12 Biggest Brand Blunders In History
Sorry, was that "toilet" or "tonic" water you wanted to buy?
Brand blunders are far more common than they should be, particularly from world-famous companies. Barely a week goes by without one well-known business or another branding one of their products in such a way that they manage to offend somebody, or cause political outrage somewhere. There are various reasons as to why brands make such blunders, including carelessness, a lack of cultural understanding, poor general research, a misunderstanding of consumer attitudes in certain countries, as well as imperfect - or in some case too literal - translation of names, slogans and brands.
One of the most common blunders made by brands is the failure to adequately check how product names or slogans translate into different languages - with some changing into profanities or even words meaning male or female genitalia. Another mistake made by a world-renowned car company was to try and promote one of their products with an advert featuring an actor who was pro-Tibetan independence, which caused them to lose lots of business in China. Elsewhere, one of the globe's biggest sports-manufacturing companies inadvertently offended the Muslim world by designing an insensitive logo that resembled the Arabic name for "Allah".
So here are 12 of the biggest blunders by world-famous brands in history.