Chevy Nova Awards
The Chevy Nova Award is awarded for catastrophic foreign marketing campaigns. It is named after a car called the Chevy Nova was introduced to Central and South America. Intended buyers in these countries were somewhat perplexed when the car went on the market because "No va" in Spanish means "it doesn't go". Here are some of the nominations for the recent Chevy Nova Award:
- Coors put its slogan, "Turn It Loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer From Diarrhoea."
- Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, into Germany only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "Manure Stick."
- When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the smiling baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the labels of what's inside, since many people can't read.
- Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.
- An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I Saw the Potato" (la papa).
- Pepsi's "Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave" in Chinese.
- The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Kekoukela", meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax", depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "kokou kole", translating into "happiness in the mouth."
- When American Airlines wanted to advertise its new leather first class seats in the Mexican market, it translated its "Fly In Leather" campaign literally, which meant "Fly Naked" (vuela en cuero) in Spanish!
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