During the Super Bowl, people talk nearly as much about the three million dollar 30-second ads than they do about the actual football game itself. That's why Honda is pre-promoting and creating buzz for its new ad that will air during Super Bowl Sunday this February 5th. And the buzz now is all about the return of a slightly grey Ferris Bueller, the main character from the 1986 hit movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Yep, Matthew Broderick returns as Ferris, a bon vivant with the utmost confidence, even when singing in Chinese. We ask: why sing in Chinese and not the original German from the movie, and was it dubbed?
Did you put your plans to expand into Japan on hold when last year’s earthquake leveled confidence in its economy? If the fallout from the crisis temporarily clouded your view, now is the time to recognize that abundant business opportunities appear every day in post-earthquake Japan.
Finding where your company’s global expansion strategy fits with Japanese consumers may be your greatest source of growth in the decade ahead, as we mentioned in our Q4 newsletter post, "Opportunity in Japan's New Dawn". Trends in retail, social media, mobile advertising, and product design show tremendous promise for 2012 and beyond. Japan is a trendsetter — a pioneer in product design, mobile technology, architecture — and sets the bar for buyer desire globally.
If you're like us, you much prefer shopping on your favorite store's website at home in your bunny slippers (don't judge) than fighting the crowds at the mall. And you're not alone...Cyber Monday resulted in $1.25 billion dollars in online sales in the U.S. alone, according to an article on ITProPortal. While Cyber Monday is traditionally a follow-up to the post-Thanksgiving "Black Friday" event in the U.S., global ecommerce is following suit.
Modern business looks to emerging economies—areas noted for rapid growth and industrialization, according to Wikipedia—as targets for investment. One of the most commonly cited areas, BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China—read more about this in our blog post), now has some competition from MIST (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, and Turkey). An article from AdAge provides some compelling reasons for why MIST may be a viable and profitable market for your product or services.
What’s the secret behind a film that’s
able to make viewers laugh, cry, screech or sit in quiet reflection at the very
same moment in theaters across the globe, irrespective of language and culture?
Besides blood, sweat and tears, the quick answer is: talented translators (and voice talents). Movie translators truly do make or break a film.
Translating your
website goes a long way towards establishing your local presence in a global
market. A local-language blog can take you another step further, with marketing
benefits that equal that of your English-language blog. But is this the right
step for your organization? Get the scoop on what we mean, take a minute to answer these questions, then read
on.
While we were all sipping pink wine this weekend, savoring barbequed
tri-tip, taking a snooze in the hammock and generally shunning all forms of
labor, the French were up to something quite different. Yesterday, the 5th
of September, was a day of mass exodus in the hexagone (as the French refer to their geometrically-shaped
country). Millions of impeccably groomed, sun-tanned French kids donning petit backpacks
and perfectly shined shoes filed into the streets for their first day back to
school. That’s right—millions. Back-to-school in the States is a season; it
happens over several weeks’ time. In France, the vast majority of students head
back to school on the same day, called la
rentrée: the return, or the re-entry.
Due to the prevalence of English-language searches in China, a unique partnership has formed between the Chinese search giant Baidu and the American "decision engine" Bing. Baidu users searching for English terms will see a selection of English search results alongside Chinese results in their browsers, providing access to an additional layer of information.
Bilingual search results, still a relatively new technology, show how the quest for information on a global scale overcomes regional language barriers...or perhaps caters to an increasingly polylingual group of internet users who are comfortable searching in one or more languages.
“Brevity is the soul of wit,” Shakespeare famously posited in Act 2 of Hamlet. Brevity may be an effective, low-cost way to introduce your product or service to international markets, too. Enter the minisite: a fun, interactive, compact teaser site that draws attention and prepares you for a larger rollout down the line…or helps judge brand interest to determine if your international markets are suitable for you and your goals.
Localizing a minisite is significantly easier and more cost-effective than a full site, and can get your name “out there” in a new region while you consider the rest of your localization strategy; e.g. do we really need our entire product catalog translated? What about SEO/PPC keywords and ads? Is our CMS ready to handle Chinese?
Here are some quick steps to help you get your minisite up and running:
1. Pick a handful of pages – really, no more than five – that share the basics of your product or service.
2. No TMIs or oversharing! Less is more here; you’re mainly trying to drum up interest so your visitors either learn the basics about your brand or highlighted product, or they immediately buy something on your site.
Last night in San Francisco, The Disposable Film Festival premiered 24 short films made by people from around the world. Finalists hailed from the U.S., Israel, UK, Canada, Spain, Germany, Russia and France. The films, ranging in time from fifty seconds to seven and a half minutes, were not made by video recorders or professional cameras, but from point and shoot cameras, pocket cams, web cams, screen capture, SLRs, mobile phones and a “hacked” Kinect video game console.
While people in Arab countries are using their mobile phones to disseminate information and images about civic revolutions, these video artists are using their phones and other small devices to create a global film revolution. You don’t need to be a Hollywood or Bollywood film director with a big budget, diva movie stars, big name backers, or formal training to create innovative and compelling films.
Take a look at this film, titled “Thrush” by UK director Gabriel Bisset-Smith, the grand prize winner of the Festival:
As Egypt goes, so goes the Arab world: if that idea has lost some of its currency in recent years, Egypt’s latest revolution is proving its worth once again. By far the most populous Arab country, Egypt has long had a cultural influence that extends far beyond its borders — a status reflected in Cairo’s Arabic nickname, “Umm Al-Dunya”, or “Mother of the World." A brief look at a few of Egypt’s “greatest hits” shows why events there have such an outsized impact on other Arab countries, and why the rise of democracy in Egypt could pave the way for a new era in the region.
Politics. For better or worse, Egypt has long been at the leading edge of Arab politics. The fiery President Gamal Abdel Nasser breathed life into Arab nationalism and inspired a generation of young revolutionaries — though his star dimmed after Egypt’s disastrous 1967 war with Israel. His successor, Anwar Al-Sadat, lacked Nasser’s popular appeal, yet he transformed Arab politics yet again by making peace with Israel and aligning Egypt with the West.
Music. Cairo and Beirut have a longstanding rivalry as capitals of the Arab music industry. For lovers of traditional Arab music, twentieth-century Egyptian stars such as Umm Kulthum and Farid Al-Atrash remain legends. More recently, singer Amr Diab has become one of a handful of Arab pop stars to achieve worldwide fame, most notably with his 1996 single Habibi ya Nur al-‘Ain.
The international business community is still
trying to assess the effects of revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia for investment
and growth in the Middle East and North Africa—especially now that similar
uprisings are springing up across the Arab world. A brief look at the Arab and
foreign media reveals uncertainty and concern over what will happen next. Yet
there is also hope that greater democracy will improve the economic outlook
both in Egypt and elsewhere in the region.
To be sure, the economy of the Arab world’s largest country is still reeling after weeks of paralysis. Banks have reopened, but Egypt’s stock market remains closed, reportedly infuriating foreign investors, and the tourists who power much of the economy have been slow to return. Exacerbating the immediate crisis, the rash of labor protests and strikes that helped bring down Egypt’s dictatorship has not yet abated. The Egyptian state newspaper Al-Ahram (in Arabic) echoes the new government’s call for the strikes to end, saying they endanger the country’s economic growth.
On Friday, January 28, 2011 the ruling government of Egypt cut off access to internet and cell phone services to its 80 million inhabitants. That’s the equivalent of shutting down access to everyone in California, Texas, and Florida. Yet, despite this, individual voices among the hundreds of thousands of Egyptian protesters are still being broadcast not only via traditional television news, but also via YouTube, personal blogs and Twitter feeds. Similar to the events that occurred in Thailand in 2010 and Iran in 2009, the "internet revolution" has transformed the 21st century civic revolution into a 24/7 newsfeed of insightful, real-time protester tidbits.
Videos, blogs, and tweets are the new call to arms — instead of picking up pens, protesters now wield phones. Want to glean a bit of what’s being written by Egyptians but don’t speak Arabic? No problem. Check out Meedan, a service we profiled in a previous blog that translates various news items from Arabic into English, along with translated reader comments. Another similar website is Alive In Egypt, which adds English subtitles to videos, and Arabic transcriptions along with English translations of Speak2Tweet audio files. Speak2Tweet, launched by Google when the Egyptian protests started, allows anyone to leave a voicemail that is then placed onto Twitter with an #egypt hashtag.
Mobile advertising is definitely here to stay. In fact, across
all advertising media, it’s quickly emerging as the global dominator, second only
to online video. How does mobile advertising work and which foreign markets
offer the most promise for your mobile campaign? Here’s the 411:
Quick Facts
The figures will make your head spin:
BRIC is more than a simple acronym symbolizing the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China. It's often a business imperative to sell into these countries, where the population increasingly has income not only for lower-priced commodities, but also for luxury goods. Let's focus on Brazil.
With an estimated 201 million inhabitants and a land mass nearly
equal to that of the U.S., Brazil is a huge player in the global
marketplace. It has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world,
with an average annual GDP growth rate of over 4% in the past five years
and purchasing power of over $2 trillion. Economists estimate at least
7% growth for 2010. Much of this is due to a quickly emerging lower
middle class of 95.4 million people who are snapping up cars, cell
phones, new homes and all the items needed for these newly-built homes —
commodities and discretionary products that American companies produce
and sell.
So is now the time to start offering your company's products and services to Brazilian consumers? Absolutely. Here are three reasons to start tapping into the potential of this market:
1. The economic future is bright. Thanks to the prudent fiscal and monetary policies of President Lula and his economic team, Brazil was shielded from much of the fallout from the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Though growth rates slowed, the overall impact was minimal, and the country emerged in 2010 to lead South America with sustained growth, strong exports, moderate inflation and decreasing unemployment. It is predicted to become one of the five largest economies in the world in the decades to come.
As an American company, breaking into the Brazilian market is not as much of an obstacle as in other countries. Since Brazilian independence in 1822, the U.S. and Brazil have enjoyed relatively friendly, active political and economic relations. Currently, the United States is one of the largest exporters to Brazil, representing nearly 16% of their $128 billion imported goods and services, followed closely by China.
This past year we saw several examples of global brands that used
cultural and linguistic differences to their advantage, taking a unique
cross-cultural approach to marketing and advertising.
One of these was the iconic American brand Levi's and their Nuevo Pionero campaign.
In this campaign that showed a truly "adventurous" approach to catching the eye of the young, bi-cultural Latino market, Levi's took five young U.S. Hispanics on a journey this summer from Alaska to Argentina on the Pan-American Highway. This literal and metaphorical journey from North to South shows the five travelers fully clad in Levi's new Work Wear line, stopping in ten different cities and pitching in on work projects involving the arts. Their experiences were documented in a ten-week reality show, "Norte a Sur: Una Ruta, 5 Experiencias" (North to South: One Route, 5 Experiences), that aired in the fall on Discovery en Español.
The African continent is one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world. According to Wikipedia, over 2,000 languages have been identified among its 54 countries, with over 500 languages actively spoken in Nigeria alone.
Economically, as of 2008, the McKinsey Global Institute reports that the continent’s combined GDP of $1.6 trillion is expected to surpass $2.5 trillion by 2020, with consumer spending forecast at $1.4 trillion by the same year. Eighty percent of the continent’s GDP in 2005 was shared between 15 of its .JPG "africa globe")
countries, chiefly among natural resources, commerce, farming, and telecommunications. Private foreign capital spiked dramatically from $10 billion to almost $90 billion from 2003 to 2007.
In addition, McKinsey suggests that “four groups of industries together will be worth $2.6 trillion in annual revenue by 2020. These are consumer-facing industries (such as retail, telecommunications, and banking); infrastructure-related industries; agriculture; and resources.”
Being an emerging economy with a wealth of spoken languages, how does African commerce communicate?
A rising tide raises all boats. We’ve all heard the old adage before. Yet somehow the intensity and global gloom of this last recession had many of us doubting that it would ring true this time, that the regular tidal patterns would ever return.
It may come as a surprise, then, that one of the categories that has bounced back significantly in 2010 is luxury goods.
The tide has risen for this sector in general and global luxury sales are projected to grow by 10 percent this year (via The Financial Times). LVMH, Swatch, Richemont (owner of Cartier, Montblanc and Hermes) and Burberry are a few of the “boats” enjoying the rising tide. Each of these companies has performed better-than-expected in 2010 and their shares have risen sharply.
Big brands are the biggest benefiters from this trend, according to consultant Bain, because they were able to respond to the global financial crisis by opening new stores and continuing to invest. Globalization has been the key to many of these brands’ success.
Though the U.S. has definitely seen growth in luxury goods sales this year (around 12%, according to FT), Asia harbors the brightest potential for the industry in 2010 and 2011. According to forecasts by Bain earlier this year, China was likely to finish 2010 with a 15% increase in year-to-year revenue growth; as this year draws to a close, estimates are more along the lines of 30%, and China is poised to become the world’s third largest luxury market in five years’ time (FT).
In the first part of this blog entry, Advertising in Europe, Part One, we saw that English is understandably prominent
in signage promoting tourist activities. We also saw that it is used in music advertising. So, continuing on our bike tour of Berlin, let’s see where else English is used
as a “polyglot marketing tactic” in out-of-home advertising.
When you think of mass marketing with a bit of flair, you may also think food and beverage, especially alcohol. This multi-story scaffold mesh ad for Beck's beer features a German headline that is a play on words and roughly translates to: “Better a cool beer than a refined pilsner.”
The tagline is in English: “The beer for a fresh generation.” That’s a lot of expensive ad space promoting a well-known German brand partly in English, in Germany (Becks was originally owned by a local family in Bremen in northern Germany until 2002; now it’s owned by the Belgian-based beverage giant InBev).
Perhaps you want a little nosh with your beer? You may be tempted to get a German bratwurst, but then you see a poster for Subway, the American sandwich franchise.
Walk around parts of Continental Europe and you may think you’re actually in the States or the U.K. due to the amount of English used in out-of-home advertising (e.g. billboards, scaffold banners, bus shelters, subway and bus posters, etc.). Glance at this Berlin subway advertisement below and you'll notice the headline is actually in English. Is English really taking over the world and replacing European languages in local advertising? Well, yes and no. It really depends on where you are.
In France, where Francophile-centric laws dictate what must be in French (mostly everything), you won’t see very much English in advertising, even in cosmopolitan Paris. However, in northern Europe and Germany, there is quite a bit of English – everywhere. Many people, especially those of the last two generations, are highly fluent in English and use it on a daily basis for business. That said, most ads are not exclusively in English; they combine two languages to form a polyglot marketing tactic. Advertisers get attention by portraying their brand as cool and youthful, but at the same time throw in some native language to get specifics across.
Smart, fun and useful. Acclaro shares news and tips on translation, localization, language, global business and culture.