Monthly Archives: October 2013

10/7/13

Bad Translation: “Eating Your Fingers Off”

One of the significant milestones for a company is to expand internationally. Fundamental knowledge of international marketing becomes indispensable since a lack of such knowledge could result in being offensive, which may sequentially cause negative consequences including being blacklisted by the target country.

Imaging a customer who is about to enter a fast food restaurant sees the slogan “Eating Your Fingers Off”, would the customer still have any appetites to eat in this restaurant? This awkward slogan was from a well-known fast food restaurant, KFC. Initially, the slogan was “Finger-lickin’ good”. However, due to bad translating, the phrase was translated to entirely different meaning in Chinese when KFC first opened in Beijing, China.

From the above example, it is clearly shown that translation is really important. Bad translation can have funny effects or may confuse the foreign customers. Then, a company is unable to utilize brand positioning to create a distinguish impression in customers’ mind since the bad slogan, in this case, has already established a misleading image. Thus, a company would need extra money or time to build a “right” impression to the customers.

 

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10/6/13

Note to Samsung: Beware! Here Comes HTC

Microsoft hopes to launch HTC phones equipped with dual (Windows and Android) operating system, reports “The Motley Fool”. It is still uncertain whether or not HTC will go about this system.

Some people agreed that HTC One is now the best phone on the market compared to its main rival Samsung S4, which has no dual front speakers, no good-looking interface and no tactile metal chassis. However, Samsung has succeeded way further than HTC, which may due to its omnipresent advertising budget. According to analyst Horace Dediu, Samsung’s mobile advertising budget is more than $4 billions U.S. dollars. Comparatively, HTC overall advertising budget is only $3.7 billions. Google provides Android a free and open platform. However, Samsung dominated by up to 60% of the market share by its vertical integration advantages.

 While HTC is no longer important to the investors, it is still important in terms of its strategic position. HTC becomes Google’s “tool” to balance Samsung’s power since Samsung has expanding significantly in recent.

With my personal point of view, I think if HTC really decided to launch a mobile phone with a pair of operating systems, it would perhaps dominant the market shares since it is very unique and has not been on the market yet.

 

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