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Is it me, or is there something deeply disturbing with this image?
It was part of a video montage I saw at the SONY shop, supposedly demonstrating the high picture quality of the Bravia range – however it wasn’t the stunning visuals that I couldn’t take my eyes off, it was the fact a fat, cute kid had a hat on his head with the word LOVER proudly emblazoned on the front.
In a great ad for brand design, it would appear from the distinctive colours and symbols the hat is connected to the Walls/Streets ice cream company, a subsiduary of the Unilever brand … which is quite interesting given that organisations goes to great lengths to talk about their “moral compass”, which roughly translates to doing right by customers and society as a whole.
Oh who are they kidding, they flog the illusion of getting laid via AXE/Lynx male grooming products and culturally blackmail millions of Asian women into buying their skin whitening cream so I wouldn’t be surprised if lil Johnnie’s hat was part of a new ice cream campaign strategy that basically said, “Lick our ice cream, and soon hot bitches will be licking your long cone.”
Maybe.
Anyway, it proves that if you are translating copy into other languages, you’d better have someone on hand who really knows what they’re doing, because doing it on the cheap [ie: Google translate] can come back and destroy your Unilever career.
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congratufuckinglations campbell, this made me laugh out loud you sick fuck.
whoever had the idea to make the poor kid mr lover man was either a bastard, illiterate or a gary glitter though my money is on one of the kardashians being behind this because theyre pimping (sorry modeling) their fucking embryos at the moment.
when streets/walls or whoever the fuck they are say theyre all about “family fun” they really werent fucking joking were they.
Comment by andy@cynic August 4, 2010 @ 6:47 amWhat a way to resign as a brand manager. Fucking awesome.
Comment by Billy Whizz August 4, 2010 @ 7:22 amDon’t people know you should never wear items (or get others to wear items) with words in languages you don’t fully understand?
Amusing though.
Comment by George August 4, 2010 @ 7:49 amGood point George – but as you know, too many people think they can do everything so these situations will continue to arise.
Funny how an agency can get in trouble for a minute mistake and yet many clients will turn a blind eye to this sort of thing.
Comment by Rob August 4, 2010 @ 12:43 pmAs a Brit abroad, you soon learn to despise the English language as it is used by local lazy copywriters to make something look cool and cosmopolitan – or by agencies that have been forced to localise a global campaign and can’t be arsed to do it properly.
Don’t get me started on global campaigns.
Good morning.
Comment by Marcus August 4, 2010 @ 3:24 pmSpeaking of growing up: what I want to know is do you still have a job after yesterday’s gaffe?
Comment by northern August 4, 2010 @ 5:51 pmIt’s come to this has it Robert? Picking on innocent kids? You should be ashamed of yourself but you don’t really do that do you.
Comment by Bazza August 4, 2010 @ 6:13 pmI guess people in other countries think English has a… je ne sais quoi… a joie de vivre if you will.
Translation is uber important. Neglect it at your peril. Too many American ads get shown here with no thought for whether the language is appropriate also.
As for the lover, maybe it’s part problem with translation, part problem with semantics.
Comment by Rob Mortimer August 4, 2010 @ 6:25 pmVery amusing you used French to describe English.
Comment by Bazza August 4, 2010 @ 7:33 pmThen you got my post’s Raison d’être…
Comment by Rob Mortimer August 4, 2010 @ 8:38 pmcareful mortimer, youre sailing awfully close to pretentious cock island.
Comment by andy@cynic August 4, 2010 @ 11:46 pmGood point. Achtung!
Comment by Rob Mortimer August 5, 2010 @ 4:38 pmDid you hear stories about tattoos on a Caucasian’s body that has some Chinese characters they think they know about? Now that on the other hand, wouldn’t destroy the gutsy tattooist’s career at all.
Comment by aaronaldo August 4, 2010 @ 8:21 pmMy wife once saw a burly guy in a tight fitting Nike tshirt with chinese script on it.
She burst out laughing.
I asked why, and she said: “It says ‘Girl Power’!”
Comment by Rob Mortimer August 4, 2010 @ 8:37 pm