Tuesday 22 May 2012
Tuesday 20 December 2011
Monday 21 November 2011
Sunday 16 October 2011
Huge Branding Mistakes
Lost in Translation
A number of major marketing blunders come from simple errors in translation. While it’s amazing to consider that ad campaigns, those silly little business ventures that cost millions and millions of dollars, could actually overlook something as central as, you know, the meaning of the words they print in their ads.
But it happens all the time. The Coors “Turn it loose” slogan translated into a Spanish idiom for diarrhea. Perdue Chicken’s slogan “It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken” was translated in Spanish to “It takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate,” and Mexican consumers read the translated “Got Milk?” as “Are you lactating?”
Microsoft Blue Screen of Death
It should be some comfort for Bill Gates to know that Microsoft wasn’t simply buried by Apple’s innovation and superior brand appeal. That might make him feel weak and out of control. Microsoft was also buried by Microsoft. Not only did they lose their ability to make their product seem comparatively hip, hot and oh-so-indispensable, but they made a crucial error during an equally crucial marketing opportunity.
Most of us are familiar with Apple’s signature “Wheel of Death”, a spinning rainbow pie that signifies the end of a computer’s functionality. Our parents might recall a similar phenomenon called the Blue Screen of Death, a Microsoft based harbinger of frustration and doom. When the Blue Screen of Death appears, you’re done for.
At a pre-release screening of Windows 98 for an audience of press members, stunned onlookers chortled as the Blue Screen appeared and Microsoft employees blushed as their new program crashed before their eyes.
Saturday 15 October 2011
Objects Are Larger Than They Appear
That women will stop at nothing to artificially achieve the perfect silhouette is not breaking news. How they do it, however, is ever-changing. In the past, undergarments did the bulk of the work, from whale-bone corsets to Real Housewives–designed faux Spanx; women’s waists have been nipped, tucked, and cinched underneath their clothes in every which way. But now, thanks to a slew of optical-illusion dresses hitting red carpets and runways, the dresses are drawing the curves.
At the Venice Film Festival in early September, Kate Winslet pulled off a seemingly antithetical miracle: Wearing a clever skintight shift dress from Stella McCartney’s fall 2011 collection, the Oscar-winning actress appeared to be curvier and thinner. The secret to Winslet’s dress was ingenious color blocking—black side panels gave her a high, tiny waist that, when added to the white panel around her bust, gave her an hourglass figure that’d turn Jessica Rabbit green with envy.
