Cracking an international market is a goal of most
growing corporations.
SOME MORE MNC GAFFES !!
It shouldn't be that hard, yet even the big
>multi-nationals run into trouble because of language
and cultural
>differences. For example...
>
>The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as
Ke-kou-ke-la.
>Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover
until after thousands
of
>signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite
the wax tadpole" or
>"female horse stuffed with wax" depending on the
dialect. Coke then
>researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a
close phonetic
equivalent,
>"ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely translated as
"happiness in the
>mouth."
>
>In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come
alive with the
Pepsi
>Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your
ancestors back from the
>dead."
>
>Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan
"finger-lickin'
good"
>came out as "eat your fingers off."
>
>The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, "Salem -
Feeling Free," got
>translated in the Japanese market into "When smoking
Salem, you feel
so
>refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty."
>
>When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in
South America, it was
>apparently unaware that "no va" means "it won't go."
>After the company figured out why it wasn't selling
any cars, it
renamed
>the
>car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.
>
>Ford had a similar problem in Brazil when the Pinto
flopped. The
company
>found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for "tiny
male genitals".
Ford
>pried all the nameplates off and substituted Corcel,
which means
horse.
>
>When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico,
its ads were
supposed
>to
>say "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you."
However, the
company
>mistakenly thought the spanish word "embarazar" meant
embarrass.
Instead
>the
>ads said that "It wont leak in your pocket and make
you pregnant."
>
>An American t-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for
the spanish
market
>which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of the
desired "I Saw the
Pope" in
>Spanish, the shirts proclaimed "I Saw the Potato."
>
>Chicken-man Frank Perdue's slogan, "It takes a tough
man to make a
tender
>chicken," got terribly mangled in another Spanish
translation. A photo
of
>Perdue with one of his birds appeared on billboards
all over Mexico
with a
>caption that explained "It takes a hard man to make a
chicken
aroused."
>
>Hunt-Wesson introduced its Big John products in
French Canada as Gros
Jos
>before finding out that the phrase, in slang, means
"big breasts." In
this
>case, however, the name problem did not have a
noticeable effect on
sales.
>
>Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue,
the name of a
>notorious porno mag.
>
>In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water
translated the name
into
>Schweppes Toilet Water.
>
>Japan's second-largest tourist agency was mystified
when it entered
>English-speaking markets and began receiving requests
for unusual sex
>tours.
>Upon finding out why, the owners of Kinki Nippon
Tourist Company
changed
>its
>name.
>
>and finally...
>
>In an effort to boost orange juice sales in
predominantly continental
>breakfast eating England, a campaign was devised to
extoll the drink's
>eye-opening, pick-me-up qualities. Hence, the slogan,
"Orange juice.
It
>gets
>your pecker up."
This is hilarious... even an Englishman could not construct sentences using numeric!