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Embarrassing Adverts

Sometimes large companies make some terrible blunders in their advertising campaigns.  The ones listed here are totally fictitious... or are they?

Sharwoods
MediaGuardian.co.uk reports: Sharwoods £6m campaign to launch its new Bundh sauces received calls immediately from numerous Punjabi speakers.  "Bundh" sounds like the Punjabi word for "arse".
Sharwoods has no intention of changing it. "We hope that once they understand the derivation of the Bundh sauce range and taste the delicious meals they can produce, they will agree that it is miles apart from the Punjabi word that is similar but spelled and pronounced differently (with a long "u")."

Chevy Nova
When General Motors introduced the Chevrolet (aka Chevy) Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that "no va" means "it won't go". After he company figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.

Kentucky Fried Chicken, KFC
Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan "finger-lickin' good" came out as "eat your fingers off."

Milk
The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are you lactating?"

Parker Pen, Parker Quink Ink
When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you."  However, the Spanish word "embarazar" was used by mistake to mean embarrass. The ads actually said: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."

Powergenitalia, www.powergenitalia.com
No, Powergenitalia is not the company responsible for all that spam offering to help you with organ extensions or to invigorate you with Viagara-powered vitality. It is also not the Italian division of energy giant Powergen.
When numerous English-speakers on the web took note of the web site www.powergenitalia.com, Powergen felt obligated to announce that they had no connection with the site and in fact had no Italian offices, so that people would not think that it was their Translation Marketing Mistake.
No, they left that distinctive honor to the marketing folks at Powergen Italia, an Italian maker of battery chargers. Perhaps they were shocked to learn its a World Wide Web. The website now switches you over to the more aptly named for English-speakers, http://www.batterychargerpowergen.it.

Nike
Nike has a television commercial for hiking shoes that was shot in Kenya using Samburu tribesmen. The camera closes in on the one tribesman who speaks, in native Maa. As he speaks, the Nike slogan "Just do it" appears on the screen. Lee Cronk, an anthropologist at the University of Cincinnati, says the Kenyan is really saying, "I don't want these. Give me big shoes."  Says Nike's Elizabeth Dolan, "We thought nobody in America would know what he said."

Gerber Baby Food
When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the label.  Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what's inside, since most people can't read.

Coca-Cola, Ke-kou-ke-la
The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la.  Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of  signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or  "female horse stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect. Coke then  researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth."

Pizza Hut P'Zone
Pizza Hut is advertising their new dish, a calzone they named the P'Zone. It is pronounced like "pezón", the Spanish word for "nipple". Susana says the Pizza Hut PR dept. in Texas told her they knew about this before launching the campaign.

Hong Kong Tourist Board
According to TravelBiz.com in April, 2003 the Hong Kong Tourist Board tried to either pull their ads or have their slogan changed. But it was too late to change the campaign that was on billboards throughout Hong Kong and in British versions of Cosmopolitan and Conde Nast Traveller.
The slogan that was running "Hong Kong: It will take your breath away." unfortunately coincided with the SARS epidemic that resulted in numerous deaths. Shortness of breath is one of the main symptoms of SARS.

International Wine Glass Symbol
Stevadores in an unnamed African port, seeing the international --but evidently not universal!-- symbol for 'fragile' (a wine glass with snapped stem) presumed it meant that some idiot had sent a cargo of broken glass.  So they obligingly pitched all the cases overboard into the harbour!

Hyundai Pony
Richard Seamon reports: Hyundai had problems with the Hyundai Pony. In Cockney rhyming slang, "Pony" is short for "pony and trap", meaning crap.  It didn't deter Hyundai, they still marketed it in the UK (circa 1982).

Perdue Chicken
Chicken-man Frank Perdue's slogan, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken," got terribly mangled in another Spanish translation. A photo of Perdue with one of his birds appeared on billboards all over Mexico with a caption that explained "It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused."

Electrolux Vacuum
The Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux tried to sell its goods in America but didn't help itself with this slogan, "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

Coors
Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose" into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea".

American or Braniff Airlines
When American Airlines wanted to advertise its new leather first class seats in the Mexican market, it translated its "Fly In Leather" campaign literally, which meant "Fly Naked" ("vuela en cuero") in Spanish!

Pepsi
In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead."

Reed Business News
A few years back Reed Business News relaunched itself with the branding: "If it's news to you, it's news to us.".
It was replaced after a couple of days...

Signs
From a Japanese information booklet about using a hotel air conditioner:
Cooles and Heates; if you want just condition of warm in your room, please control yourself."
From a brochure of a car rental firm in Tokyo:
"When passengers of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigor."
Two signs from a Majorcan shop entrance:
- English well talking.
- Here speeching American.
Sign in a Bombay hotel (where water is still routinely fetched from the Ganges potentially giving you diarrhea or worse):
All water has been personally passed by the management.