Like so many joint ventures, the name origin of NIGAZ (which, incidentally, plans to invest at least US$2.5bn in oil and gas exploration across Nigeria) is easy enough to determine and rather meaningless, one suspects, to the Russian tongue. However racial connotations abound in the English-speaking world, such that incredulous Twitterers have dubbed it one of the worst branding disasters of all time. Afrikaans-speakers would even be forgiven for thinking the joint venture produced a cure for flatulence.
All negative meanings apparently escaped Dmitry Medvedev when, according to the UK's Guardian, he agreed to the joint venture on a recent business trip to Nigeria intended to show off the Kremlin's growing interest in Africa's energy reserves. The lesson, of course, is that international branding can be a perilous business and in that, Medvedev need not feel alone.
Car manufacturers know these perils all to well. Mitsubishi was forced to change its name of its Pajero model in Spain where the term means “wanker”. Ford's Pinto found that the Brazilian translation is “small penis” and Chevrolet's Nova translated as “doesn't go” in Spanish - also affecting sales in South America.
Far Eastern translations and transliterations (mapping the sounds of one language to the best matching script of another language) create major difficulties too. KFC's “finger lickin' good” became “eat your fingers off” in China, while Pepsi's “come alive with the Pepsi generation” evolved to “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead” in Taiwan.
The NIGAZ disaster, though, is sign of things to come as investment focus in Africa increases. Africa can have more languages and cultures in a single country than on some continents and its people are known to be particularly brand savvy. Brand owners can reduce the risks associated with these types of blunders by asking their trademark advisors to include connotation checks when doing pre-clearance searches. In addition, your trademark attorney will rate your brand according to its distinctive qualities, which has a direct impact on the legal costs associated with protecting it and ensuring future exclusivity to your brand in the marketplace. In addition, you should get solutions for keeping the brand secret until it is launched whilst, at the same time, a strategy for securing the all-important filing date - the date from which the legal rights to your trademark will run.
