Brand Names Lost in Translation

International branding and marketing is very important and crucial to the expansion of a company. Given such importance, companies must take it very seriously and an aspect which has to be thoroughly studied is culture and language. Today I met another classic case of a company creating a brand without actually paying too much attention to this concept. If a brand decides to go international it must also make sure that the brand carries the same message all around and that there are no negative connotations to a brand name.

The latter example related to gas giant Gazprom's new joint venture with Nigerian firm NNPC. The two firms decided to call the joint venture Nigaz. While tit's quite easy to deduce from where the name originates; a conjunction of the words "Nigeria" and "gaz", English speakers seeing the word written down find that the brand name has a strange resemblance to a slang racist word..

Incredulous Twitter users quickly spread the story around, dubbing it a branding fail and prompting a number to suggest Nigaz should adopt a strap line along the lines of "gas with attitude".

As I said previously this is not the first failure at creating an international brand. The most classic example is the Vauxhall Nova, however other examples exist... Mitsubishi was forced to change the name of its SUV model the Pajero in Spain, where the term means 'wanker'. Starbucks opted to stick with the term 'latte' when it launched it's coffee shop brand in Germany, to the amusement of locals. While the word "latte", which translated in English means means 'milk', is translated to German Slang it actually means 'erection'.

A simple translation error meant that a Parker Pen ad run in Mexico ended up promising consumers that it would not "leak in your pocket and make you pregnant", which is at least a more honest promise than Pepsi's "come alive with the Pepsi generation" slogan, which famously ended up meaning "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead" when it was translated to Taiwanese and marketed in Taiwan.

Chinese translations are difficult too and in fact are fraught with difficulties - Kentucky Fried Chicken's "finger lickin' good" managed to come out as "eat your fingers off".

No matter how much we stress the importance of having a brand name or strap line which carries no bad connotations in any language you intend to market in, companies still continue to make this newbie mistake. It's vital to take care of these things although some companies might be tempted to make the mistake on purpose to get some free PR.

Pepsi Co in a marketing blunder that resembles 1985 New Coke Launch

PepsiCo, the American Beverage Giant, biggest rival of Coca Cola Co has actually fallen in the same trap as it's rival...however the product is a different one; this time it involves it's orange juice brand Tropicana.

Arnell Group had been assigned the job to redesign the package (carton) of the Tropicana Orange Juice. The launch of the new design took place in early January and according to according to AgencySpy. it has cost Pepsi Co about $35 million. The launch of the new redesigned container was far less than successful as Tropicana is set to abandon its trendy new orange juice carton and revert back to its traditional packaging, featuring the iconic orange with a straw in it.

The PepsiCo's Tropicana had to bow to public demand and scrap the changes made to its flagship product as consumers, especially those very loyal to the brand, complained about the makeover in letters, e-mail and calls made to the company's customer service and clamored for a return of the original look. Complaining customers called the new package as ugly and stupid as it resembles the package of a generic brand. In fact articles also report customers calling the company complaining that they couldn't find the product on supermarket's shelves. The new package (as can be seen below) is more simple and it has removed the iconic orange from the package and replaced it with orange juice. This has, according to some complaining customers removed the attachment to the claim that the juice is fresh. Being it's premium product, Pepsi has to intervene to limit the damage to it's brand!

This problem came about at the same time as the company (Tropicana) registered a decline of about 20% in sales in favour of competitors such as Minute Maid and other private labels.

This event has thought management of Tropicana that they have a very loyal customer base, who actually care about the product. Now with the advent of new technologies such as Twitter and mobile emailing it has made it much easier for the latter to voice their opinion and the company has to listen to its customers. One must remember that marketing is not about making products look better but meeting customer needs and demands; marketers must be good listeners. This event is very similar to that of Coca Cola's launch of New Coke in 1985 where Coca Cola had received an avalanche of complaints and they decided to recall New Coke and get back the original Coke version. Consumers were just attached to the brand as although in focus groups they liked the New Coke taste, they were not ready to give up the original Coke.

It's essential to identify all the elements that make customers loyal to the product and do extensive tests before risking damaging the brand...Pepsi Co will think it twice now before doing any further changes to any of their brands.