As an advertising consultant for a New York—based clothing company, the protagonist in this case wants to respect and reflect religious diversity in both promotion and publicity. An actress wearing a hijab, the head cover many Muslim women wear in public, has been included in the company's upcoming global ad campaign, sparking concerns about how the campaign will be received in France. Taking into account the friction between political secularism and Islam that had manifested itself in France, with one prominent clothing retailer having withdrawn some advertising that depicted hijabs, the protagonist must decide how to advise the clothing company to proceed with its campaign. Excerpt UVA-E-0438 Apr. 14, 2020 Vulcan Clothing Company In just a few months, you planned to roll out a major advertising campaign for one of your longest-standing clients, the New York—based clothing company Vulcan. In an effort to reflect and respect religious diversity, the video-clip series you and your team produced depicted representatives from a number of major faiths and some atheists wearing various Vulcan garments while going about their daily lives. One of those representatives was a Muslim woman, and her video segment dually functioned as an unveiling of Vulcan's own line of patterned hijabs, the head cover that some Muslim women and girls wore when in public. And while Vulcan made its American roots loud and clear in its overall brand language, it recently gained considerable traction in French metropolitan markets—so much so that opening a brick-and-mortar store in Paris had become a serious prospect. Challenges to Entering European Markets Expansion into European markets didn't come without its cultural, historical, and political caveats. First, the story of religion, secularization, and public life in Europe was a uniquely complex and complicated one, shaped by a blend of historical and contemporary influences: centuries of religious warfare; peculiar church—state relationships; contesting views on immigration; and challenges of pluralistic social integration, among others. Amid that complexity and complication, however, one thing was clear: Church attendance and, more broadly, faith in traditional religious institutions had waned consistently throughout the continent. Even if devotion remained strong in some Eastern European countries (especially contrasted with their Western European neighbors); and even if Asia housed the world's most secularized nations (e.g., China and Japan), Europe's narrative arc had brought it to a much more deinstitutionalized religious place when considered against the rest of the world. . . .