As a promotional strategy, Coca-Cola released a campaign that featured a series of bottle caps that were supposed to be used to create humorous sentences. However, Coca-Cola has been under bad publicity due to their carelessness. This is because the words on the bottle caps were either in French or in English; however, English speaking-customers are under shock and disbelief due to the offensive implications some of the French words had in English. Such words were “retard”, which means late in French and “douche”, which means shower in French.

Perhaps Coca-Cola’s marketing team should have clearly distinguished the difference of both languages in order to minimize offence.  Such little mistakes did not only cost Coca-Cola money as they had to get rid of the other bottle caps but it also damaged its reputation.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/offensive-phrases-on-bottle-caps-prompt-coca-cola-to-cancel-canadian-promotion/article14427173/