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It’s well known that the name and the slogan of a product are at least a half of selling success. However many companies, even the greatest, make mistakes while choosing names and slogans. They don’t pay enough attention to this matter and this result in market loss for them. Here is collection of promotional marketing mistakes:

 
Pepsi’ slogan of 1963 "Come Alive, You’re in the Pepsi Generation" was translated into Taiwan language and got an unexpected meaning: “Pepsi will make your ancestry to rise from graves” Taiwans were shocked.

When Parker Pen entered the Mexican market, its advertisements which claimed that Parker Pens "won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you" was mistranslated to "No te embarazará chorreándose en tu bolsillo" which means "Won’t leak in your pocket and impregnate you".. The problem is that the translator choosed up a wrong word which is false friend for native English-speaking – Embarazada (Spanish word for pregnant).

When Gerber started selling its organic baby cereal in Africa, he chose on the cover to be printed smiling baby. But Gerber’ product was not popular. Later they found out that in Africa there are a lot of illiterate people and on the wrapper as the rule companies print what is inside. For instance if they sell oatmeal, they place oatmeal porridge on the wrapper. Poor illiterate Africans were confused. Later the Company changed wrapper’ picture to this one:

A legend claims that General Motors places her car Chevrolet Nova at the Spanish-speaking markets but it came to grief. Because its name spaced no va, literally translates to "no go," as in "it doesn’t go." However, they say it is not true.

Bacardi put on the market an upscale bitters drink named ‘Pavane’ which in French means stylishness, but in German it sounded too close to ‘Pavian’ – baboon.

Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, into German only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "manure stick".

Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux raised a few eye-brows in US when it came up with the slogan “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux”. It later reworked its strap line.

Coors beer had bad luck in Spain with its “Turn it loose” slogan. It translated as “You will suffer from diarrhea”.

Sticking with Spain, US food brand Frank Perdue’s chicken campaign created confusion with the strap line “It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken” In Spain this became “It takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate”.

KFC’ “Finger Licking” good’ slogan is used world over to highlight the tastiness of the product. However when the phrase was translated into Chinese for the Hong Kong market, it came out as ‘Eat your fingers off’. Needles to say, most customers opted for the fries instead.

When American Airlines decided to advertise the luxurious aspect of flying business class to their Mexican customers, they thought it would make sense to focus on the leather seats. They therefore used slogan “Fly in Leather”, which in Spanish, read “Vuelo en Cuero”. What the Spanish dictionary had neglected to inform them was that the phrase ‘en cuero’ is a slang term for ‘in the nude’. It soon emerged that there was little demand for mile-high naturism among Mexico’s business flyers.

Colgate-Palmolive Company put on the French market new toothpaste Cue. Later Americans found out that the very same name has popular French porno magazine. 

One company promoted bars of chocolate with peanuts in Japan as the thing which cause burst of energy when preparing to exams. But in Japan there is a superstition that chocolate with peanuts cause a nosebleed.

Puffs drapery had ill fame in Germany because ‘puff’ in German slang means ‘brothel’.

 
Coca-cola Company had a huge problem when choosing a name for their product in China. The problem was that when Chinese pronounce ‘coca cola’ this means ‘bite wax tadpole’. The company had to look through about 40 thousand of versions. Finally they choose ‘cocu cole’ which means in Chinese ‘happiness in mouth’.

When produced a new high-grade and expensive whisky, one firm promoted it in and advertisement which pictured a glass with golden drink with a couple of golden coins in it’s bottom. The endorsement under the picture said: “For several extra cents you will get a much better whisky”. However the whisky was unpopular. There were a lot of complains about some metallic flavor. They had to remove coins from the picture at first, then to lower the price, later to chance the shape and the name of the bottle to get rid of associations caused by unfortunate advertisement.

So, even experienced companies make sometimes awful mistakes in their promotions.

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