What’s in a Name? Famous Marketing Translation Blunders

What’s in a Name? Famous Marketing Translation Blunders

If you are considering marketing your product internationally, there are a lot of things you must consider when naming your products or creating your slogans. It may surprise you to learn that some major companies have had some huge product failures because they didn’t do their research. Remember the Chevy Nova? That didn’t do so well in Mexico due to the name meaning: No Go. Once they realized this, they renamed the car the Caribe.

Here are some other famous blunders:

Schweppes Tonic Water translates in Italian to “Schweppes Toilet Water”

Coors’ Slogan “Turn it Loose” translates in Spanish to “Suffer from Diarrhea”

Pepsi’s Slogan “Come Alive with the Pepsi Generation” translates in Chinese to “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave”

KFC’s Slogan “Finger Licking Good” translates in Chinese as “Eat Your Fingers Off”

Clairol’s “Mist Stick” curling iron translates in German to “Manure Stick”

The Dairy Association’s “Got Milk” ad translates in Spanish to “Are You Lactating”

It’s not just Americans who make these blunders. Scandinavian manufacturer of Electrolux created the campaign: Nothing Sucks like an Electrolux.

It has been said that Gerber may have made one of the biggest blunders, however, when they put a picture of a baby on their jars of baby food. In Africa, it is common for them to put a picture on the label of what is actually in the product. This has since been considered a myth.

Additional Resources:

Product Placement:  Is it Shameless or Just Good Business

How to Market Your Product Using Social Media

50 Famous People Who Failed Before Becoming a Success

Product Placement – Is it Shameless or Just Good Business?

I teach a lot of marketing classes where we talk about product placement.  In a recent discussion we were talking about FedEx and the movie Castaway.  I read that the company didn’t pay for that mention.  I find that hard to believe but I guess it is possible.

Product placement is big business.  Recently BeBe launched a new line of clothes based on its popularity from 90210.

Here is a list of some very noticeable products placed in movies that you may remember.

  1. Taco Bell in Demolition Man
  2. Popeye’s Chicken in Little Nicky
  3. Reese’s Pieces in ET
  4. New Beetle in Herbie:  Fully Loaded
  5. AOL in You’ve Got Mail
  6. Several Dolls like Barbie, Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story
  7. Aquafina in National Treasure
  8. CNN in Contact
  9. Dr. Pepper in Spiderman
  10. Apple computers in too many movies to mention

Check out the following links for some more examples:

Movie-Moron.com – 10 Most Shameless Uses of Product Placement in Films

MetaFilter.com – Examples of Product Placement in Movies

Cracked.com – 10 Most Shameless Product Placements in Movie History

Listverse.com – Top 10 Blatant Examples of Product Placement in Movies

Wikipedia.com – The Complete Lowdown on Product Placement

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