“Nothing sucks like an Electrolux” was the slogan that the Swedish manufacturer used to launch their new series of vacuum cleaners in the US about 25 years ago. The phrase had worked well in other English speaking markets and they were totally convinced it was going to sound appealing also in the US. You figure what happened.
Using catchy phrases in other languages and countries can have painful results.
Pepsi sold their product in China with the typical message “Pepsi brings tyou back to life” eventually translated into “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave”. And how about General Motors that failed the launch of Chevy Nova in South America for then discovering that “nova” means “it doesn’t go” and sales didn’t actually go anywhere until they changed the name of the vehicle.
And Parker told to his potential pen buyers in Mexico that their pen was not going to leak in their pockets and make them pregnant. And it just goes on and on. So you need to realize that many Internet Marketing strategies don’t work outside of the US for the added complexity introduced by the language and if you rely on automatic translation tools you are in for some very bad and embarrassing surprises.
There is no substitute for simplicity. They more you avoid cunning slogans and double meaning sentences, and just stick to basic communication with possibly lots of pictures or videos then you are fairly on the safe ground. And again there will still be a majority of people that will misunderstand most of what you say, but at least you will avoid the most embarrassing situations. And again they say that 90% of our marketing efforts produce no results and that we get the majority of our customers from the remaining 10% or 20%.
The point is that it take 90% of mistakes to figure out the 10% that really works for you. So keep trying my friend, but be careful of the language and cultural barrier when it comes to international buyers.
Roberto Mazzoni
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