In 2003 when I was working for a Chinese newspaper, I received an IKEA ad from its agency. It was a typical promotional ad with some nice furniture pictures and the headline saying sales ends on a certain date, followed by store locations and web address. The ad was nice, but only one problem -- it was in English.
I called the agency -- which was not one specialized in Asian marketing -- and offered translation of headline and typesetting free of charge. The response I got was that the client wanted it in English. They believed those readers who did not understand the simple line were not the target audience anyway.
It was true that more than half of our readers knew some English; yet they counted on the paper for in language news and product information. Other than some job classified ads, the entire paper was in Chinese (90+ pages daily).
After the ad was printed, several readers called our customer service team asking why we had that ad on our paper. Was it a mechanical mistake? Why didn’t we translate it? None of them asked about the actual product/service/promotion.
By placing an English ad on a Chinese newspaper, IKEA’s message to the audience was like "We want to tell you what we have/sell, but we don’t want to listen to what you need." Was that really what IKEA wanted?
Technorati Tags:
Asian American
, Asian Marketing
, Diversity Advertising
, Chinese Newspaper
, Translation
, IKEA
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