At one time, it was not uncommon in B-to-B manufacturing for a product introduction to focus entirely on the domestic market. Only later in the product life cycle, after development costs proved hard to recoup, would an anxious marketer “discover” offshore markets in which the product could also be sold. This is like a visitor to Paris taking a walk and “discovering” an “obscure” street called les Champs Elysées (an acquaintance who has led a sheltered life once told me about her impromptu walk along this world-famous boulevard using exactly those words).
Of course, developing a product for sale and marketing only in its home country would now strike most of us as not only absurd but also out of the question. How could anyone ignore market opportunities elsewhere without risking that their sunk product development costs would remain forever underwater?
Most marketer can’t and don’t, despite the added hurdles of global product development. Even when the most daunting challenges (such as different regulatory environments, currencies, untested markets, and varying customer purchasing patterns) have been worked through and the first beta model has left the test bench or the initial run of finished product is rolling off the assembly line the adventure has often just begun.
What do I mean? Well, consider that your product might be about to debut in places where prospects have different cultural references than those of your home-base customers. Acknowledging these variants, investigating them, and acting on your findings can mean the difference between a straightforward, effective marketing campaign and a confusing, counter-productive one.
Obviously, this caveat applies to a promotion’s overt “borrowed interest” elements (i.e., allusions to your product winning an ”Oscar” or to it “hitting a home run”) but it also applies to more subtle pitfalls, such as the use of idiomatic or colloquial expressions that make no sense to prospects whose first language is not English and that, even if rendered in the local language, can prove confusing to translators unaccustomed 
to dealing with terms that aren’t literal. Take, for example, my own use of the words “sunk” and “underwater” in the paragraph above. You and I understand the meaning of these words in a financial context, but readers in Seoul or Shenzen might wonder why they are suddenly skimming a post about a flood or a maritime disaster.
In part, I am writing facetiously and with “tongue in cheek” (yet another potentially mystifying colloquial expression) but I am also quite (not “dead”) serious. When I worked in the semiconductor industry, a French trade magazine transformed the phrase “semiconductor wafers” in a press release headline to read “les galettes de semiconducteur,” or in simple English, “semiconductor cookies”; this demonstrates that even legitimate phrases can wreak havoc, so why risk worse with those that aren’t.
All marketing materials destined for non-native English-speaking prospects must be prepared with the above points in mind. Some in-house marketing communications staff are sufficiently knowledgeable (rather than “savvy,” a derivation of a French word that, in this mangled form, means absolutely nothing to the French) and others are not. I recently completed a project for a client whose young marketing communications staff knows nearly all there is to know about Adobe Creative Suite and U.S. pop culture but not so much about the complexities of the world beyond our borders and their tablets’ desktops.
On other occasions, in older manufacturing firms, I have encountered more broadly experienced marketing staff who are expert at addressing U.S. markets but sometimes find themselves at a loss when targeting markets farther afield. Both of these sorts of skills gaps can often be filled by adding new external or internal perspectives to the mix. All that it usually takes is some tweaking—or, more plainly spoken, some adjustment.
So, the next time you find slang or jargon in your global marketing communications, keep in mind that if you don’t understand it most likely no one abroad will either.
Image, Chris Lott