their best US advertisements would give them a bad image in the UK and Japan, so they remade them to fit the culture.