Gorton’s just launched a microsite in Spanish. Good, you say — but wait, did anyone proofread this before it went live? Oops!
The first time it went up, the homepage showed a series of revolving images with the tagline “¡Mamas y Mariscos!” The poblem is that “Mamas” means “breasts” in Spanish (the perfect match to a photo of three women from the waist up). What they meant to say was “Mamás y Mariscos” (“Moms & Seafood”). Sometimes a little accent mark can make such a big difference!
In addition, the microsite was riddled with grammatical errors (open exclamation mark in “¡Bievenido!”, etc.)
As soon as the site went live, Hispanic blogs lit up! Everyone thought it was dumb that no one at the corporate level cared enough to take the time to ensure that the Latino outreach was on target. Worse yet, no one made sure that it was not offensive or made the company look foolish to those it was trying to reach. The blunder served as proof that Gorton’s doesn’t get it, and that, in the long run, it always pays to use an ad agency that does!
