Big Brands’ International Marketing and Localization Mistakes

Some translation, marketing, or localization mistakes cost more than just losing revenue or market share. The failure can quickly go viral and negatively affect a brand’s image on a long-term scale. Besides, it can lead to disastrous scenarios such as customer boycotts, and you might have to forget about entering new valuable markets forever.

Big companies and brands often have their own translation and localization department or retain the same service provider to avoid being misunderstood by the market they are trying to enter. Nowadays, professional translation and localization can fill the cultural and linguistic gap from one country to another, and thus allowing global campaigns and other marketing activities to become successful.

Hence, besides other essential business activities, the first step to internationalization is hiring a trusted professional translation and localization company. (To know the difference between translation and localization, read our blog here.)

And what better way to avoid international marketing and translation no-no by knowing more about them through these famous brands’ unfortunate mishaps.

One of the biggest marketing mistakes in history was made by German car giant BMW. The German automaker’s advertisement opened with Al Ain Football Club members singing the Emirati national anthem before starting a game. A few seconds in, they suddenly stopped singing upon hearing a car engine sound and ran towards BMW cars.

Not surprisingly, Emiratis found the commercial incredibly offensive and demanded withdrawal, describing it as disrespectful to the national anthem. Despite the company’s explanation about the issue, the advert had been replaced with a less offensive version.   

Throwback to the 1980s when the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) touched down in China as the first American fast-food chain. Most of you may remember KFC’s all-time-popular slogan “Finger-Lickin’ Good.” The Chinese translation was more than horrifying in that the meaning became “Eat Your Fingers Off.” Luckily, despite KFC getting off on the wrong foot, it didn’t hold back the giant company from expanding into the billion-dollar sized Chinese market. Now, KFC has become the most popular fast-food chain in China with more than 5000 branches.

Dear Starbucks lovers, even your favorite brand isn’t immune to translation missteps. 

Localizing the famous “Gingerbread Latte” to German for the holidays seems like a piece of cake. (Gingerbread is a popular holiday treat in Germany.) However, not only did Starbucks fail to translate “gingerbread,” but also made a huge blunder with the word “latte”. “Latte” means milk in Italian, but in German, it is a rather indecent slang for erection. 

Fortunately for Starbucks, this didn’t provoke a strong negative reaction in its many German coffee fans who took the gaffe light-heartedly. Consequently, Starbucks continued its use of the word “latte” for the German market.