British English and American English marketing
When a British company is trying to sell overseas for the first time, the first market that they tend to look towards is in America simply because of the common language and, of course, the reverse applies too.
However, it’s not quite a common language and one of the things that these companies often forget is that their product documentation and website often need to be translated into the appropriate version of English. Unfortunately, that’s far from an obvious thought as the familiarity we each have for the other’s dialect often means that we’re almost completely unaware of the differences.
Take a few simple examples: bath taps in the UK are bathroom faucets in America, rubbers in the UK are erasers in America, the lift becomes an elevator and that’s just a few trivial examples amongst many that often aren’t obvious because whilst we see each other’s TV we generally don’t live in each other’s country and therefore never encounter the trivial, but important, differences like these.
So, if you are doing UK/American marketing try taking a short holiday in the UK or vacation in America and perhaps thereby avoid unfortunate assumptions.
Popularity: 46% [?]
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Copyright © 2008 by Arnold Stewart. All rights reserved.