ya gotta love advertising

Panasonic developed a complete Japanese Web browser, and to make the system user-friendly, licensed the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker as the “Internet guide.” Panasonic eventually planned on a world version of the product.
The day before the ads were to be released, Panasonic
decided to delay the product launch indefinately.

The reason: an American staff member at the internal product launch explained to the stunned and embarrassed Japanese what the ad’s slogan, “Touch Woody - The Internet Pecker”, might mean to English speakers.

tee hee … :smiley:

Oh I love those translation errors. Wasn’t there a good one with Coke?

Damn memory.

Apparently, this happened in 1996, although I can’t find solid confirmation of the veracity of this story. In my opinion, the story just reeks of urban legend, but Snopes doesn’t have anything on it.

BTW, JustaGirl, the wording of your post is almost identical to that found in various websites I found by using “touch woody” as a Google search term. From the site I linked to earlier, it appears that the wording originally appeared in a publication called “EE Times” in 1996, and therefore would almost certainly be copyrighted. Mods typically frown on such cut-and-paste jobs for posts here, since it tends to violate copyrights and make persons of a legal persuasion a little twitchy.

Not entirely off topic, here’s an article I found yesterday (via www.robotwisdom.com ) debunking the persistent urban legends about humourous mechanical translation errors.

I’m sure the “Touch Woody” thing will be added to the mostly-spurious litany of international marketing gaffes that people can’t seem to resist perpetuating.

It would take a Russian “water goat” to get this sort of thing out of the collective consciousness. :smiley:

Welcome aboard, JustAGirl.

I was unaware that sharing a story was considered copywrite infringement. I got that from a msn group that I belong too and although they have copywrite rules they have no problem with people posting stories etc that they find amusing or interesting.
I am more than happy to apologize if I was wrong in doing this, but I was under the assumption that it is only illegal if you try and pass it off as your own. In this case I was doing no such thing. As I see it, if the rule is that sticky then everyone is guilty of this as we forward pre written works & images to people every single day …

JaG

JaG

When posting something from another source, you can provide a link to the source and, preferrably, put the source in quotes.

Example:

Hey, look what I found here

You can quote something by typing in (without all the * of course)
[QUOTE] info to be quoted [/QUOTE*]

However, you should never copy the entire content of the piece, as that always is a violation of copyright, regardless of how it is cited. A great resource for information on copyrights and legalities of media law can be found at LawGirl.com

Hope that helps.

Cheers!
Jet

Gosh, I wonder what other various websites you might have found in that search, Atreyu. :wink:

Just FYI, you can read more of the SDMB policy about this HERE. In particular, note that

[QUOTE]
Suggested guidelines[list=A][li]If you are going to quote something from an article, quote less than 5% of the source. Include a link to the article if the article is available online.Only quote directly in very rare circumstances. Instead of repeating a source word-for-word, read the article, attempt to understand it, and rephrase what it says in your own words. Again, include a link to the source if the source is available online. Otherwise indicate a reference to the source (e.g. Science News, issue x, pages yy-zz).[/list=A][/li][/QUOTE]

The idea is that this board is used by people all over the world, in a wide variety of legal jurisdictions, subject to a wide variety of copyright laws. You may be entirely accurate in your beliefs of the copyright laws wherever you are, but the SDMB guidelines provide some legal protection to the board hosts to consider and accomodate other legal jurisdictions.

Oh… and welcome to the SDMB! (Not that I’m a grizzled veteran really in a position to welcome others but… )

ok, that wasa bad on my part and your right I should have made myself more familiar with the rules. I will be sure to read them over today :slight_smile:

thanks for the help and for the welcomes :wink:
JaG

The “touch woody” thing is a long-circulated piece of Internet lore. Wouldn’t it technically have no copyright, since it goes around and around and around and around and originally didn’t have a copyright notice?

And let’s get back to figuring out whether or not the Japanese wanted to touch Woody, the Internet pecker.