Marketing Question - Need Guru advice!

Calcruzer
Fri, 04 Jan 2008 15:12:42 +0000

Let me throw in a thought here, radron omega.

I travel overseas a bit for my business (was in England, Wales, Norway, Sweden, and Thailand in the past year or two), and I used to give a lecture to a professional society on “Cultural Differences in Marketing Overseas”. (I’m in Finance and IT now, though).

While it is not necessary to know a foreign language to successfully do business overseas, it probably is important to understand the nuances of a culture if you plan to market overseas. Even large companies like General Motors, Coke, and Apple made major mistakes when originally selling overseas because of not understanding the local cultures–or misusing the language ever so slightly.

A few examples:
1-GM tried to sell the Chevrolet Nova in latin america under the same name. However, “no va” translates to “doesn’t go” in Spanish.

2-Coke used their “Coke comes alive” campaign a few years back in China. However the translation came out mistakenly as “Coke brings your ancestors back from the grave”

3-Apple tried to sell a special (green) shade of iPod in Malaysia. However, this particular shade is representative of disease in the Malay culture.

Others:
4-Braniff advertised their leather seats on their Latin american flights. However, in their TV ads they mispronounced the name and it came out as “fly naked” instead of “fly in leather seats”.

5-One firm tried to sell their white wedding dresses in Japan, not realizing that Japanese get married in red–and they dress in white for funerals.

6-Chrysler tried to market purple cars to a particular Latin country–not realizing that purple cars signify death (are used as hearsts) in certain Latin cultures.

There are many other similar examples where color, language, artifacts, and other such cultural items make a difference. (For example don’t try to sell a “shag” carpet in England even–since “shagging” has a completely different usage there.) The point I’m making is that knowing the language or spending some time in a place does help in doing marketing to a particular location.