"Hopefully I’m not dating myself too much with this anecdote, but you may remember a particular urban legend that gained wide circulation in the 80’s and inspired a fair share of hearty laughs. As the story goes, the somewhat maligned Chevy Nova, when introduced to Latin American markets, supposedly made one of the most notorious cultural faux pas in automotive history. According to the tale, the car’s name in Spanish meant “it doesn’t go.” Now this might be a bit dubious because nova means the same in English as it does in Spanish and even the separated words no va would be linguistically awkward when trying to say the car is broken or doesn’t run.
The urban legend’s veracity aside, the story brings up a fine point and one that you should keep in mind when designing your booklet printing or newsletter printing. Half the time these types of printed materials end up in the hands of other companies you do business with or hope to do business with and just because the local branch is just down the block, doesn’t mean that your print won’t reach the parent company overseas. Or maybe there’s just a diverse ethnic population in your city that are going to be receiving your newsletters in their mail box. Either way, its important to understand the different cultures involved so you can avoid potentially damaging gaffs like the Nova example.
Short of going back to school to earn your doctorate in world studies and international relations, though, its impossible to know all of the subtle nuances of all the cultures of all the people that might look at your ads. The easiest solution, of course, is to have someone from the culture in question proofread your ad for you and point out any potential stumbling blocks. Barring that, you may have to break down and do a little research yourself. This won’t cover all eventualities, but even a quick study of a culture’s mores and norms will help you avoid the biggest missteps. For instance, if you run a restaurant you may want to avoid imagery of “hotoke bashi,” that is to say, chopsticks standing upright in a bowl of rice. Not only is this considered horrible table manners, its also how Japanese people place food in front of the graves of the dead. Obviously, not the kind of image you would be trying to make for your restaurant.
Don’t panic, nobody expects you to know everything about everybody, but taking the little bit of extra effort required to better understand your customers can earn their kind regards, while potentially saving yourself some red-faced embarrassment. After all, you certainly don’t want your company to be the focus of the next urban legend or cautionary tale about cultural missteps."
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