Foreign branding

From Free net encyclopedia

Foreign branding is an advertising and marketing term describing the implied cachet or superiority of domestic products with a foreign or foreign-sounding name.

In English-speaking countries, many cosmetics and fashion brands use French-styled names to imply a connection to the style-conscious. Food and drink items also use French names, trading on the high reputation of France in these areas. One example is the use of the name of the French wine-growing district of Chablis on bottles of generic-quality American-grown white wine. The practice became common enough that Chablis, attached to an American domestic wine, ultimately came to convey an image of cheapness. In the UK the perceived higher quality of German and Scandinavian kitchens led the English company Moben Kitchens to trademark "Möben" in 1977 [1], while the electrical retailer Dixons adopted the Japanese-sounding brand "Matsui" for its own brand of consumer electronics equipment.

In countries where the common language is not English, English-based foreign branding is often found. For instance, in Germany it is common for television advertisements to be mainly in German, but to end with an English-language motto or slogan; recently, however, there has been a notable shift back towards German due to widespread complaints from language purists and studies showing that many target audiences with moderate English proficiency misunderstood the intended message. The most prominent example in this respect is Sat.1 Television, which abandoned its poorly understood corporate slogan "Powered by Emotion" in favor of "Sat.1 zeigt's allen", a phrase that is much more catchy to German ears and translates into "Sat.1 shows (it to) everybody".

Foreign branding is also often used in Mexico, mostly due to the country's proximity to the United States. English product names and slogans are commonplace on Swedish products marketed mainly to Swedes. In Japanese markets, products often have foreign (or foreign-sounding) names. English has different connotations than Italian or French. The English-sounding names may be Engrishy and ungrammatical in real English, but in some cases may be accepted when the product reaches foreign markets.

The foreign-branded item need not have a name that would appeal to native speakers of the language. For instance, Pocari Sweat, a popular sports drink marketed in Japan by the Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., has a name that to many English speakers would imply that the product actually contains sweat, rather than the intended meaning of a beverage intended to replace the electrolytes lost in sweating. In some cases the foreign name may even be offensive to native speakers. There are an inordinate amount of car models that can be used as examples: The Mitsubishi Pajero had to be renamed to Montero in Spain and Latin America, since pajero is a Spanish slang term equivalent to "wanker," or even "faggot." [2]. Another example is the Honda Fitta ("cunt") in Sweden. The cold potato and leek soup vichyssoise was invented at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York in the 1910s and was given a French name to make it sound more palatable. There is an Australian owned brand of sunscreen called Le Tan.

[edit]

Foreign branding through creative spelling

A Bronx, New York premium-priced ice cream was dubbed Häagen-Dazs to imply "old world craftsmanship and tradition." Häagen-Dazs has no meaning in any European language, although it contains several conventions used in European languages, such as the umlaut. Volkswagen's advertising campaigns for Fahrvergnügen ("pleasure of driving") and IKEA's for unböring are similar examples, although the diacritics are linguistically justified in the former case.

Häagen-Dazs spawned imitators, such as Frusen Glädjé (frusen glädje without the acute accent meaning "frozen joy" in Swedish), another brand of premium ice cream. Häagen Dazs sued unsuccessfully in 1980 to stop them from using a "Scandinavian marketing theme."

The comic strip Hagar the Horrible is sometimes billed as Hågar the Hørrible to emphasize its Viking theme. In Scandinavian and German translations the name of the main character is actually written Hägar or Hægar, which makes it similar to the English pronunciation, whereas å sounds more like o.

The fashion for the heavy metal umlaut (use of umlauts in the names of heavy metal bands) can also be seen as a form of foreign branding. Here, the image being sought is probably more specifically Teutonic rather than European in general.

Diacritics are not the only marketing weapons available. Faux Cyrillic lifts entire Cyrillic characters to add "Яussiaи" (yaüssiaï) flavor. "GrΣΣk" (grssk) characters are similarly abused as in advertising for MY BIG FAT GRΣΣK WEDDING. The cover of Madonna's Greatest Hits Volume 2 contains the seemingly Japanese string モヂジラミミヂ, which some people believe is an attempt to render the word "MADONNA" by using katakana characters as stylized English letters. The actual explanation is slightly more complicated. Each key on a Japanese keyboard is marked with both a Latin and a Japanese phonetic character. The cover text string is made up of the Japanese characters that share the same keys as the letters M-A-D-O-N-N-A. It was most likely made by hitting these keys while the keyboard was in "kana key" mode. The real Japanese reading, mojijiramimiji, is meaningless.

[edit]