Shocking Marketing Mistakes

Posted on 23. Feb, 2007 by DeanHunt in Online Marketing

Do you want to know what happens when a major brand fails to hire a professional translator for their marketing campaigns? Here is your answer:

Coors used the slogan “Turn it loose” for the Spanish market, but it was read as “Suffer from diarrhea”

Cosmetics giant Clairol introduces the “Mist Stick,” a curling iron, into the German market, they later found out that “mist” is slang for manure. Not many Germans had a use for the “Manure Stick“.

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

When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful 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 English. Whoops.

In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into “Schweppes Toilet Water.”

Pepsi’s “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” translated into “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave,” in Chinese.

I am not sure what the morale of this article is, but it is nice to know that even the biggest companies make amusing errors.