We don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are. We are captive to the assumptions and images in our own mind.

PuddingProof.net is a service to help you avoid “self reference criteria”, i.e., talking too much about yourself and not engaging the customer. Ask yourself:

• Are you spending too much time describing who you are versus what you are selling?
• Do you talk more about the technology and not enough about the customer benefits?
• Do your marketing materials give people a reason to call you? An incentive?
• Would your mother understand them?

Marketing with the right tools but using the wrong message can undermine a company’s chance of business success.

Marketing Abroad

The first step in effective cross cultural negotiations and marketing, is to create acceptance and understanding through your communications. Using the right language but the wrong words can undermine your chances of business success.

• If you are creating marketing materials for use abroad, are you using words and phrases that native speakers will relate too?

Here's an example of how the wrong words can lead to confusion. In an impressive catalog put together by Chinese companies hoping to do business in the U.S., one company listed their products as:

"technical renovation of vehicle heat exchange system"

What does this mean? When we asked a group of American business people answers included:

catalytic converters
air conditioning systems
heating systems
engine cooling systems ...

Which is it? It's important that potential customers can understand immediately what your products are.

Do your materials sound and look like this?

The following may be "English" but it's not intelligible. It is full of spelling and grammatical errors, with phrasing and words native English speakers wouldn't use.

"By now, through our hard and diligent work, we have setup strong marketion network ,complete distributing netword around all of country,It’s our good after-sale service,consummate intrinsic quality that enable us to be enjoyed in a high popurality among wide custormers as well as far exported to ..."

(This is taken from a real, live web site that will remain unidentified so as not to embarass the company)

Even Big Companies Make Mistakes

There are many examples of major advertising mistakes that have happened through careless translation. Click here to read a few of them.