The Greatest Branding Failures Of All Time

Brands operate on a global scale. Brand names such as Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Gillette, Adidas, Disney, Marlboro, Sony, Budweiser, Microsoft and Pepsi are now recognized across the world. The dismantling of trade barriers, combined with the rise of global communications technologies such as the Internet, has meant that companies can expand into new markets faster than ever before.

However, many companies have confused the era of globalization with an era of homogenization. If they have had success with one product in one market they have assumed they can have equal success in another. All they believe they have to do is set up a Web site in the relevant language, run an ad campaign and set up a similar distribution network. What they forget to understand is that there is more to a country than its language, currency or gross domestic product. The cultural differences between, and often within, countries can greatly affect the chances of success for a brand.

In order to succeed, brands must cater for the specific tastes of each market they enter. If these tastes change, then the brand must change also. As the bumpy ride experienced by Kellogg’s in India (the first example included in this chapter) indicates, companies which fail to accommodate and acknowledge these vast cultural differences face a long battle in replicating their success at home in other markets.

However, understanding cultural differences is not just about international markets. It is also about understanding the specific culture of the brand. When companies acquire a brand that wasn’t theirs to begin with, they can often make similar faux pas as when they move into a foreign market. However, instead of making the mistake of misinterpreting the market they misinterpret the brand. This happened when CBS acquired the guitar company Fender and when Quaker Oats bought the soft drink Snapple. Although the companies spent millions on marketing, they lost market share as they didn’t understand exactly where the market was, and what the customer wanted. As a result, in both cases, the acquisition weakened the brand.


1. Pepsi in Taiwan

In order to keep a singular identity throughout the world, many companies stick with the same marketing campaign and brand message in every country. However, this occasionally creates difficulties. For instance, in Taiwan Pepsi’s advertising slogan ‘Come alive with the Pepsi generation’ was translated as ‘Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead.’


2. Schweppes Tonic Water in Italy

In Italy, a promotional campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water failed when the product name was translated as ‘Schweppes Toilet Water’. Subsequent campaigns have had better results.



3. Chevy Nova and others

Of all products, cars have had the most translation problems. When people chuckled at General Motors’ Chevy Nova in Latin America, the automotive giant was perplexed. Until, that is, someone pointed out that ‘Nova’ means ‘It doesn’t go’ in Spanish. Then there was the Mitsubishi Pajero sport utility that caused embarrassment in Spain, where ‘pajero’ is slang for ‘masturbator’. Toyota’s Fiera car proved controversial in Puerto Rico, where ‘fiera’ translates to ‘ugly old woman’. Likewise few Germans were enthusiastic about owning Rolls-Royce’s ‘Silver Animal Droppings’ car. To the English speaking world it bears the more romantic name ‘Silver Mist’. And finally, Ford didn’t have the reception they expected in Brazil when their ‘Pinto’ car flopped. Then they discovered that in Brazilian Portuguese slang, ‘pinto’ means ‘small penis’.


4. Electrolux in the United States

Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux raised a few eyebrows in the United States when it came up with the slogan ‘Nothing sucks like an Electrolux’. It later reworked its strap line.


5. Gerber in Africa

When baby food manufacturer Gerber started to sell its products in Africa it used the same packaging as for Western markets. This packaging included a picture of a baby boy on the label. Surprised at low sales, Gerber discovered that in Africa, as most customers can’t read English, Western companies generally put pictures on the label of what’s inside.


6. Coors in Spain

Coors beer had equally bad luck in Spain with its ‘Turn it loose’ slogan. It translated as ‘You will suffer from diarrhoea’.

7. Frank Perdue’s chicken in Spain

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.’


8. Clairol’s Mist Stick in Germany

When Clairol launched its ‘Mist Stick’ curling iron in Germany, the company apparently had no idea that ‘Mist’ was a slang term for manure. The company discovered that few women were crying out for a manure stick.


9. Parker Pens in Mexico

Parker Pens alarmed its Mexican market with ads intended to read ‘It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you’ because, in fact, the ad stated ‘It won’t leak in your pocket and impregnate you.’ The company had managed to confuse ‘embarrass’ with the Spanish verb ‘embrazar’ or ‘to impregnate’.


10. American Airlines in Mexico

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 the 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.


11. Vicks in Germany

Vapour-rub manufacturer Vicks failed to attract much custom for its products in Germany. The problem was that ‘V’ is pronounced as an ‘F’ in German, meaning Vicks sounds like the German equivalent of the ‘f’ word.


12. Kentucky Fried Chicken in Hong Kong

KFC’s ‘finger lickin’ good’ slogan is used the 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’. Needless to say, most customers opted for the fries instead.


13. CBS Fender

A tale of two cultures...

For guitar fans, the Fender brand is an icon. Fender guitars, such as the Stratocaster and the Telecaster, were associated with the rock and roll scene of the 1950s and were later played by many of the most famous rock musicians. John Lennon and George Harrison both owned Stratocasters, and Jimi Hendrix also helped to turn that particular model of electric guitar into a legend.

However, at some point in the early 1960s Leo Fender made the near-fatal decision to sell his company. In 1965 he found a buyer in the form of CBS, which already at that time was one of the largest players in the music business, with its record labels and radio shows proving extremely popular and successful. The deal was viewed by both parties as a logical one. After all, CBS was in the music business and Fender made musical instruments. How was that for synergy?

Initially, the move seemed to be a success. As the electric guitar revolutionized rock music in the late 1960s and the 1970s, CBS-Fender remained the main manufacturer of the instrument. Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler and almost any other guitar legend from that period played a Fender guitar.

By 1975, though, the company started to lose market share. ‘The problem was, CBS didn’t know all that much about real manufacturing,’ says Morgan Ringwald, the current PR director for Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. ‘After about ten years, they lost sight of all quality control, let their patents lapse, and forgot to keep putting money into research and development. Pretty soon, Asian manufacturers were able to make cheaper and better copies of Fender designs.’

The company’s major selling point – the Stratocaster guitar – was neglected. According to the Fender lover’s Web site, Fender-strat.com, this was a major mistake:

The conglomerate eventually did what no-one else could: make the Strat less powerful. As time went by, new players bought from Fender while experienced players turned to vintage Strats for the eternal brilliance of its design, combined with the understated remarkable versatility [. . .] By 1985, the Strat had been copied, stripped, doctored and otherwise abused.

In 1981 CBS had recruited a new management team to ‘re-invent’ the Fender brand. They put together a five-year business plan based on the idea of improving the quality of Fender products. However, the real turnaround didn’t occur until 1985, when CBS decided to divest all of its non-broadcasting businesses. Fender was subsequently purchased by a group of employees and investors led by William Schultz.

The Fender company which emerged from this ‘re-birth’ (as Fender fans like to call it) was certainly smaller than CBS-Fender had ever been. CBS sold only the Fender name patents, and the parts that were left over in stock. No buildings or machines had been involved in the deal. However, what the new Fender company did have was a team of employees who understood exactly what the Fender brand was all about. Indeed, many had been with the company since Leo Fender had begun making guitars and amplifiers back in the 1940s. It didn’t take long for the brand to reclaim its place in the hearts of guitar fans worldwide.

During the 1990s, Fender’s sales increased dramatically and the company extended its product offerings around the growing requirements of the electrical guitarists, producing not only strings and guitars, but also audio products such as amplifiers and mixing boards. The secret to Fender’s continued success rests in its understanding of the values that made the brand so popular in the first place – namely, craftsmanship and a deep understanding of the contemporary guitarist. When those values were temporarily forgotten, during CBS’ reign of 1965 to 1985, the brand suffered.

Now, Fender is back on track and its customers are more appreciative of the brand than ever before. As the Fender-strat.com Web site enthuses, ‘Fender has maintained its hold on the hearts, minds, and fingers of guitarists everywhere with relentless quality, as well as some of the highest research and development commitments in the industry.’

This view is supported by another non-official guitar Web site, harmonycentral.com. On that site, Fender-lover Richard Smith congratulates the brand on surviving the CBS years and on its return to its core values. ‘The Fender company is still shaping the way the world plays and hears music, and making life better for guitar players,’ he says.

Lessons from Fender

• Understand your product. One of the main problems CBS faced was that it had little real understanding of what exactly made Fender so special. ‘Most companies don’t do their homework,’ says Howard Moskowitz, the president of New York-based market research firm, Moskowitz Jacobs. ‘They don’t really know anything about the dynamics of their product, about the drivers of liking in a product that they’re going to go into.’
• Focus on what built the brand. CBS neglected the attention to quality and craftsmanship which had established the Fender brand in the first place.

Taken from HERE.