Among the many, multi-faceted challenges tied to launching a product or service with global ambitions is settling on a name that speaks to what is a broad, widespread and multi-lingual demographic. It can be difficult to settle on phrasing that is able to convert a chosen message across a broad spectrum of cultural and language barriers without something getting lost or redefined along the way. Just ask Apple Inc., which learned the hard way that SIRI, iPhone’s personal assistant software, translates to mean a rather vulgar word for penis in the Georgian language.
So it’s hard to blame these foreign companies for losing something in translation upon releasing products with names that are, admittedly, pretty amusing to English-speaking consumers. That is, in the event that these actually are mistakes. While some of the items listed here are clearly innocent translation errors, some do seem to be deliberate, tongue-in-cheek attempts to be provocative and to draw a few more eyeballs with some curiously worded packaging. Indeed, in an era where any online blog can generate millions of views from across the world, a silly product from Ghana can become a worldwide phenomenon immediately.
While these translation faux pas can be highly amusing for consumers and other on-lookers, they can represent awfully expensive mistakes for the corporations unfortunate enough to make them. Sometimes, a company will lose money on a dud of an ad campaign over a cultural mis-step, as was the case when Pampers flopped in Japan after including a stork delivering babies on its packaging and thereby confusing Japanese customers who weren’t familiar with that culture-specific folklore. Other times, a poorly researched marketing campaign launch can wind up retracted at a significant expense over a translation snafu, such as when HSBC Bank’s “Assume Nothing” tagline translated to “Do Nothing” in many countries, prompting a $10 million brand overhaul overseas.
We in North America are hardly perfect when it comes to branding messages that don’t quite hit the target overseas. On top of the iPhone and HSBC Bank fiascoes, KFC initially ran into trouble in China when it’s “Finger-lickin’ good” tagline translated to the less appealing “Eat your fingers off”. Surely other countries could build their own lists of product launches stemming from the US that went comically awry when they crossed the ocean. For the purposes of this list, however, we focused in on products that, whether knowingly or unknowingly, carry a certain – and undeniably entertaining - charge when translated to English.
Whether these are unintentionally hilarious miscues or deliberate, devilish winks from marketers who know they will draw some added attention, it’s hard to believe that any of these raunchily-titled products will have English-speaking consumers flocking to the grocery store or the web to buy them. Unless, of course, sucking down a “Vergina beer” is your sort of thing. But hey, they will certainly get you aware and talking. And isn’t that just the point of brand marketing?
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