HILARIOUS MARKETING MISTAKES

BY

THE LEADING GLOBAL BRANDS

Most companies dream of expanding their operations around the globe.

In order to globalise a certain brand, all of them carry out marketing campaigns to spread the word.

As a management student, you must have learned (or about to learn) several fundamentals of brand management. We assume that you are aware of several steps involved in a marketing campaign starting from advertising, PR to hosting launch events and so on.

In this presentation, we will discuss about the worst mistakes that marketers had committed while aiming for globalisation of their brands. These mistakes were, in fact overlooked by the brands that affected their sales in certain countries.

HERE WE GO...

MANURE STICK! SORRY... WHAT?

Clairol, a hair care company based in USA, launched a curling iron in the year 2006. They named the product ‘Mist Stick’, which resulted to be a super hit product in the US market. Now the company was willing to expand their operations in Germany. But it seems that Clairol had not conducted enough research about the country and its language, since ‘mist’ in German means ‘manure’.

YOU WILL EAT MY FINGERS. SERIOUSLY?

We all love KFC (Kentucky’s Fried Chicken) for its delicious food products. Reasonable enough, they use the tagline “Finger-lickin’ good”. However, they did not pay attention to the Chinese translation of the same, when they opted to launch their first outlet in Beijing, China in 1987. When KFC translated their tagline into Chinese, it read ‘We will eat your fingers off!’

BUY SODA AND BRING BACK YOUR ANCESTORS FROM GRAVE

We are not joking. Pepsi had a popular slogan, ‘We bring you back to life’, which caused the Chinese people to perspire. It was mainly because the translation of the slogan in Mandarin (Official language of China) stood as ‘We bring your ancestors back from dead’.

GENITALS DON’T SELL IN BRAZIL

Do not get us wrong please. The car manufacturers, Ford had realised such universal truth only after launching their subcompact car ‘Pinto’ in Brazil, where the car did not sell at all. Well, the company officials came to know that ‘Pinto’ is a Brazilian slang that stands for ‘male genital’.

THE PEN THAT WILL NOT MAKE YOU PREGNANT We must be kidding, right?

No, we are not. The slogan for Parker Pens says, ‘It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you’, which when translated into Spanish read ‘It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant’.

DIARRHOEA CAUSING BEER

Coors is currently the seventh-largest beer company in the world. It had a popular slogan ‘Turn it loose!’ that the company officials thought would translate fine into Spanish. Well, they were wrong, as the Spanish version of the slogan meant ‘Suffer from Diarrhoea’.

RUSH TO DIEThe German car manufacturer ‘Mercedes-Benz’ wanted to enter to Chinese market to yield the unlimited growth potential. On its course of expanding to the most populated country of the world, the luxury carmakers wished to create a strong bond with the Chinese people and eventually developed the brand name ‘Bensi’, without being aware that ‘Bensi’ means ‘Rush to die’ in Chinese.

VICK OFFIn German dialect, the alphabet ‘v’ is pronounced as ‘f’. This caused huge problem for the cough drop specialist Vicks when they entered the German economy for expanding their venture. Vicks is a German slang, which means sexual intercourse.

THANK YOU

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