Emmanuel Luis B.

Alcala
BFAC01
Cultural Blunders
1. What are examples of cultural blunders?
- Nestle putting a baby on their baby food product that they sell in Africa
- Coca-Cola labeled their product with Chinese Characters that means “Bite the Wax
Tadpole”
- Vicks didn’t know the way how German alphabets were pronounced; their product
name meant differently in the German population.
- Puffs in German has a different colloquial meaning.
- Panasonic’s brand name has different connotations in America; therefore, their
product and campaign became infamous
- Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called “Cue”, the name of a notorious
adult magazine.
- In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into
“Schweppes Toilet Water”.
- In Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan “finger-lickin’ good” came out as “Eat
your fingers off”.

2. What do you think are the causes of these blunders?

- The companies did not research enough about the culture on the country they are
marketing their product. They also didn’t take time to study the translations and
meanings of what they are going to present in different countries. Therefore,
creating numerous blunders that

3. How do you think blunders affect communication?

- Blunders distorts communication, they give wrong interpretations, wrong
information, and wrong meaning towards others. It creates negativity towards the
product or brand name, resulting to negative feedbacks.

4. What are the ways to avoid these blunders?

- The culture of foreign countries are important in creating campaigns in other
countries. Investing time and effort to research and study the target market will be a
huge advantage and I think it will greatly help the company who are going to
advertise their product. It may create positive feedback towards the product or
campaign, that can entice a lot of customers to avail their product. Information is a
great tool in creating a product that can entice consumers to avail and use it.