Cultural Mistakes in Marketing Campaigns

It’s well known that the name and the slogan of a product are at least a half of selling success. However many companies, even the greatest, make mistakes while choosing names and slogans. They don’t pay enough attention to this matter and this result in market loss for them. Here are some examples of promotional marketing mistakes: Pepsi’ slogan of 1963 "Come Alive, You’re in the Pepsi Generation" was translated into Taiwan language and got an unexpected meaning: “Pepsi will make your ancestry to rise from graves” Taiwans were shocked. When Parker Pen entered the Mexican market, its advertisements which claimed that Parker Pens "won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you," it was mistranslated to "No te embarazará chorreándose en tu bolsillo" which means "Won’t leak in your pocket and impregnate you.” Gerber introduced organic baby cereal in Africa with the famous smiling baby on the label. But the product was not selling. Turns out that in Africa there are a lot of illiterate people and as a rule companies print a photo on the label of what is inside. For instance if they sell oatmeal, they place oatmeal porridge on the label. Bacardi put on the market an upscale bitters drink named ‘Pavane’ which in French means stylishness, but in German it sounded too close to ‘Pavian’ – baboon. Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, in the German market only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "manure stick". Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux raised a few eyebrows in the United States when it came up with the slogan “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.” Coors beer had bad luck in Spain with its “Turn it loose” slogan. It translated as “You will suffer from diarrhea”. Frank Perdue’s chicken campaign created confusion with the tag line “It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken.” In Spain this became “It takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate.” KFC’ “Finger Licking” good’ slogan is used all over the world to highlight the tastiness of the product. However when the phrase was translated into Chinese for the Hong Kong market, it became ‘Eat your fingers off’. Needles to say, most customers opted for the fries instead. When American Airlines decided to advertise the luxurious aspect of flying business class to their Mexican customers, they thought it would make sense to focus on the leather seats. Therefore, they used the slogan “Fly in Leather,” which in Spanish translates to “Vuela en Cuero.” What the Spanish dictionary had neglected to inform them was that the phrase ‘en cuero’ is a slang term for ‘in the nude’. AA soon found out that there was little demand for mile-high nudism among Mexico’s business flyers. The Colgate-Palmolive Company introduced a tooth paste called Cue in the French market. Little did they know Cue is a popular French porno magazine. Puffs drapery had ill fame in Germany because ‘puff’ in German slang means ‘brothel.’ The Coca-Cola Company had a huge problem when choosing a name for their product in China. When Chinese pronounced ‘coca cola’ it meant ‘bite wax tadpole’. The company had to look through about 40 thousand different variations to find ‘cocu cole,’ which means ‘happiness in mouth’ in Chinese.