Branding. The game of the name.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc – MMiami.com

“It’s Colombia, not Columbia.”

• I’ve noticed that some politicians who have thrown their hat in the presidential primary race as of late suffer from one of the oldest problems in the marketing playbook: a lack of brand name recognition.
• In the case of Pete Buttigieg y Amy Klobuchar, the problem goes beyond brand name recognition: it’s brand name pronunciation.
• Forgive me for stating the obvious but this is a huge marketing issue.
• Particularly in the cross-cultural marketing realm.
• It is an issue that takes considerable amounts of focus and patience to fix.
• And cash.
• And luck.
• For lawn sign and bumper sticker purposes, Buttigieg’s strategists have opted to just rechristen him Mayor Pete (in case you didn’t know, he is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana) or simply Pete.
• Good call.
• It’s been done in the past with considerable success.
• Coca-Cole: Coke.
• Chevrolet: Chevy.
• Budweiser: Bud.
• Macintosh: Mac.
• SoHo, Tribeca, Nolita
• Due to a number or reasons we will not analyze today, the English language tends to be more prone to the use of shorthand than Spanish.
• And even slang.
• It is not infrequent to see a New York Times headline using “cop” instead of police officer.
• You will never read “poli” (or any other of the myriad slang words that can be used to refer to the police force across Spanish-speaking countries) on a Spanish-language media outlet.
• It would be considered vulgar, childish or silly, even by tabloid standards.
• But back to cross-cultural marketing.
• Pronunciation is a serious challenge for Hispanic brands trying to gain footing among mainstream consumers.
• And vice versa.
• Think of the facial contortions required from a Spanish-speaker to pronounce, say, Spotify
• A little personal story.
• I handled the Flor de Caña US account for several years.
• Flor de Caña as in the award-winning Nicaraguan rum.
• It’s earned medals galore from all sorts of international competitions.
• It enjoys broad brand name recognition in its native Nicaragua and across Central America.
• Its problem?
• The brand name is a tongue twister for non-Spanish speakers.
• To add salt to the wound, its nemesis is the Guatemalan rum Zacapa (as easy to pronounce and remember as it gets).
• Think of this setting: you are at a bar trying to impress a date/client/colleague.
• You want to make a show of your worldliness and sophistication in front of him or her.
• It just so happens that your command of the Spanish language is limited.
• Fumbling your drink is not an option.
• You just cannot afford the humiliation of having the bartender -a condescending hipster with the notorious penchant to shamelessly flirt with his patron’s dates- to correct your pronunciation.
• Which rum would you choose for your mojito?