Not every brand wants to be funny pt. 2: Cultural differences

To pick an appropriate brand name isn't too easy itself. But introducing that name in a foreign country is another level of difficulty. We've looked at examples of brands that didn't want to be funny. These were funny because they were translated badly, or not at all. Today's examples have to do with deeper levels: Culture, pronunciation or slang terms.

Baby food producer Gerber wanted to introduce their baby food in Africa. Their jars obviously feature their logo, with a baby prominently in frame. What they didn't consider is that it's common in Africa to put the main ingredient of the product on the jar. Baby food got an entirely different meaning like this.

When Vicks introduced their brand in Germany, they quickly learned that the "v" is pronounced as an "f" in Germany. Pronounce it that way, and it means "to fuck". Now I really don't want to know what's in that jar.

Let's stay in Germany. Puffs, a brand known for their tissues, went to Germany. The people at Puffs also didn't really do their homework, because a simple Google Translate would've revealed that "puff" is the German word for whorehouse. On the bright side, they do need a lot of tissues there.

The Colonel went to China and all he got was outrage because of his slogan. Because while "Finger lickin' good!" is a perfectly fine slogan in our western world, translate it into Chinese and you might get something like: "Eat your fingers off". Again, surprised no one realised this before printing out god knows how many posters.

I can see how you may make a mistake on translating your slogan into Chinese. They don't use the same alphabet, it's an entirely different culture etc. But translating into Spanish couldn't be that difficult, could it? Coors proved it's not as easy as it looks, it's actually quite hard. Their slogan: "Turn it loose" ended up as "Suffer from diarrhoea" for some unknown reason.