Since there exists no silver bullet that can cover display, advertising mistakes remain one of the most detrimental blunders that can cost a company a fortune. Coca Cola at one time fell into the trap of this error. During the introduction of Coca Cola in China, the company advertised its products under the name “Ke-Kou-Ke-La”. It was too unfortunate for the company had no idea on what the phrase that streamed all over the China media meant. This continued for some time until signs came out suggesting that the phrase meant “bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax” depending on the Chinese dialect. Coke the responded by carrying out a research on 40,000 Chinese language characters. It was found that there existed a close phonetic equivalent to the advert. “Ko-Kou-Ko-Le” this had a rough meaning “Happiness in the mouth” (Have you seen what it can do to the mouth?”. These brought about the negative connotation that the Chinese people have been showing towards Coke. The Chinese people demanded a clear ingredients content of coke (De Mooij, 2009).
The Coca Cola Company could have avoided this mistake if it would have taken its time to investigate on the content of its advert. Research on advertisement is a very important activity that a company must do when it is about to release an advert to the market. While researching on the effectiveness of an advert to the intended customers, a company needs to investigate on the content of its advert as it usually appears to be a total representation of the product or the company in question (Walvis, 2003). Coca Cola could have avoided this by thoroughly investigating on the character content of the words used in the phrase of its advert.
References
De Mooij, M. (2009). Global marketing and advertising: Understanding cultural paradoxes. Sage.
Walvis, T. (2003). Avoiding advertising research disaster: Advertising and the uncertainty principle. The Journal of Brand Management, 10(6), 403-409.
