Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Self-reference Criterion has to do with making decisions concerning global marketing of a product or the design of the global product itself based on your cultural biases without taking into account the cultures of the target customers. For example, if you are introducing a computer in the US, a black case would be a good choice because black is a color associated with high tech. However, in China, black is associated with evil. Knowing this, you may want to choose silver for the case color - also high tech in the United States but acceptable also in China.

If you dream up a product called "OK Pain Relief" and your commercials say, "Take this pill and you will feel OK" and the actor makes the OK symbol (index finger touching the thumb, remaining fingers up), this is OK in most of the world - excect Brazil where it means the same thing as the raised middle finger. If you knew about this in Brazilian customs (and many Portuguese too) - your admen probably would have avoided upsetting all of Brazil.

Some real life example has to do with language more than culture - but still fits. General Motors named their new compact car Nova and introduced it in Mexico. "No va" in Spanish means "doesn't go" - not a good name for a car. Also, a Japanese vacuum cleaner manufacturer translated their slogan to English and it was, "This vacuum cleaner really sucks!" In English, this is slang for "not good."

One recommendation to avoid this problem is to have people on the product team from the target cultures to make sure any issues are avoided.

Hope this helps you!

Wayde

You can get more examples of when products have funny names here:

www.engrish.com

And type "brand failure" into the past questions search button to get a few more dissuasions about it.

Also if you choose to put the one about the "Nova", make a note about the fact it is NOT true, even though it is many marketing text books. Nova in Spanish is pronounced differently than in English so there was not problem. Novas actually sold very well in Mexico.