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Marketing Screw-Ups
These engineering and science tech-centric
jokes, song parodies, anecdotes and assorted humor have been collected from friends
and websites across the Internet. I check back occasionally for new fodder, but
it seems all the old content is reappearing all over (like this is). The humor is
light-hearted and clean and sometimes slightly assaultive to the easily-offended,
so you are forewarned. It is all workplace-safe.
- Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose," into Spanish where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea."
- 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 German only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "manure stick."
- When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what's inside, since most people can't read. On top of that, "gerber" is a slang word for "puck" in French (thanks to Eric for this).
- Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.
- 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 grave", in Chinese.
- Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "it takes a strong man to make a tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate."
- The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Ke-kou-ke-la", 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 "ko-kou-ko-le", translating into "happiness in the mouth."
- When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, "it won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." Instead, the company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."
- The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. However, it was soon brought to their attention that the Spanish translation read, "Are you lactating?"
- When American Airlines wanted to advertise its new leather first-class seats in the Mexican market, it translated its "Fly In Leather" campaign literally, which meant "Fly Naked" (vuela en cuero) in Spanish.
- GM's marketed its Nova in Central and South America, not realizing that "No va" in Spanish means, "it doesn't go."
Copyright: 1996 - 2026 |
About RF Cafe RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived... |
Copyright 1996 - 2026 All trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other rights of ownership to images
and text used on the RF Cafe website are hereby acknowledge My Hobby Website: My Daughter's Website: |
