page_title: Brand blunder
section_title: True cases
hierarchical_section_title: Brand blunder / True cases
caption_attribution_description: Ford Pinto runabout from 1973
context_page_description: A brand blunder is an error associated with the branding of a product, especially a new product in a new market. Reasons for such slips include the lack of understanding of the language, culture and consumer attitudes in the new market.
  There are numerous examples of brand blunders in marketing history; there are also numerous urban legends surrounding brand blunders, where there is little evidence of an actual blunder.
context_section_description: In international marketing, companies must research their product brand name carefully; not only must a brand be distinctive and easy to pronounce, but it must not have unintended negative or obscene connotations in other territories around the world. Examples of brand names which have proved unsuitable for use in English-speaking countries have included:
  Alu-Fanny, a French aluminium foil
  Bimbo, a brand of bread in Spain and the Americas
  Crapsy Fruit, a French breakfast cereal
  Atum Bom, a Portuguese brand of tinned tuna
  Kack, Danish confectionery
  Kum Onit, a German make of pencil sharpeners
  Mukk, an Italian yogurt
  Plopp, a Swedish chocolate bar
  Pocari Sweat, a Japanese sports drink
  Poo, type of curry powder in Argentina
  Pschitt, a French fizzy soft drink
  A number of Belgian beer brands, such as Silly, Prik, Slag, La Plope, Pee Klak and Witte Dikke
  Brand names and advertising campaigns which have proved controversial in recent years have included the following instances:
  In 1997, the sportswear company Reebok introduced a women's running shoe called "Incubus"; the company was forced to recall the product when it became apparent that an Incubus is a mythological male demon that rapes women in their sleep.
  A 1997 direct mailer from Weight Watchers featuring Sarah Ferguson, with a caption stating that losing weight was "harder than outrunning the paparazzi", appeared in mailboxes in the days before and following the death of Ferguson's former sister-in-law Princess Diana, an incident in which paparazzi were at the time suspected to have played a role. The company quickly pulled the ads.
  An April 2002 Starbucks ad featured twin cups of their Tazo drinks with the caption "Collapse into cool" and an airborne dragonfly, imagery and wording which reminded many of the recent 9/11 attacks. Though the ads were created before the attacks and the resemblance was coincidental, the company apologized and pulled the posters.
  In 2005 the electronics company Nintendo brought to market in South Korea an electronic dictionary for children named Touch Dic; it was subsequently renamed Touch Dictionary as the name sounded too similar to the slang term "dick".
  In 2006 Sony had a limited Dutch billboard campaign promoting the then-upcoming arrival of the white PlayStation Portable by featuring a black woman and white woman with respectively colored clothing and hair in confrontational poses. After accusations of racism, Sony pulled the ads.
  In 2008, Greyhound Canada hastily pulled the slogan "There's a reason you've never heard of 'bus rage'" after Tim McLean was murdered and beheaded by fellow passenger Vince Weiguang Li aboard a bus in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba.
  A Nike ad on Oscar Pistorius' website used the caption "I am the bullet in the chamber" and was pulled in 2013 after his arrest in connection with the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
  The Honda Jazz was initially named the Honda Fitta. However, when marketing collateral reached the Swedish office of the company, it was pointed out that "Fitta" is a slang term for "vagina" in Swedish and Norwegian. The model was renamed "Jazz" for most markets, with the name "Fit" being used in Japan, China, and the Americas. Similarly, sales of the Ford Pinto suffered in Brazil due to pinto being a Portuguese slang word for a penis; Mitsubishi found that the name of its Pajero model was the same as the Spanish term for "wanker"; and the name of the Toyota MR2, when spoken in French, bore an uncomfortable phonetic similarity to the French word merde, meaning "shit".
  A name given by IKEA's Chinese website for its stuffed wolf toy Lufsig, Lo Mo Sai (路姆西), contained a homophone of Hai (閪), a profane Cantonese word meaning "vagina"; the name itself could be written as Lo Mo Hai (老母閪), meaning "mother's vagina".
  Ayds diet candy launching a mass marketing campaign just before the start of, and continuing through the early years of, the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
  A German company courted controversy in 2010 when it introduced a brand of beer called Fucking Hell. The brand name was a deliberate cho
caption: The Ford Pinto: problematic in Brazil
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