The 'Catchiest' Franchise Name

Posted Fri, 2006/11/10 - 14:47 by Mr. Blue MauMau

5 Comments

By Eugene Driga2006-11-13 12:02

Curves Means Whore In Romanian

Hi, I am a franchise expert in Romania and I'm running The Romanian Franchisee Community. Lately there's been some info about "Curves" - the well-known fitness brand - that they want to get on the Romanian market. Even if it's a famous and succesful brand in other countries, I don't think that they'd have much chances over here, and that's because their brand name. In Romanian language "curves" means "whores". So... unless they change their name, which is very unlikely to do, they could be only a source for some laughs here.

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By Don Sniegowski2006-11-13 12:27

International Brand Names

Curves means prostitute in Romanian?? Bummer!! Hmm, on second thought the franchise chain might get a lot of business. It just won't be as they planned it in the States.

Good to see you here, Eugene. Now this is informative! Welcome.

-don-

p.s. By the way, here are some other famous international brand name mess ups:

When I worked for Nike, we had a big stink over a designer who drew flames on the souls of a new fast shoe. Little did he know that the flames that connoted speed looked like fancy Arabic caligraphy for Allah. Very bad juju. (If you don't understand the cultural implications, just remember what the Iraqi locals did when the statue of Sadam Hussein came tumbling down. They angrily dusted the souls of their shoes on his image.)
When Coke originally went into China, their name sounded like "tadpole" so they were forced to change it. After all, even the Chinese don't want to drink tadpole juice. (It has no medicinal benefits and it doesn't help swimmers swim faster either.)
Remember the Nova car? In Spanish it meant "No Va'' or "no go''.
And lest anyone out there think that only we Americans make such mistakes, Japan's All Nippon Airways has had problems. ANA's Chinese characters get big chuckles from the Chinese because it means "All Day Empty", a bad sign for an airline.
And there is the international French lemonade brand Pschitt, which does not sound like it would quench my thirst on a hot summer's day.

Know of any others?

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By FranSynergy2006-11-13 15:28

Mr. Rooter Plumbing

Mr. Rooter Plumbing (a Dwyer Group Company) the 2nd largest plumbing and drain cleaning franchise goes by Drain Doctor outside of the United States.

"Mr. Rooter ... Service in your home 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week" did not work out real well in parts of the UK and Australia when you consider that Rooter is slang for Prostitute. Therefore translating into Mr. Prostitute Service in your.....you get the idea.

I'm sure that in the early 70's they never considered that some day they would be operating an international franchise. It just goes to prove that when you're starting a business there's a lot to consider.

Believe & Succeed,
FranSynergy
Synergizing Franchising 1 Franchisee at a time!
www.fransynergy.com

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By Eugene Driga2006-11-14 10:25

Lost in Translation

The Pepsi slogan 'Come Alive With Pepsi Generation' was translated into Chinese: Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the grave'.

KFC's "finger lickin' good" slogan was translated into Chinese for the Hong Kong market as " eat your fingers off"

Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer ELECTROLUX came in the US with the slogan "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux". It later revoked its strap line

From Brand Failures by Matt Haig (PDF document)