Maalox: Knock it back when your stool turns black.
[sub]Wish I could remember where I stole that from…[/sub]
They didn’t use it, but…
Up here we have a monorail light transit system known as the Skytrain. When it was being built, several names were suggested.
Keeping in mind that the Fraser River runs within sight of part of the line, someone came up with the perfect name.
The “Fraser Area Rapid Transit System.”
Bring your own beans! 
So, the transit line in Simi Valley, CA (Western Ventura County, just northwest of LA) is called…
SCAT.
I kid you not. http://www.scat.org :eek:
Along the same lines as the Nova = No go, a British friend told me that the Toyota MR2 had serious PR problems in France because of the way the letter-number combination is pronounced in their language. Em ahrd deux. When spoken quickly, sounds like the French word “merde”.
The following site also makes reference to the car names “Matador” and “Pajero” in Spanish speaking countries. Both with meanings that were unintentional: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2204745.stm
Oh, good. I thought I was the only one who wanted to get some paper and clean up every time UPS advertised!
Groove Tube is one of my all time favorites. Don’t forget that Brown 79 was: “Another fine product brought to you by Uranus.” (corporation)
This was a while back - probably 15-20 years. One day my father and I were watching television when a commercial for Cascade - the dishwasher powder - came on. The commercial told you how Cascade has a special ingredient that makes water come off the glassware in sheets, so you don’t have to wipe water spots off the glasses at the end of the cycle. Then the commercial announcer finshed up with the incredible slogan:
Cascade give you sheeting action with no wiping!
My father and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Not surprisingly, we never saw the commercial again.
The current political party in power in Ireland, Fianna Fáil, had the following slogan at the last election when they got re-elected: A lot done. More to do.
According to someone on the radio (possibly UL…) when the slogan was translated into the Irish language, it wasn’t done by a native speaker, so in the venacular the slogan in came out to mean:
We haven’t done enough. That’s all right then.
I thought this thread was for worst slogans.
Wasn’t this one for Apple Computers:
Think Different
In my head I would always change it to “Think DifferentLY”. Very annoying.
This story is a cross-cultural advertising error, kind of like selling the Chevy Nova to spanish-speaking countries.
My husband used to work for a company called SEER Technologies (they wanted a name like Oracle, but they eventually found out that name was already taken). The company sold computer networking software called “middleware” – that communicated between computers that used different operating systems and network protocols.
Anyway, the company first rolled out its new advertising slogan, “NetEssential: the Slash in Client/Server” in the U.S. to no great embarrassment – until they pitched it to a group of users in London who nearly “slashed” themselves laughing.
As you BritDopers already know, and the SEER advertising execs didn’t, “slash” is UK slang for “urination.”
My jaw dropped when I heard this one: A local medical center, apparently with a focus on women’s medicine, ended with one of their surgical specialists proudly proclaiming: “This is not your mother’s hysterectomy!” My lord, I should hope not!
I don’t know if this one is true, but it’s the story I was told when I interviewed at the ad agency where I’m now working.
A few years ago, Matsushita Electronics (parent company of Panasonic), wanted to set up an internet service similar to Yahoo. They bought the rights to use Woody Woodpecker as the site mascot and then proceeded to come up with the following slogan:
TouchWoody: The Internet Pecker.
Taste the Golden Spray
That wasn’t really a slogan, but the title of a big-budget movie bomb referred to in The Big Hit.
<nitpick>
It’s grammatically correct – you don’t say “Think Pinkly,” after all.
In the slogan, “different” is meant to tell you what to think, not how to think.
</nitpick>
Man, that natural gas used to fuel the buses must be REALLY compressed…
When I was a high-school student in the mid-1970’s, a local landscaper (I lived in Northeast Ohio at the time) advertised his services by offering to perform “lawn jobs” of all kinds. At the time, “lawn job” was a slang term for the act of vandalism sometimes known as “turfing”, i.e. driving a car onto somebody’s grass in order to rip up sod, leave unsightly tire tracks, and generally commit gramineous mayhem.
While we’re talking about bad political slogans, the following one is quite famous:
“Our nation is on the edge of an abyss. Vote for us and we’ll take it a step forward.”
I’ve heard it attributed to Canadian politician Real Caouette and Charles DeGaulle so it’s probably apocryphal.
Another political one: in the 1970’s , the Liberal Party here in the UK went electioneering with the slogan “One More Heave”.
Hijack, good slogans:
Royal Flush Sanitation (holding tank pumping): “A Royal Flush beats a full house”
Going Garbage: “satisfaction guaranteed or double your garbage back”
Going Garbage, who use Hiel brand trucks: “Another load of garbage going to Hiel”
Brian
The sanitation one reminded me of another sanitation company slogan I saw as a kid: “We’re #1 in the #2 business!”