taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com (Dave Taylor) (08/07/90)
As part of a book I'm working on for Springer-Verlag, I would like to collect some amusing anecdotes about companies that have tried to market their product, be it computer software/hardware, or even food or clothing, but failed due to a lack of understanding of the foreign marketplace. Examples are the story of Chevy finding that the "Nova" didn't sell very well in Mexico; nova means "doesn't go" in Spanish. Coke also committed a similar faux pas when they cracked the Chinese market for their soda; they choose Chinese ideograms that 'looked like the "coca cola" letters and ended up with a soda whose name actually was something like "the drink to die consuming". I also recall hearing a story about the Mac trashcan icon and what the locals took it for in Italy, but unfortunately I can't find any more specific traces in my head on that one... I will credit all submissions, and would ideally like a reference with your submission, but pure anecdotal stories are fine too. If anyone knows of any sources I can dig up in a library or on an online service or similar, I would be absolutely delighted to hear about it! (perhaps the Harvard Business School library, for example?) The book, by the way, is on "Creating International Software" and is a logical followon to my chapter "Real Life Experiences Internation- alizating Software" for the only just released Elsevier book "Designing User Interfaces for International Use", edited by Dr. Jakob Neilsen. Thanks greatly for any assistance! Please respond via email rather than follow up articles, too! Sincerely, -- Dave Taylor Intuitive Systems Mountain View, California taylor@limbo.intuitive.com or {uunet!}{decwrl,apple}!limbo!taylor