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October 26, 2003Those who don't learn from the past are condemned to work for Nissan...
Marketing snafus based on unintended translations are nothing new. I’d heard the yarn about how the Chevy Nova had bombed in Spanish-speaking countries. Nobody was too interested in a car whose very name said it "no va," or wouldn’t go. Just recently, the Buick LaCrosse was rethought for the Canadian market after it became known that “lacrosse” is a masturbatory term among the youth of Quebec. This website has a list of various examples, not all of which concern cars, and many of which are highly entertaining. My personal favorite was the Taiwanese translation of "Come alive with the Pepsi generation!"
"Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead!"
The latest marketing snafu isn’t so much an unfortunate translation as much as it highlights the ignorance of the marketing guys at Nissan and the general American public. They’ve just unveiled a new SUV—the Nissan Pathfinder Armada.
That’s all well and good for Nissan, but I can’t help but wonder how the public will receive it. For the moment, let’s ignore the contradiction of naming a single SUV with the Spanish word for "fleet"—we’ve bigger fish to fry with regard to negative connotations. Frankly, the word "armada" isn’t teeming with them.
The best-known example of an armada is the Spanish Armada of 1588. King Philip II of Spain decided that Protestant England needed a religious spring cleaning and figured that he’d put down the smack on the home island with some 130 or so ships and about 30,000 men. Their ships were second-rate and their men ill-prepared; many of them were soldiers, not sailors, and utterly unaccustomed to sea life. When they finally reached England, the defenders handed them their collective Spanish butts on a platter, at which point the survivors (about 60 ships and 15,000 men—half of the armada’s original tally) limped home. Four million ducats later, the Spanish had nothing to show for their treasury-crippling investment. The English funded their successful defense on one one-hundredth of that amount. Spanish handed over its naval dominance to the English who, emboldened by their victory and Spain’s self-inflicted wounds, pursued their own colonial agenda with a new vigor.
But don’t let me dissuade you. If you want to end up demoralized and broke while the neighbor you hate gets a promotion at work, the 2004 Nissan Pathfinder Armada is the vehicle for you!
Posted by patrick at October 26, 2003 03:46 AM
CommentsAh yes, marketers and car names. I took part in a recent online poll that asked my opinion of various possible car names, and I'll tell you, every one of them sucked. It got to the point where I'd have to pick my five favorites out of a list of about thirty, then say why I'd picked those five. About all I could tell them was, "Because they don't suck quite as hard as all the others."
I wonder how soon we'll see the Pontiac Crusader on the market, only to have the company hastily change the name for the Middle-Eastern market. Or have they already done something that stupid?
But maybe, when the Sponge Bob Square Pants generation grows up, we'll see some honest SUV names, like Big Box Gas Hog. Or maybe, just maybe, we'll finally be plugging our cars in by then or running them off the sun instead of stuffing them with dead dinosaurs...
Posted by: Jon Bastian at October 26, 2003 12:55 PM
Ah yes, marketers and car names. I took part in a recent online poll that asked my opinion of various possible car names, and I'll tell you, every one of them sucked. It got to the point where I'd have to pick my five favorites out of a list of about thirty, then say why I'd picked those five. About all I could tell them was, "Because they don't suck quite as hard as all the others."
I wonder how soon we'll see the Pontiac Crusader on the market, only to have the company hastily change the name for the Middle-Eastern market. Or have they already done something that stupid?
But maybe, when the Sponge Bob Square Pants generation grows up, we'll see some honest SUV names, like Big Box Gas Hog. Or maybe, just maybe, we'll finally be plugging our cars in by then or running them off the sun instead of stuffing them with dead dinosaurs...
Posted by: Jon Bastian at October 26, 2003 12:55 PM
Doh! I didn't push that button twice, I swear...
Posted by: Jon Bastian at October 26, 2003 12:55 PM
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