Hilarious examples of brand names gone wrong aka brand blunder

One “brand blunder” Wikipedia lists as an urban legend is that Pepsi ran an ad campaign in China with the slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation.” Supposedly a poor translation rendered this into Chinese as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.” Interestingly Wikipedia says the same story has been told about “Coke adds life” and that the setting is given as any of several Asian countries.

I had believed the Pepsi story because I first read it in an advertising trade paper, probably Advertising Age, back in the 1970s. The article discussed how overseas and domestic non-English-speaking markets were growing fast. Jumping in without thinking things through, some agencies didn’t bother to seek out native speakers to write copy. Instead they gave the job to the guy who’d taken the language in college. This guy would sit down with his college notes and a bilingual dictionary and produce things like the (alleged) Pepsi blunder.

I hope the article’s other two stories weren’t also urban legends. Both dealt with the American Spanish-speaking market. At the time only Spanish-speaking ad agencies had a piece of that growing pie and English-speaking agencies wanted their slice. So they put their sophomore Spanish to work and came up with two classic ads.

The first was for chicken. I believe it showed a brawny fellow tending a chicken. The English slogan was “It takes a tough guy to raise a tender chicken.” Supposedly this was translated literally using a dictionary. Unfortunately in everyday street Spanish the resulting slogan read “It takes a guy with a hard on to excite the chicks.”

The other example was a sticker for a company celebrating its long history. They would put the sticker on their product near the logo. It would read in Spanish, “Over 50 years!” Unfortunately (again) the typesetter left the tilde off 50 Años, 50 years, and none of the amateur linguists caught it. Thus the sticker went out reading “50 Anos,” which meant “50 Anuses.”

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That I can believe. I have often been frustrated by the tendency of English speakers to think that diacritics in other languages are optional.

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I wouldn’t call any of these blunder since the intended audience isn’t English-speakers. It’s weirdly anglo-centric to describe a perfectly fine brand as a “blunder” or mistake just because it doesn’t work well in English.

As noted in the comments, blunders seem to happen more often in the other direction, with rapacious colonizing English-speakers expanding into other markets, and feeling over-confident in their ability to market to different cultures using different languages.

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Photo! Photos! …er, please.

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Also the Vauxhall Nova in the UK. Nice, small cars - I have owned two. ‘Nova’ is an acceptable brand name, but not for a car in Spain. It was re-named ‘Corsa’ when it was re-styled.

Then there’s the Mitsubishi Pajero four wheel drive. Only pajero in Portuguese means “wanker”. They’re still selling those, so clearly they’re not worried about the Portuguese-speaking market backlash. (If my googling is correct, they didn’t even rename it in that market.)

The Mitsubishi ‘Pajero’ was the ‘Shogun’ in the UK, and the ‘Montero’ in cars when they get over about 70K miles, and they are often shipped out to Europe, so there are Pajeros in the UK. I looked at being one once.

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As the Wang systems were used for word processing and being somewhat expensive they tended to be shared. Knew a secretary who always put a note on her desk when she went to type things. Of course it read, “On the Wang.”

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Pschitt is an oldie but a goodie. I still remember a friend’s dad having me and my middle school friends in stitches telling us about that one.

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Yes, that is indeed an urban myth, and Spanish speakers do indeed know what “nova” means, because it means the same thing in Spanish.

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When Coca Cola was introduced in China, they had to change the pronunciation, because those syllables in standard Chinese translated to “Bite the Wax Tadpole.”

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My father had to go through several different printers when getting invitations to my sister’s wedding printed to find one that could get the hacek (č) in his son-in-law’s name right.

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Thanks, Google Maps!

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well, there’s always corona. the beer i mean

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I’ve looked ‘long and hard’ for proof of the “Wang Cares” campaign (e.g. by diligently browsing computer mags of the late 70s and 80s when this campaign is usually said to have occurred). Nothing has ‘come’ of it, so if anyone can post some proof, I’ve love to give it the once over.

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The only place I’ve seen it is in top-ten lists of “you’ll never believe these advertising blunders”

Wang-Cares

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As said, the story is likely a myth

Nova is not a word in Spanish, but it’s meaning, because of it’s Latin root, is clear. “New”.
We do use the word supernova with same spelling as in English.

You can force the joke that “doesn’t go” (no va) but that requires to change the stress in the word. In nova the stress is in the o. In no va you also have to stress the va. The natural reading of the word for a Spanish speaker, even if you don’t know the meaning, doesn’t immediately invite the joke.

For that matter, coca-cola is much weirder. Cola is tail or butt. We simply refer to it as Coca.

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Nope.
Corsa was/is the original name. Built-in Zaragoza, Spain. Rebadged as the Vauxhall Nova for the United Kingdom.

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I love Pocari Sweat - it saved me during a few Japan trips where it was 32degC and about 85% humidity. Having said that I still haven’t found out what type of animal a Pocari is, or how you’d harvest its sweat (or why it tastes so good :grin:)

Supplies acquired down on Iriomote Island before nearly drowning while snorkelling:

(edited for stupid wayward apostrophe)

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I’ve seen a few… interesting… ones while visiting. Some that are reminiscent of posts on engrish.com:

And then one from Nagoya which perfectly encapsulated the fact that there are no L or V syllables in Japanese, and they often get replaced by R and B (though not of the Luther Vandross kind):

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I once had a business card from this company.

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