The humorous side to Brand Failures

Every company venturing into a new international market has to tread very carefully. In a bid to rush into uncharted territories , they often commit grave errors which prove very difficult to undo later on. Some of these errors are absolutely unwarranted and provide no logic as to why the best marketing companies across the world committed them.

A few examples...

Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American ad campaign: “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.”

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, kokou- 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.

When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point 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.”