Rant of the day
There has been an explosion of posters and advertisements around Edinburgh in the last few weeks. The subject, the new GAP clothes range. To most people the posters are completely unintelligible. There is a picture of a young child in a warm outfit with the words “Holiday is Here” underneath. I have seen people looking wistfully at the poster with puzzled expressions. As they turn away, I can see them thinking, "Why is the child going on her holidays in such warm clothes? Perhaps she’s going on a trip to Lapland to see Father Christmas or maybe a skiing holiday?"
I assume that the advertisements refer to the impending Christmas season. We do make the most of the bank holidays over Christmas and New Year and schools close for a couple of weeks Christmas holidays but our main holiday is in the summer. People go on holidays at various times in the year but I would guess that for most people late November/early December is a relatively unlikely time to go holiday. We’re too busy doing our Christmas shopping.
Yes, I know that in America most of these are known as vacations (not a word in general use outside universities here) and holiday is only used for what we call bank holidays. I know that America has a significant Jewish population as well as many other religions so it is a convenient term more likely to include than alienate people …but …
If GAP want to have a stores in Britain or anywhere else for that matter, they should recognise that their global advertising campaigns should use words which can be understood unambiguously in the relevant country. I asked a member of staff to explain the words on the poster - she hadn’t realised what it meant. It isn’t even good marketing!!!
[/rant]
Perhaps it's a play on the (Coke?) jingle: "Holidays are coming"? That's what I thought when I first saw it (South Ken station).
No doubt the switch from plural to singular is meant to give the grammar more of a childlike element...
>"Holidays are coming"?
... and the goose is getting fat?
Must have missed that jingle, all I can remember is "I'd like to teach to world to sing" - terrific those New Seekers! I don't think Irn Bru could be described as the "Real Thing" but I do like the man on the building site ad.
My initial reaction is to relate it to the US publicity for the Hitchcock film "The Birds." The pre-release publicity posters screamed The Birds Is Coming. It was a "teaser" to build up interest. Yuk. I found it annoying and ungrammatical. The picture was excellent, though!
Are they touting a new line of winter-wear called "Holiday?"
You are correct : it is bad marketing.
wow
Wait! Wait! Wait!
Department of Second Thoughts:
Is it bad marketing? We are talking about it, aren't we?
wow
Jo,
I agree, it's inappropriate marketing. A couple of almost related comments:
The Americans have Thanksgiving at the end of November as well as Christmas at the end of December. When I was working in Chicago I found the 'holiday mood' kicked in far earlier than in any other place I'd worked. Now I work for an overseas subsidiary of an American company, dependent on the US for a lot of information and product, I find it frustrating because they didn't think to remind us in advance that their offices were going to be closed for a four day weekend, which added to time differences meant we wouldn't get responses to a question asked on Wednesday until the following Tuesday at the earliest...
I have bought clothing from a US retailer on-line. They now regularly send me catalogues. Their accounts department have noticed that in July Australia introduced a new tax and all the catalogues now include a note explaining the effect of this on prices for customers in Australia. Their marketing department have not yet noticed that December is summer in the southern hemisphere and it is not a good time to send catalogues advertising warm, fleecy, knitted, 'snug' clothing....
(NB - I am not against all things American! It just happens that there are a great many more American multinationals out there able to commit this kind of idiocy, so they are top of mind. ALso, I wonder whether having a larger domestic market they are able to get to a certain size and inflexibility before they have to learn the lessons of internationalisation?)
Department of Second Thoughts:
Is it bad marketing? We are talking about it, aren't we?You are indeed a Wise Old Woman!
I reckon you've hit the nail on the head m'dear.
Bad marketing
I'm not sure that people are talking about it. Have you heard anyone else talking about it Fishy? It's just knocking down another chink in the wall of national identity as yet another multi-national ignores our differences.
When Benetton show new born babies or death row prisoners then people seem to talk (rightly or wrongly). Most of the rest is barely noticed.
The ad campaign referenced here is available on the net for viewing at
http://www.gap.com/asp/shops/gap/holiday.asp
>..before they have to learn the lessons of internationalisation
Bridget,
I can relate to what you are saying. I used to run the Australian/NZ software support centre for a US computer company. We had support analysts available to cover the working hours of customers across five time zones every day, unless it was a public holiday in ALL locations (about 6 days/year). Our US support headquarters - which provided "next level" support to us - worked 7.00am to 4.00pm only, and closed on every public holiday in their state.
It also used to irk me that they would use the names of northern hemisphere seasons for software release dates and on product catalogs. Use of the word "fall" just reinforced the impression that their world stopped at the US border.
Incidentally, that's also where I first came across the horrible "words" i18n and l10n for internationalization and localization respectively.
Tv ads in the U.S. have become remarkable for all but omitting the product in their visual displays. We (Americans) can watch an ad over and over, and laud it for its humor or maybe its humanity, and yet we will be uncertain of the object of that very ad -- let's see, was it for a new line of blue jeans? or for a sportscar?
Same here, ShyHeart. Unless they're affecting us in some subliminal way, it does make you feel that the advertising companies concerned are taking their customers' money under false pretences. Mind you, it generates some good entries for <insert the ad equivalent of the Cannes Film Festival here>.
In reply to:
Wait! Wait! Wait!
Department of Second Thoughts:
Is it bad marketing? We are talking about it, aren't we?
wow
Yup.
Marty wrote: Same here, ShyHeart. Unless they're affecting us in some subliminal way, it does make you feel that the advertising companies concerned are taking their customers' money under false pretences. Mind you, it generates some good entries for <insert the ad equivalent of the Cannes Film Festival here>.
In NZ (and I'm sure in Oz), Toyota have a history of very, very successful TV advertising in terms of the viewer's retention of the message. Some of the contents of these ads become iconic and enter the language, albeit briefly.
The latest one, which whipped up a storm of teacup proportions among the couch-bound semi-moral bleeters with which NZ (and I bet most other countries) is littered every night, was one for the Toyota HiLux utility vehicle (pickup for the Yanks). The only word spoken in the ad was "Bugger!", spoken by a farmer, his wife and his dog. A court ruling arising from the rump whingeland complaints left us with a new, acceptable word - bugger!
The really interesting thing is that within weeks another ad - a transport road safety ad - had a four-year-old girl saying it when her father, driving a ute, accidentally splashes her shoes when going through a puddle of water. Still, I guess bad language doesn't pay, because she gets hit by a car a couple of seconds later.
WHAT ?!?!?!
A little girl gets HIT by a car in a Toyota commercial. And people are upset about the word bugger being uttered???
Curiouser and curiouser.
- a transport road safety ad - had a four-year-old girl saying it when her father, driving a ute, accidentally splashes her shoes when going through a puddle of water. Still, I guess bad language doesn't pay, because she gets hit by a car a couple of seconds later.
no idle threats in your safety ads! you kill off jaywalkers and foul mouthed kids, huh?
Every year in Japan as an end of year special, and at odd intervals here, there are shows featuring international TV commercials. Some of the european soap commercials are too riske for US TV, and end up "blurred"-- others are just strange to our way of thinking.
I like one of the beer commercials-- OZ i think, a guy sitting at a bar stool, first beer opposite an old hag, with each beer, she gets younger and more voluptious! by time he is bleary eyed, the woman is knockout! it would never play here! the puritans wouldn't object, (truth in advertizing), but breweries would never show any one getting bleary eyed on beer! Our beer commercials look like ads for young health bodies!
there are scads of stories about how us marketer's failed to check out a translation, and wordered why there marketing effort failed...
some ideas just seem so obviously bad.. Xerox changed its corporate logo from a blue san serif XEROX to a big red X(digitized) -- a symbol i associate with "Wrong". and i guess looking at there stock and company performance others agree with me.
And my daughter came home from visiting her aunt in japan, and remarked it was no wonder no one in japan bought american cars. she hadn't seen a single one with the steering wheel on the right. all were equiped as if for the US market! she was a teenager, and she thought it was a dumb way to sell cars.
AWAD rules OK. I just tried to follow Father Steve's GAP link to see what the fuss is about -- and the ad isn't there any more. Some pathetic excuse about an unauthorised link but we know the real reason, don't we.
Incidentally, it's not just Americans. Sogo, a Japanese dept. store has branches in Jakarta and they have in store advertisements at the moment (or did till the Christmas/Idul Fitri blitz started) urging us to buy winter clothes, not having noticed that on the equator we don't have winter. No wonder they've gone bankrupt...
Bingley
In reply to:
the horrible "words" i18n and l10n for internationalization and localization respectively.
[shudder] Huh? [/shudder]
Bingley
- a transport road safety ad - had a four-year-old girl saying it when her father, driving a ute, accidentally splashes her shoes when going through a puddle of water. Still, I guess bad language doesn't pay, because she gets hit by a car a couple of seconds later
Thanks, 1000 Ship Launcher.
and, there are scads of stories about how us marketer's failed to check out a translation, and wordered why there marketing effort failed...
My favourite one is Ford's attempts to sell the Nova in Central and South America ... in Spanish, "no va" means "doesn't go". You can imagine the sales graph. Talk about flatliners!
I like the coke cola ad--in US it was "coke brings things to life!"
in china it was first translated as "coke restore your dead ancestors to life" not exactly the image they wanted to portray.
but sometimes marketers get it right. Foster's (Aussie) beer has had some great commercials in US, (the intro is "How to speak" accompanied by a visual--a large, sizzling steak on platter, it's then garnished with a sprig of parsley. the unseen announcers states "salad". there are lots of them, all in similar vein. (busy saloon, many drinkers, one, on far end bar throws a boomerang, the guy it hits reaches up and switches the channel on the TV to a soccer game. Unseen announcer "remote") tag line is all is Fosters--Australian for beer. It a good campaign, since i don't even like beer and i remember them!
Have you heard anyone else talking about it Fishy?Nope. But then, maybe we're the target market
It's just knocking down another chink in the wall of national identity as yet another multi-national ignores our differences.Well, to the extent that's true, it's plain old bad marketing, and will result in loss of sales in the country(-ies) concerned. And it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.
Having said which, I quite like Gap stuff. Damn.