Brand names

You need to establish whether your brand name has

any meaning in another language. As we can see from
the examples above, it is especially important to
check your brand name in Chinese-speaking markets
as it is a very tricky language to navigate. This is
because one Chinese character can have several
meanings, and these meanings can then morph into
something completely different when paired with
another character.
When Pepsi unveiled their slogan “Pepsi
brings you back to life” in China, it
translated as “Pepsi brings your
ancestors back from the grave”. A
zombie apocalypse wasn’t quite the
message they were going for, but it’s not
hard to see how the translation ended
up there.
Mercedes Benz also got off on the
wrong foot when entering the Chinese
market. Their brand name was
translated as “Bensi”, or in Chinese:
“Rush to die”. Not an ideal name for a
car manufacturer who needs to
reassure customers that their safety is
paramount!
KFC was yet another victim to the
pitfalls of breaking the Chinese
market: their famous slogan “Finger-
lickin’ good” was somewhat literally
translated to “Eat your fingers off”.
Coca-Cola also rivalled Pepsi’s
mishap with their bizarrely
wonderful translated brand name
“Bite the wax tadpole” in China
Braniff Airlines are no longer flying, but they
will be fondly remembered for their 1987 ad
campaign “Fly in leather”, which was
translated into Spanish as “Vuela en cuero”.
This worked fine in most of Latin America,
but in Mexico it caused a bit of a stir as the
connotation was “Fly naked”.