While I was reading the article for today's class 'International Advertising and Global Consumer Culture' I was reminded of a text I received a few months ago. My Spanish friend sent me a message asking me if I knew why Colgate had a hard time selling its product and advertising in Spanish-speaking countries. I thought about it and realized "cólgate" in Spanish means, "Go hang yourself!" I found a chat site of people talking about the subject and a few debated whether this is true.
http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question67409.html
This search led me to this site, which gives examples of marketing mistakes in a cross-cultural setting. Some of them are hilarious.
http://www.i18nguy.com/translations.html
Then I found another site with a post from someone claiming who works writing brand names for international markets. They talk about how important it is to run a translation by a native speaker before making the campaign public. Also, quite comical!
http://colgatetoothpaste.tuainspiron.com/tag/mistakes/
I thought this were not only funny but relevant to the article. If companies are going to save money and time by making one campaign for a product they still need to take consideration of cultural and language differences. Not only the ads they run, but in the very names of a product itself (as seen with the case of Colgate toothpaste.) The artical said international ad campaigns can have a 'truly universal appeal' that is 'effective in any market.' The sites I have posted show this is not always true.
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