Advertising on my travels
by Jennie Ambrose
I consider myself to be pretty lucky. My parents have a home in the South of France that I get to visit at least once every summer. I get to chill in the sun reading a good book, drink lots of local wine and sample the great cuisine. I call it my rehab time.
It takes less than 2 hours for me to get to my parents’ place. Cheap air fares and easy access to flights has made the world feel very small indeed. Yet it always amazes me just how different everything feels when I get there. Not least in terms of the advertising.
Now I hope I’m not the only person that does this, but I have to confess I love wondering around foreign supermarkets. It’s not just all the different foods and the smells either. I also like spotting which stuff is the same as at home, and which is the same but different – like the way Walkers Crisp are called Lays, or how Lynx is called Axe.
But if there’s one thing that really stands out, it’s how simple the advertising is.
On the drive to Géant you go past loads of billboards, just like you would in the UK. Yet when you look at them they seem so dated. There’s little sense of art direction or creative concept behind them – just an image next to some product copy and a price. That’s it.
When I was in Goa in India a while ago I noticed the same thing, but even more extreme. There the advertising felt like it was stuck in a completely different era, never mind a different year.
50s-style 48-sheets, featuring good-looking locals with big cheesy grins and a product in their hand. It’s simplistic advertising that wouldn’t get past the first stage of creative in any agency worth its salt over here. Yet it must work, otherwise they wouldn’t do it, right?
Maybe it’s about playing safe. After all, if you’re big company selling the same product in multiple countries, you’ve got to be careful with your messages. It’s amazing how easily things can get lost in translation. Indeed some big companies have got their cross-cultural advertising very wrong in the past.
Take Kentucky Fried Chicken, who entered the Chinese market, only to discover that their famous “finger lickin’ good” slogan actually translates as “eat your fingers off.”
Likewise, Pepsi’s slogan, “Pepsi Brings you Back to Life” sounds great in English, but has a very different meaning in Mandarin, translating literally as, “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave.”
And one of my all time favourites has to be when Ford introduced the Pinto in Brazil. After watching sales go nowhere, the company learned that “Pinto” is Brazilian slang for “tiny male genitals.” Ford pried the nameplates off all of the cars and substituted them with “Corcel,” which means horse.
So next time you’re away, look out for how they advertise in the supermarkets I’d be interested in what you find. Oh, and be careful of your translations!
Tags: 48 sheet, Advertising, Air fares, Art Direction, Award-Winning Advertising Agency, axe, Billboards, concepts, Creative, Direct Marketing Agency, flights, Ford, France, Géant, great cuisine, Kentucky Fried Chicken, lays, lynx, Manchester Advertising Agency, Marketing Agency, Online Marketing Agency, Pepsi, PPC Agency, SEO Company, summer, supermarkets, UK Advertising Agency, walkers, wine
