Check Out These Marketing Blunders

Planning on marketing your product or service internationally in the future? If so, you might want to think ahead now. Today’s post outlines some major marketing blunders, made by large organizations. While funny, they’re a lesson to those of us just entering the world of marketing. Do your research.

Electrolux, the Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer, released the following marketing campaign in North America: “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.” Who wants a vacuum that sucks? Depends on how you look at it. In North America, if something sucks it means we don’t like it. While the slogan surely raised a few eyebrows, it wasn’t as damaging as some others I’ve seen.

Take, for instance, the release of the Chevy Nova in Mexico. When translated, “nova” means “doesn’t go”. Who’s going to buy a car that “doesn’t go”? Needless to say, the Chevy Nova was not a big hit in Mexico.

Due to social pressures and civil rights movements, Crayola renamed several of their colouring crayons over time. In consideration of other skin tones, “flesh” became “peach” and “Indian red” became “chestnut.” Consider the social implications of how your product or service will be received by different peoples and genders.

When Pepsi’s ad slogan, “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” is translated into Chinese, it says something along the lines of “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.” I’m not sure how that was taken in China, but I certainly don’t want the ghosts of my ancestors returning unannounced.

Parker Pen was marketing a ballpoint pen in Mexico. The ads were supposed to read, “It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you,” but the company used the wrong word for embarrass. The word “embarazar” means to impregnate, so the ad ended up reading, “It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.” Oh, thank goodness!

When Gerber, the baby food company, started to sell its food in Africa, it decided to use the same packaging as it had used in North America. The label carried few words, but showed a happy Caucasian baby. Later Gerber learned that, since most people can’t read, pictures on labels in Africa often depict what’s in the jar. Whoops!

Coca Cola wanted to have a phonetically similar name in China, but were having trouble finding one that worked. The first one they came up with read as “Ke-kou-ke-la,” which, depending on the dialect, meant, “bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax.” Coke researched the 40,000 Chinese characters to find a phonetic match. Finally, it came up with “ko-kou-ko-le,” meaning “happiness in the mouth.”

German makers of knapsacks, refer to their backpacks as “body bags,” a term that doesn’t really work in North America for obvious reasons.

While many of these blunders stem from translation issues, marketing slogans and the names of products sometimes don’t translate well even in the same language. Fanny packs, which were a big hit in North America, were somewhat of a fail in England. The word “fanny” doesn’t have the same meaning there as it does here.

There is no end to these types of marketing mistakes. If your company has plans to sell its product or service outside of the country, consider the names of and slogans for your products ahead of time. It could save you a lot of trouble in the future, although, it might be good for a laugh for the rest of us.