In the 70’s Wang had a slogan to show how dedicated they were to customers. The slogan was “Wang Cares”. It didn’t last long.
Not a brand, but it still makes me giggle when I see Spotted Dick in the international isle.
Bic was founded by a Frenchman named “Bich”. He dropped the “h” when he realized what it was doing to his sales in the English world.
I thought that was the joke.
The original name in Japan of Pac-Man was Puck-Man, as in “hockey puck,” because it’s literally a living hockey puck. So they just translated “Puck-Man” to come up with the English name. Fortunately, before they printed up all the labels for the machines, an executive who’d spent time in the US clued them in that defacement of the machines would be a problem if they were called “Puck-Man.” Disaster averted.
Wang died of cancer, and eventually the company failed, but why assume it was a brand-name failure?
I assume **kferr **is saying that the slogan didn’t last long. The company died for the same reason that lots of early tech companies died; they couldn’t make the jump to the PC world.
In the early 1980s I briefly worked as a quality control inspector for the Ball Computer Company. (For some reason the same company that makes Ball jars decided it would be a good idea to build computers. That branch didn’t last very long.) We used to joke that it was better to be a Ball inspector than a Wang operator. Anyone can operate a Wang, but it takes training to inspect Balls.
They don’t sound all that much alike. The second vowel is different, and the rhythm of the syllables is completely different. American and British English are stress-timed languages. Emphasis is meaningful.
In the early 1980s, a publisher came out with a new method book for teaching school bands (musical groups). Unfortunately, the title of this new series of books was Aids for Band. It was a pretty good book, but it didn’t catch on for some reason.
The company Smalterie Metallurgiche Emiliane Guastalla make a range of domestic appliances which they consider to be at the premium end of the market.
All fine and good but if I’m buying a fridge and they really must use the company name in capital letters on the door, then I’d rather see BEKO than SMEG.
Maybe it’s just me …
I recall watching a footy match in the 80’s when the advertising hoardings around the pitch were just a repeat after repeat of the Airline name “TWA” in lovely big three-foot high boldly coloured letters.
Not strictly what the OP was looking for but it was an incident waiting to happen and hilarious to boot.
I don’t think that would raise an eyebrow today, considering the random Chinglish brand names that proliferate in Amazon today.
I remember years ago a commercial played here in Chicago, I think it was for a clothing store or outlet or something. Anyway, its slogan was “Uptown Quality at Downtown Prices!”
I never saw the commercial but once, and I’ve always wondered if it was because somebody wised the company up that while that slogan might work in New York, here in Chicago it would translate as “Thrift Shop Quality at Designer Boutique Prices!”
As for more recently, remember Wen Shampoo that was all over the place with the infomercials? You couldn’t hardly channel surf without running across one. Well, I just found out that in 2014 the company settled a 26 million dollar class action lawsuit for their celebrated shampoo irritating scalps and making clumps of hair fall out. They were sitting on 21,000 complaints.
And do you know what “wen” actually means? It’s a sebaceous scalp cyst usually caused by clogged pores.
I really like how that turned out.