Another one bites the....Grass?

Every culture has its own expressions, references and idioms that immediately make you feel at home, part of the culture – or not, if you don’t recognise or understand them.

Pre-COVID I was in Belgrade and found myself in a bar listening to a live band. They didn’t sing “Another one bites the dust”, but they did do various covers of well-known English songs which the assembled throng thoroughly enjoyed and joined in. However, as soon as they played popular Serbian songs the entire place erupted – everyone singing their hearts out.

For me, it perfectly encapsulated the truth of what Nelson Mandela once said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

As every marketer knows, engaging audiences with your brand is the name of the game in today’s competitive world. It can be hard enough in your own language to make that connection, but as companies expand and establish a global presence, the task of connecting your brand in different cultures, in different languages, can seem colossal.

Many of the challenges centre around translation – being able to translate increasing amounts of content into multiple formats, at speed, into many languages. There are plenty of ways you can go about it – from using your marketing agency, using freelance translators, or using a Language Service Provider. Increasingly technology is helping to massively increase the amount of content that can be translated and translated quickly – with machine translation it is now possible to roll out a marketing campaign globally in many languages within weeks not months.

But when getting your campaign to connect with people, engage with your brand, translating the words is only half the battle. The other half is making sure the meaning of what you want to say is communicated effectively and properly understood by the target audience.

Technically there is nothing wrong with Electrolux’s slogan “Nothing sucks like Electrolux”, which the Swedish vacuum maker wanted to use to emphasise its powerful performance – however the slogan had rather different connotations for American consumers who wondered why they’d promote it as being poor or rubbish…

Obviously you don’t want your campaign to be one that “bites the grass”, so you should make sure the meaning of your message translates properly across cultures (known as transcreation in some circles) if you want your campaign to engage audiences globally and build brand loyalty.

To find out more about how to speak to the heart with your audiences around the world, please visit our Authentic Global Marketing experience.