10 Ridiculous Mistakes Made By International Brands
Hi guys!
It happens so that even world famous bands make ridiculous mistakes in the titles of
their multimillion advertising campaigns.
Who knows, maybe they do that on purpose?
Anyway, in today’s episode you will learn about 10 most bizarre and funny mistakes in
branding history.
1.
There was this one time when Pepsi goofed it up on both German and Chinese markets.
Their main slogan “Come alive!
You re in the pepsi generation” was very badly misinterpreted.
German version was quite funny and very reassuring, it urged people to rise from the grave together
with pepsi!
Germans laughed at it and didn’t seem to mind but in case of Chinese consumers it was
more like scary than funny.
It went like: “Pepsi will get your parents from the grave”
2.
American Airlines wanted more customers so badly they decided to change their regular
seats to leather ones!
However, in Mexico their campaign failed because of the silly slogan “Fly In Leather”.
In Spanish “Fly In Leather” sounds like “Vuela en Cuero” and means “Fly Naked”.
Hey, why the hell not!?
3.
Gerber decided they should supply Central Africa with their baby food products.
Their corporate identity is the smiling baby face they feature on all their products.
The popular majority of Central Africa can’t read and that’s why they always put contents
on the cover of the product.
So Gerber markers failed to take into account that a child`s face would seem weird, better
yet creepy.
I can only imagine people’s faces when they were offered that cannibal baby food.
4.
Chevrolet Nova, looks good, isn’t it?
Unfortunately, this beauty wasn’t in demand in Spanish-speaking countries.
And if Google is right that’s 23 countries!
And only because of the name.
The thing is in Spanish “no va” means “not going”.
Get it?
Who the hell would wanna by a car with a name like that!?
I wouldn’t!
5.
Another big fail concerns Mazda and its car “Laputa”.
I guess many of you already know what’s the story here.
Anyway, “La puta” in Spanish means…
well, that’s what they call prostitutes.
So, I guess a lot of people found it to be a good enough reason not to buy Laputa.
6.
In 2009 Russian leading gas company “Gazprom” merged with “Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation” and gave their joint venture a rather controversial name “Nigaz”.
Nigaz as you already guessed was the abbreviation of Nigeria and Gazprom.
Quite a few people were shocked and outraged from what seemed to be more suitable for a
Snoop Dog’s music video.
As for me, I say let Nigaz be Nigaz. 7.
After launching campaign in Asia, Coca-Cola noticed that their slogan sounds a bit weird
in a few Chinese dialects.
They came up with things like “bite the tadpole” and “Wax Horse”.
After a while they changed the slogan to something like “happiness in your mouth”.
That goes like this: “Kekoukele”.
8.
There is a car called Chevrolet Aveo, and you can find one of these only in Russian-speaking
countries.
In the rest of the world its called Daewoo Kalos.
Long story short “kalos” in Russian means “shit”.
9.
In the year 1980 some really weird diet candies appeared.
Those were called “Ayds”.
One year later a first case of AIDS was detected.
Although it spells a bit differently, it is pronounced the same.
Ayds will help you lose weight!
Which is true in a way… 10.
World famous brand Bacardi also had problems with their squash called Pavian.
They failed to take into account that what in French means chic and style in many other
languages translates simply as baboon.
Alright, that’s all for now guys.
I m really glad that you watched this episode till the end.
If you know anything about interesting multinational brands fails, share that in the comments,
I am sure that a lot of people would be interested to see more.
Thanks for watching everybody, have fun!
See you soon.