Foreign branding is an advertising and marketing term describing the implied cachet or superiority of domestic products with a foreign or foreign-sounding name. Generally speaking, advertising is the promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas, usually by an identified sponsor. ... It has been suggested that Product marketing be merged into this article or section. ...

In English-speaking countries, many cosmetics and fashion brands use French-styled names to imply a connection to the style-conscious. Food and drink items also use French names, trading on the high reputation of France in these areas. One example is the use of the name of the French wine-growing district of Chablis on bottles of generic-quality American-grown white wine. The practice became common enough that Chablis, attached to an American domestic wine, ultimately came to convey an image of cheapness. In the UK the perceived higher quality of German and Scandinavian kitchens led the English company Moben Kitchens to trademark "Möben" in 1977 [1], while the electrical retailer Dixons adopted the Japanese-sounding brand "Matsui" for its own brand of consumer electronics equipment. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Closeup of a womans eye while wearing makeup Cosmetics or makeup are substances to enhance the beauty of the human body, apart from simple cleaning. ... The term fashion applies to a prevailing mode of expression. ... The Chablis wine region is the northernmost sector of Burgundy, France, and also the name of a town located there. ...

In countries where the common language is not English, English-based foreign branding is often found. For instance, in Germany it is common for television advertisements to be mainly in German, but to end with an English-language motto or slogan; recently, however, there has been a notable shift back towards German due to widespread complaints from language purists and studies showing that many target audiences with moderate English proficiency misunderstood the intended message. The most prominent example in this respect is Sat.1 Television, which abandoned its poorly understood corporate slogan "Powered by Emotion" in favor of "Sat.1 zeigt's allen", a phrase that is much more catchy to German ears and translates into "Sat.1 shows (it to) everybody".

Foreign branding is also often used in Mexico, mostly due to the country's proximity to the United States. English product names and slogans are commonplace on Swedish products marketed mainly to Swedes. In Japanese markets, products often have foreign (or foreign-sounding) names. English has different connotations than Italian or French. The English-sounding names may be Engrishy and ungrammatical in real English, but in some cases may be accepted when the product reaches foreign markets. // Economic Profile Japans industrialized, free-market economy is the worlds third-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP) after the United States and China, and second-largest by market exchange rates. ... Sign in a toilet in Shanghai, instructing people to put used paper napkins in the wastebin Engrish on a sweatshirt in Japan Engrish refers to the poor-quality English that is often found in Asian countries. ...

The foreign-branded item need not have a name that would appeal to native speakers of the language. For instance, Pocari Sweat, a popular sports drink marketed in Japan by the Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., has a name that to many English speakers would imply that the product actually contains sweat, rather than the intended meaning of a beverage intended to replace the electrolytes lost in sweating. In some cases the foreign name may even be offensive to native speakers. There are an inordinate amount of car models that can be used as examples: The Mitsubishi Pajero had to be renamed to Montero in Spain and Latin America, since pajero is a Spanish slang term equivalent to "wanker," or even "faggot." [2]. Another example is the Honda Fitta ("cunt") in Sweden. The cold potato and leek soup vichyssoise was invented at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York in the 1910s and was given a French name to make it sound more palatable. There is an Australian owned brand of sunscreen called Le Tan. Additional example is the Korean car manufacturer Kia, which sounds like vomit in Hebrew, as such in Israel the name was changed and pronounced as Kaya instead. Pocari Sweat can Pocari Sweat (ポカリスエット) is a popular Japanese soft drink, manufactured by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. ... SWEAT is an OLN/TSN show hosted by Julie Zwillich that aired in 2003-2004. ... An electrolyte is a substance that dissociates into free ions when dissolved (or molten), to produce an electrically conductive medium. ... Mitsubishi Shogun 2800 in the United Kingdom The Mitsubishi Pajero, known as the Mitsubishi Montero in North America and Spanish-speaking countries, and as Mitsubishi Shogun in the United Kingdom, is an SUV built by the Mitsubishi Motors Corporation. ... Masturbation is the manual excitation of the sexual organs, most often to the point of orgasm. ... Vichyssoise is a French-style soup made of pureed leeks, onions, potatoes, cream, and chicken stock and is usually served cold. ... // Events and trends The 1910s represent the culmination of European militarism which had its beginings during the second half of the 19th Century. ...

Foreign branding through creative spelling

A Bronx, New York premium-priced ice cream was dubbed Häagen-Dazs to imply "old world craftsmanship and tradition." Häagen-Dazs has no meaning in any European language, although it contains several conventions used in European languages, such as the umlaut. Volkswagen's advertising campaigns for Fahrvergnügen ("pleasure of driving") and IKEA's for unböring are similar examples, although the diacritics are linguistically justified in the former case. The Bronx is one of the five boroughs of United States. ... Missing image Ice cream is often served on a stick Boxes of ice cream are often found in stores in a display freezer. ... A Häagen-Dazs shop in IFC Mall, Central, Hong Kong. ... Europe is conventionally considered one of the seven continents of Earth which, in this case, is more a cultural and political distinction than a physiographic one, leading to some dispute as to Europes actual borders. ... In linguistics the term Umlaut is used in a variety of closely related ways, some narrower, some broader. ... Volkswagen (pronounced folksvagen; meaning: peoples car; also known as VW or V-Dub) is an automobile manufacturer based in Wolfsburg, Germany in the State of Lower Saxony. ... IKEA is a Swedish home furnishings retailer. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and someone who engages in this study is called a linguist. ...

Häagen-Dazs spawned imitators, such as Frusen Glädjé (frusen glädje without the acute accent meaning "frozen joy" in Swedish), another brand of premium ice cream. Häagen Dazs sued unsuccessfully in 1980 to stop them from using a "Scandinavian marketing theme." Frusen Glädjé was a company that made ice cream for the U.S. market. ... 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ...

The comic strip Hagar the Horrible is sometimes billed as Hågar the Hørrible to emphasize its Viking theme. In Scandinavian and German translations the name of the main character is actually written Hägar or Hægar, which makes it similar to the English pronunciation, whereas å sounds more like o. This article is about the comic strip, the sequential art form as published in newspapers and on the Internet. ... Hägar the Horrible Hägar the Horrible is the title and the name of the main character of a syndicated comic strip by Dik Browne, first seen in February 1973 and distributed to 1,900 newspapers in 58 countries, in 13 languages. ... Vikings were a Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish and Swedish people who lived around the coasts of Scandinavia and raided, besides others in their very homelands, the coasts of the British Isles, and other parts of Europe from the late 8th century to the 11th century. ...

The fashion for the heavy metal umlaut (use of umlauts in the names of heavy metal bands) can also be seen as a form of foreign branding. Here, the image being sought is probably more specifically Teutonic rather than European in general. The graphic designer added the umlaut to the cover of Motörheads first album for æsthetic reasons. ... Heavy Metal is a genre of music that emerged as a defined musical style in the 1970s, having its roots in hard rock bands which, between 1967 and 1974, took blues and rock to create a hybrid with a thick, heavy, guitar-and-drums-centered sound, characterised by the use...

Diacritics are not the only marketing weapons available. Faux Cyrillic lifts entire Cyrillic characters to add "Яussiaи" (yaüssiaï) flavor. "GrΣΣk" (grssk) characters are similarly abused as in advertising for MY BIG FAT GRΣΣK WEDDING. The cover of Madonna's Greatest Hits Volume 2 contains the seemingly Japanese string モヂジラミミヂ, which some people believe is an attempt to render the word "MADONNA" by using katakana characters as stylized English letters. The actual explanation is slightly more complicated. Each key on a Japanese keyboard is marked with both a Latin and a Japanese phonetic character. The cover text string is made up of the Japanese characters that share the same keys as the letters M-A-D-O-N-N-A. It was most likely made by hitting these keys while the keyboard was in "kana key" mode. The real Japanese reading, mojijiramimiji, is meaningless. Graphic designers sometimes employ faux Cyrillic typography to give a Slavic feel to English text, by replacing Latin letters with Cyrillic letters resembling them. ... My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a 2002 romantic comedy film written by Nia Vardalos and directed by Joel Zwick. ... Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone[1] (born August 16, 1958) is an American pop singer, dancer, songwriter, producer, actress, and author. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Katakana (片仮名) are a Japanese syllabary, one of the four Japanese writing systems. ...

Colloquial foreign branding through pronunciation

In Australia, the 'Target' chain of stores is often ironically referred to as "tah-ZHAY", because "French" clothing is perceived to be "fashionable." A target can signify: from ca. ...

External links

• Would you like umlauts with that? (PDF) by Bruce Campbell
• English-language page for Pocari Sweat, from the Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company
• A report by Ernst & Young on the declining status of American "chablis"
• The Modish Macron, a Language Log post about use of the macron in branding

Ernst & Young is one of the Big Four auditors, and the third largest professional services firm in the world (after PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu) in terms of revenue. ... Language Log is a popular collaborative language blog maintained by University of Pennsylvania phonetician Mark Liberman. ... A macron (from Gr. ...