Slogan Jokes / Recent Jokes
1. The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are you lactating?" 2. Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea". 3. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux". 4. Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into German only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the manure stick". 5. 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 label of what's inside, since many people can't read. 6. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the more...
Instead of printing "To Protect and Serve" on the LAPD logo,
in 1992 they decided to change the slogan to...
"We'll Treat you like a King
(Rodney King, Martin Luther King, and all them god-damned kings in africa we killed off)"
[LAPD is Los Angeles Police Department]
Sometimes advertisers get it all wrong. Here are some funny examples of advertising campaigns that ended up being entirely inappropriate.
1. Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose," into Spanish,
where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea".
2. Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron,
into German only to find out that "mist" is slang for
manure. Not too many people had a use for
the "manure stick".
3. 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).
4. Pepsi's "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation"
translated into "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave", in Chinese.
5. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the more...
Cracking an international market is a goal of most growing corporations. It shouldn`t be that hard, yet even the big multi-nationals run into trouble because of language and cultural differences. For example, observe the following examples below. The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40, 000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth." In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead." Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan "finger-lickin` good" came out as "eat your more...
Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea."
Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, into German only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "manure stick".
Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.
The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, "Salem-Feeling Free", was translated into the Japanese market as "When smoking Salem, you will feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty."
When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what's inside, since most people can't read English.
Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, more...
Q: Did you hear the slogan for the the new "Stealth Condom?" A: "They'll never see you coming."