Connor Brooke
HSBC Holdings is a bank used throughout the world and based in the United Kingdom. Known worldwide by its tagline, “The world’s private bank,” HSBC was not always branded that way. The past few years have seen a $10 million rebranding campaign for this bank due to a serious – and hilarious – translation error.
What Went Wrong
Like other translation issues in marketing, the problem was a very simple mistake. The tagline was supposed to be “Assume Nothing” – which didn’t work out in translation. The call to action became, in a number of countries, “Do Nothing,” which obviously doesn’t work out when the goal is to get someone to use your services.
HSBC, while not primarily used in the United States, is actually the sixth largest wealth manager worldwide, and has stood out in the finance world for its success – but definitely turned people away with its slogan.
The Lesson Learned
For such an enormous company with operations all over the world, it might be surprising that the translation error was so extreme. “Do nothing” is definitely not the message you want to be sending out to consumers. Just like the errors made by Quink and Braniff Airlines in my earlier post, it’s hilarious on the one hand, but in practical terms doesn’t exactly work out for a marketing campaign.
What it comes down to is cultural sensitivity and the help of an ace translator or translators who know the ins and outs of both the source language and the target language. As with any marketing campaign, though, errors may be inevitable. The solution is to fix the problem. HSBC actually let the problematic campaign run for several years before remediating the issue – yikes. While rebranding was a great move, it might have done well to occur earlier.
What it all comes down to is attention to detail. Little mistakes – like a slogan for a worldwide company that doesn’t translate well – are not only going to make consumers snicker, but could deter them from your message. By fixing your mistakes early on (or making sure they don’t take place at all) you can avoid a lot of headache!
Has your company ever made an error like HSBC’s? What did you do to correct it?
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Connor Brooke.
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Great post many thanks – but I think the slogan HSBC have used until very recently is “The World’s LOCAL bank”
This type of error can be avoided if the language adaptation process is treated seriously. I suspect that someone in HSBC said – it’s a line, how difficult can that be? and we don’t want to pay very much – it’s a single line!. Creative translation/transcreation is about ensuring that promotional copy (ads, tags, slogans, marketing copy and so on) is not just linguistically appropriate but also culturally appropriate. In our experience translating slogans and tag lines takes a huge amount of time to get right. Cross referencing the creative briefs and understanding the cultural impression in the target countries.