I Had to Share This

In my business class, we are learning about competing in the global market. Our books says how Americans are notorious for considering their own culture to be superior to other cultures. As a result, this has led to setbacks and outright failures in some foreign markets. They gave some examples of advertising and marketing f*ups uninformed Americans have committed in foreign markets (I actually lol at some of these):

• PepsiCo attempted a Chinese translation of "Come alive, You're in the Pepsi Generation" that read to Chinese customers as "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Dead."
• Coors Brewing Company put its slogan "Turn it Loose" into Spanish and found it translated as "Suffer from Diarrhea."
• Perdue Chicken used the slogan "It Takes a Strong Man to Make a Chicken Tender," which was interpreted in Spanish as "It Takes an Aroused Man to Make a Chicken Affectionate."
• KFC's patented slogan "finger-lickin' good" was understood in Japanese as "Bite Your Fingers Off."
• On the other side of the translation glitch, Electrolux, a Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer, tried to sell its products in the U.S. market with the slogan "Nothing Sucks Like an Electrolux."

Nickles, W.G., McHugh, J.M., & McHugh, S.M. (2005). Understanding Business. New York: McGraw-Hill.