Brand blunder
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Brand blunder refers to the goof ups associated with the branding of a product, especially a new product in a new market. There could be many reasons for such slips. For example, the lack of understanding of the language, culture, consumer attitude etc.
There are numerous examples of brand blunders in the marketing history; there are also numerous urban legends surrounding brand blunders, where there is little evidence of an actual blunder.
True cases
Urban legends
Urban legends about brand blunders are popular, because they use familiar urban legend motifs such as the incompetent corporation or the ignorant foreigner. Often the reality is far less dramatic, and the stories, which are even retold in marketing textbooks, are rarely backed up by researched data about sales.
- Electrolux : Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux sold products successfully in the United Kingdom using the slogan "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux". The slang disparagement "sucks" is an Americanism, so many Americans think this is an example of a blunder.[link][link] The slogan persists among minicomputer geeks as "Nothing sucks like a VAX", punning on the other UK vacuum brand Vax.
- Pepsi: Pepsi allegedly introduced their slogan into the Chinese market "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" translated into Chinese it read "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave". [link].
- Coca-Cola: The name Coca-Cola rendered phonetically in Chinese can sound like the words for "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax". Before marketing in China, the company researched nearly 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which means "happiness in the mouth." It was never marketed by the company using the other phrases, though individual merchants may have made such signs. [link]
- Gerber: In some markets in Africa , companies put pictures of the content on the label. 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.[link]
External links
- [Marketing 101] and [Mistranslations] - urban legends about marketing blunders (real and false) from Snopes.com
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