Branding blunders hall of shame
We've all seen the results of bad translation. There are examples everywhere and some are quite surprising considering the brands involved and the scale of the aftermath. For the individuals held responsible, you would think it would be punishment enough for them to suffer the subsequent career damage, but having their blunder become urban legend, that must really sting. We hope they have developed a coping strategy.
Here are some examples...
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- McDonald's: In January 2005, McDonald's published banners proclaiming "Double cheeseburger? I'd Hit It." In this blunder, the perhaps slightly out-of-touch, copywriters mistook the strictly sexual American slang expression for a term of general approval. For a UK audience the equivalent would be Double cheeseburger? I'd give it one." Arguably, more healthy than eating one . . .
- Honda: In 2001, Honda intended to release an automobile known as the Fit in Asian markets as the Honda Fitta on the European market. However, in Swedish and Norwegian, fitta is a crude reference to female genitalia, and the vehicle was rebranded Honda Jazz.
- Gerber: In some markets in Africa, companies put pictures of the content on the labels. Allegedly, when Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used a beautiful baby’s picture on the cover, the same way they do in the USA; and allegedly, uneducated Africans construed this as depicting babies as food. Either way, a little more research would have helped as the word "gerber" means "to vomit" in French.
- Sport shoe maker Umbro tried to use the German word for 'cyclone' as a moniker for some footwear. The German word 'Zyklon' is unfortunately synonymous with the gas used in Nazi concentration camps.
- The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign 'Got Milk?' prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are you lactating?"
- Coors put its slogan, 'Turn it Loose', into Spanish, where it was read as 'Suffer from Diarrhoea'.
- Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: 'Nothing sucks like an Electrolux'.
- Clairol introduced the 'Mist Stick', a curling iron, into Germany only to find out that 'Mist' is slang for manure. Not too many people had a use for the 'Manure Stick.
- An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of 'I saw the Pope' (el Papa), the shirts read 'I Saw the Potato' (la papa).
- Pepsi's 'Come Alive with the Pepsi Generation' translated into 'Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead' in Chinese.
- The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as 'Kekoukela', meaning 'Bite the wax tadpole' or 'female horse stuffed with wax', depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent 'kokou kole', translating into 'happiness in the mouth'.
- When American Airlines wanted to advertise its new leather first class seats in the Mexican market, they translated their 'Fly in Leather' campaign literally, which meant 'Fly Naked' (vuela en cuero) in Spanish.
- KFC's famous 'finger lickin' good' strapline went terribly wrong in the Chinese market. It was literally translated as 'eat your fingers off'.
We used some of these stories in a recent marketing campaign.
