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By Mihar Dias (C) Copyright April 2023
Copywriting job is not for everyone. The skill, just like intelligence, is not evenly distributed in any given population.
A wrong choice of words may conjure meanings which become an unintended consequence of bad copywriting or proof reading.
Choosing the right word and rearranging the sentence to make sure they convey the right meaning may be extremely difficult, as seen in this sign below. Obviously something is lost too in the translation from Mandarin to English.
"We’re pretty sure they meant people should go slowly or risk falling, but the English translation is pretty adorable anyway."
On the other hand, the Sun UK recently published some copywriting gaffes that are quite adorable too. One of them seems to put a curse on those who park illegally turning them to toads.
But the cutest of them all that we came across in the last few days in KL is from Ikea which now offers "kids meatballs".
The BM version seems to offer "meatballs made from children." We know what they mean but they seem to leave customers smiling when they unintentionally display such amusing copywriting. They could gave easily reworded it as "bebola daging untuk kanaka-kanak!" Or Meatballs for kids. That's what you tend to get when you Google translate, I suppose!
Customers that throng Ikea this past week were seen taking turns to snap photos of the sign board to be shared on social media later.
As we watched the scene outside Ikea, we saw customers laughing to themselves at the cute sign after they walked away with images of the signage safely stored in their digital camera.
Imagine, they say, looking for "kombo kanak kanak" next time you are in Ikea thinking there was a music show featuring some talented children only to be told that they are actually a special offer of chicken meatballs sold in combination with milk?
Social media messages on this recent Ikea advertising gaffe sarcastically suggest that there's a copywriting job opening at Ikea for those interested.
Are you interested?
Mihar Dias is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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