
Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization - ColinWright
https://blog.rjmetrics.com/2013/10/09/our-logo-looks-like-underpants-a-case-study-in-internationalization/
======
ArekDymalski
"There is no excuse for not testing something as significant as a new logo on
a large, global audience"

There is one excuse. When you are small it makes more sense to ship something
and fix it later, than invest time and money in surveying everything.
Especially if your "market research " won't be done on a property
representative group anyway.

Edit: it's an interesting read though.

~~~
mikeash
According to their data, only 2.6% of Brits thought the logo looked like
underwear, anyway. It's OK if a small proportion of your users think your logo
looks stupid. Obviously, it's nice to avoid it, but this is hardly the
disaster that's implied by "there is no excuse."

~~~
inanutshellus
Reminds me of the reaction to Apple's naming of the iPad. Like, "My Tampon?"
Ha-Ha-Ha. Big huge deal. Surely they'll rename it. What a horrible name.

But now it doesn't occur to anyone to make that association.

~~~
sago
I was one of the people lampooning Nintendo for the Wii. "Wee" being a very
common britishism for "pee".

(e.g. "I want a wii in the corner of my living room!" fnar fnar.)

I figured they'd change it before launch. The joke was stared down by the
brand, and the brand won. What do I know?

~~~
the_watcher
When the Washington NBA team changed from the Bullets to the Wizards, a common
potential problem brought up was that people would call them the Wiz (similar
connotation to wee).

~~~
jdminhbg
The MLS team in Kansas City was initially (in 1996) actually named the 'Kansas
City Wiz.' It was later changed to Wizards (and later still totally renamed
after changing ownership hands). Their games against the (also since renamed)
Dallas Burn generated a lot of childish jokes, as you might expect.

------
chris_wot
You aren't the only one. Frank Purdue, of Perdue Farms, used to have the
slogan "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken", but managed to get it
terribly mangled when translating it into Spanish. It became "It takes a hard
man to get a chicken aroused".

I wouldn't feel too bad. Not much tops that.

~~~
kitd
Also in Spain, Vauxhall motors tried to sell the Nova model which was popular
in the UK.

... until someone local pointed out that 'nova' means 'doesn't go' in Spanish
(roughly).

~~~
pilaf
Similarly, Mitsubishi's Pajero means "wanker" in Argentina and other Latin
American countries, which is why they renamed it to Montero in those
locations.

~~~
jefe_
I had a Pajero Jr. for a while in Uganda, great small SUV. Had no idea I was
driving a little wanker.

------
ericwood
At my last job we had a message shown when a certain view was empty that said
something along the lines of:

"Bummer, you don't appear to have any messages"

We got a very very angry message from a user one day, telling us they didn't
appreciate us using the word "bummer" and that it was extremely offensive.
Apparently it's a slang term in the UK.

Internationalization is tough :\

~~~
pmx
I'm from the UK and I've only ever seen "Bummer" as a mild disappointment.
That one person was probably just looking for things to complain about.

~~~
rustynails
A "bummer" is a slang term for a gay man. I haven't heard that for about 30
years. I wouldn't have linked the two meanings until the controversy was
mentioned.

~~~
ericwood
I think the consensus we reached was it was a much older bit of slang and
mostly localized to a specific region, although it was tough for us to
confirm.

------
jedberg
I have the reverse problem at my company. Our Australian cofounder was in
charge of picking the logo, so he picked an emu, a bird native to Australia.
So now people always ask us why our logo is an ostrich, so I have to point out
that emus have three toes and ostriches have two (a fact that I only learned
when I asked our cofounder why we had an ostrich in the logo, that should have
been my clue).

~~~
windsurfer
Would you say you're just "burying your head in the sand" on this issue?

~~~
jedberg
Well see that's what everyone says when they think it's an ostrich! But emus
don't do that. :)

~~~
nerfhammer
Ostriches don't either :p

------
pbhjpbhj
I wonder who wrote the survey question [and why] - "What object does this look
like?". Underpants aren't considered to be an object, hence they score low;
the question "What does this logo remind you of?" would perhaps fair quite
differently.

~~~
sk5t
Why the passive voice--who doesn't consider underpants to be an object? I
think they are an object, as are most discrete solids (a rock is an object,
dirt is not; underpants are an object, water in a cup is not an object, but
the cup is).

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Yes, of course strictly, scientifically, speaking they are an object. But
people don't talk about underpants as an object. Particularly with the weird
plural-like singular.

Similarly if you asked "What item ..." in UK English at least we talk about
"items of clothing" rather than "clothing objects" and so the question
starting "What item" is far more likely to get an item of clothing as a
response. "What does this remind you of?" is less leading.

I'm tempted in to a diatribe on the epistemological bounds of the category of
things that constitute "objects" but it would probably be less than edifying
for the rest of you so I'll keep it to myself!

------
rcurry
I can't mention the company or product name, but here's a funny story:

Back in the 90s I worked for a firm that had a really cool terminal emulation
product. Because of the name of the product, the marketing department came up
with this great picture for the front of the box that the software came in -
It was a couple of retro-looking soldiers standing side-by-side, shielding
their eyes from the sun with one hand. The packaging was awesome, and everyone
thought it was great. We were all set to release it, when one of our partners
in Germany said "Holy (Bleep)! You can't sell this here in Germany - the front
of the box looks like a couple of nazis saluting hitler!"

Back to the drawing board for the marketing guys, ha ha.

~~~
magic_beans
The fact that it took a German to identify that is alarming.

~~~
debacle
Clearly you've never worked in marketing.

------
ptha
There's a lot of scope for this sort of thing with twitter hashtags, one of
the best being a hash tag for Susan Boyle's Album Party getting shortened to:
#Susanalbumparty
[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2012/nov/22/...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2012/nov/22/twitter-
susan-boyle-susanalbumparty)

------
Grue3
This post is 2 years old, but it looks like at some point they reverted to
their original underpants logo, except rotated by 180 degrees.

~~~
chris_wot
That's what they say in the article! They also changed the white lines.

~~~
kgreene2
If you look in the upper right of the page, you can see RJMetrics current
logo, which is the original logo but with a right-side up Y, not the one shown
at the end of the article.

~~~
zeidrich
It's funny that you see it as flipped upside down. I see it as flipped left
and right. In terms of whether the Y is up or down, neither of them are, but
the original one had it leaning right, and the one currently on their page has
it leaning left.

Perception.

------
chkuendig
(2013)

------
daveguy
If that logo looks like underwear. What does the ycombinator logo look like?

~~~
danielki
To me, it looks like a partially-unzipped zipper.

------
edward
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6521138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6521138)

------
Loque
Fun read! Reminded me of when the company my father was working for merged
with an American one (my family growing up in the UK), he brought back some
t-shirts and a tennis hat/visor thing, all reading PMT!

------
sameerds
"It appears that y-fronts are a uniquely British phenomenon whose popularity
doesn’t extend far past their borders."

Sad to note that they didn't survey India!

------
bluedino
It's just a bad logo. And why did they not use their Twitter avatar in their
Google consumer survey? The image they used does not look like underpants.

------
intrasight
I see no underwear - I see a Dodecahedron. But anyway - like on most
situations, people will see what they want to see.

~~~
Retra
Well, as soon as you see underwear and notice it doesn't make sense, you
should be looking for an alternative explanation anyway.

------
rustynails
The term y-fronts is also used in Australia (the article mentions UK only
usage). I think of them as old fashioned, but that may be my own
interpretation.

I put together some slang definitions for a Quiz Night earlier this year. I
noticed Australia has a lot more in common with the UK than the US when it
comes to slang. This may change with the Internet in the next decade or so.

~~~
chris_wot
Unless we become a republic, I don't think we will. We are a hell of a lot
more cynical and reserved as a rule. And whilst we really love American
culture, we see a LOT of stuff coming out of the U.S. a good proportion of the
nation shake our heads at - like the insane U.S. gun culture and absurd health
care system. That tends to blunt U.S. influence a great deal. Not to mention
we have Australuan citizens who we know are being or have been persecuted by
the U.S., like David Hicks and Julian Assange.

