In the 1928 U.S. presidential campaign, candidate Herbert Hoover promised “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Later this year PC users in Latvia can look forward to a chicken on every disk when Microsoft releases Vista, which in Latvian means “frumpy woman” or “chicken.”
Meanwhile, closer to home, Microsoft media users in Quebec raised their eyebrows last summer when the company announced its new Zune media player. It seems that “Zune” sounds like “zoune,” a dated, cutesy slang term for genitalia in la belle province. Microsoft dismissed the homophony as a nonissue and said that the association of the slang term with its music player was “quite a stretch.”
The bottom line: We assume that Microsoft decided that giving 1.3 million Latvians a good laugh or unduly offending a few million Québecois wasn’t worth sacrificing otherwise good product names.
Microsoft isn’t alone. Last year General Motors rolled out its Buick LaCrosse in Canada, causing sophomoric twitters among those same francophones in Quebec. It seems that “la crosse” is a slang term for self-gratification. Every guy wants his ride to make him feel like a stud, but this name went a bit too far for Buick, whose average buyer is 68 years old.
But then you have companies that do their homework. In 2001 the Andersen Consulting unit that became Accenture reportedly vetted 200 names in all major economic-market languages to avoid these kinds of mistakes.
Whenever one of our clients decides to take a product or a brand name beyond its home turf, I always recommend that they get help on linguistic, cultural, economic, and legal issues. Companies often turn to their account representative at their lead language-service provider, who in turn will ask around in its various offices whether “zune” or “vista” will offend anyone’s sensibilities.
Some firms turn to branding and naming specialists such as Landor or Strategic Name Development, while the biggest corporations rely on their agencies of record (AOR) to undertake the search for offensive words—and those AORs will typically call language-service providers or these specialists to do the asking. Whichever approach you choose, don’t take the chance of being the subject of blog entries and sophomoric twitters for something so easily avoided.
Don DePalma is the founder/chief research officer of the research and consulting firm Common Sense Advisory, based in Lowell, MA, and author of “Business Without Borders: A Strategic Guide to Global Marketing.”
Other articles by Donald A. DePalma:
Can’t Read, Won’t Buy: Why Language Matters to Global Marketing
What Happens When Going Global Goes Bust?
Knowing When It’s Time to Take Your Brand Abroad
Global Marketing: Money + Web + Local Experience = Success
Global Marketing: Triage and Nuance
Global Marketing: Toe Dippers, Stubbed Toes, and Second Bouncers
Global Marketing: Where Does Your Company Fit In?
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