trib perpetuates racist falsehoods
tommyIn an editorial Sunday, the Tampa Tribune chastises Macy’s for offering an offensive t-shirt. Macy’s had already pulled the product off their shelves, but the Tribune plodded on anyway.
The t-shirt was aimed at young latinas, but the saying, “Brown is the New White,” was found to be in bad taste (and bad marketing). But your hometown newspaper compares the idiocy of that marketing to a made-up story that itself is racist and offensive.
Marketing textbooks are filled with cultural missteps by American retailers tripping over themselves to attract the burgeoning Hispanic market, a demographic that defies stereotypes. One of the most famous was General Motors’ ill-fated attempt to sell the Nova in Mexico, failing to realize that when translated into Spanish, the economy car’s name meant “does not go.”
Good grief! Every time I hear this story about the Nova, I cringe. It suggests that Mexicans are a bunch of rubes - too stupid to know the difference between marketing and reality. Talk about offensive!
It’s true that marketing textbooks include this as an example of horrible marketing, but Snopes will tell you it never happened:
… GM was aware of the translation and opted to retain the model name “Nova” in Spanish-speaking markets anyway, because they (correctly) felt the matter to be unimportant.
The truth is that the Chevrolet Nova’s name didn’t significantly affect its sales: it sold well in both its primary Spanish-language markets, Mexico and Venezuela. (Its Venezuelan sales figures actually surpassed GM’s expectations.)
You know, because Latinos are not a bunch of bumbling idiots. Yet the story is commonly used to stress the importance of research in marketing. More from Snopes:
The Chevy Nova legend lives on in countless marketing textbooks, is repeated in numerous business seminars, and is a staple of newspaper and magazine columnists who need a pithy example of human folly. Perhaps someday this apocryphal tale will become what it should be: an illustration of how easily even “experts” can sometimes fall victim to the very same dangers they warn us about.
So the Tribune is not the only one who is perpetuating this pile of offensive nonsense, but as my mom told me millions of times, ‘because everybody does it’ is no reason to justify something wrong.
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July 30th, 2007 at 11:11 am
-begin sarcasm-
Am I the only one who cringes when I see an Isuzu Ascender(Ass-ender) in the rearview mirror?
-end sarcasm-
A much better and true example is the Nike Incubus. But the Nova makes for good copy in the tabloids.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I had two teachers — one a spanish class teacher, the other a mass media/marketing teacher — bring up the Nova story in a factual light… Urban legend beign passed on as fact eh?
July 30th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
it’s deeper than that. First it was the st pete times running some writer’s “FEELINGS” that scratch-the-surface-everyone’s-a-racist as front page news. Trying to rev it up. They just CANT STAND IT that they can’t keep us all divided anymore. THEN it was Yahoo — for two or three days running this black dude claimed he got all kinds of racist threats about proposing to a chick on national tv and then would not divulge where the ‘threats’ came from. “it was not clear where the threats came from” She didn’t look white to me but I only looked at yahoos small pic no investigation. And, now THIS from the (LOL) venerable (LOL) Tampa Tribune. Without otto and ruth that paper would not BE a paper but we’re stuck with it. Nothing an entire STAFF CHANGE (exempting the above two) can’t fix.
So, I guess we should all admit it — we’re racists because the MSM says so.
LOL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think that person who writes TOO MANY of these t-shirts should admit they have reallllly bad taste and shut the hell UP and go away. They’re very confrontational. Ignorant, divisive and way NOT funny.
White — the new outspoken. (same old skin)
Black — the new ——– (same old skin)
Latinos — the new —– (same old skin)
They’ll have to define themselves. Meantime don’t fall for the marketing bullshit. This is just another way to ‘drive’ the difference. Dividing folks up.
Wherever I go are people of every hue. Living, working, loving. Half the time until they speak I’m not sure nor do I care that people are latino.
The ones who are gangsters (and that runs the color spectrum) — they’re the ones who CARE. Dragging their fucking PRIDE around.
Good. This T=shirt was MADE for them.
Keep dragging til we’re all toast.
I’m sick of ALL these t-shirts. It’s the heighth of ignorance and bad taste.
I’m especially sick of the MSM pushing racism as an agenda and a hobby. And a smokescreen.
Don’t have to talk about the illegal wars and impeachment if you talk about how my skin is different from yours, eh? Whatever.
July 30th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Fact checking editorials is apparently not very high on the Trib’s list of priorities lately. See Steve Otto’s error-laden commentary on the Sun Dome naming rights debacle on July 20 (since corrected…partially).
July 30th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Does this mean that every object that is bought and directions,ingredients,how to put put together-in at least three different languages-should be analized by a speech analyst to make sure it is written correctly for the buyer who speaks and reads only in that language-we need to have apetition or legislature written up for that mandate-the same as FDA ETC. Just to make mention of something you probably know-the flea markets sell blank shirts that the buyer have anything they want on it- my big problem is I do not like swear words and a few other things that are obscene in my estimation.
July 30th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
That urban legend is not racist. It would have been perfectly sensible for Chevy to have renamed the car. Many products get different names when they arrive in new locations. The Nova story is just a silly story people tell each other because it’s funny - the car called “doesn’t go,” haha.
If anything is racially insensitive about the Nova story in this post, it’s when you say, “it suggests that Mexicans are . . . too stupid to know the difference between marketing and reality.”
All that suggests to me is that you expect Mexicans to acquiesce to our version of product messaging or to buy the same way we do. Both of these expectations show a fair amount of ignorance about marketing and culture, but that’s OK, because I don’t think you actually mean it.
Truthfully, I think you’re pandering to Hispanics, because it provides a glossy cover for the glee SoF has taken in ripping apart the newspapers in the past year or so.
The Trib obviously sucks at fact-checking. Most papers do these days. Hell, I turned a freelance piece into Orange (owned by the Trib) about a mixed-use building in St. Pete that was factually correct until the editor moved a couple of commas and ended up saying something entirely different - and untrue.
Did she bother to ask me for sources or notes? Nope, she just f*cked up the entire piece instead and when I asked her to run a correction line, she said she’d instead change the web version, but she never got around to it.
My main point here being that if you want to take the papers to task for errors, do so every chance you can back it up, but don’t aggrandize your argument or it will become difficult to respect you even when you are right.
July 30th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Except the urban legend *is* racist. It makes the assumption they can’t recognize the word “nova” as an English one.
It’s like if someone said “Those dumb Americans, they can’t recognize the word shogun is a Japanese word, so the Mitsubishi Shogun sells bad since everyone thinks they’ll get carjacked if they drive it!”
Or,
“That Volkswagen Passat just won’t sell in America, people think it means ‘Pass At’ and it’s a slow car!”
See how ridiculous those sound?
July 30th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
I disagree. Pah-SAT is not how we say “pass at,” and people don’t “pass at” cars anyway. “Show gun” is a command and not a directive about the car, but something you would do to the car. “No va” can have equal emphasis on both words which means the car and the phrase could be pronounced the same.
It’s an actual fluke of translation and that doesn’t mean anyone has to assume Mexicans wouldn’t understand that. (And in fact, most people didn’t, since they didn’t change the name.)
If you heard two words together the way you usually hear them literally, contextually and referentially, then it’s natural to have the residue of that meaning in your mind when you hear those words.
And when those two words mean the exact opposite of the product’s function, a marketing team would be justified in wanting to rename the product.
Seriously, people looooooove to pull that racism bullshit, but I can’t be convinced that the story is anything beyond goofiness because of a funny coincidence. In the context of this post, it undermines the objective point that the papers f*ck up so often.
July 30th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Tim, perhaps you should have used the Yugo as an example. Surely we dumb Americans bought those cars simply because the name implied that owning one meant “You Go” when the reality was quite often the opposite.
I’ll agree with Rachel* that the racist angle is quite over-hyped on this post and is distracting from the real topic. Not everything is a hot-button issue. It’s simply that even though an allegory(in this case one meant to emphasize potential language or cultural barriers to marketing, and not to imply the ignorance of Spanish speakers) may get repeated long enough to pass for truth, the papers should do their homework or continue to watch their credibility erode.
July 30th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
you’re missing the whole point if you haven’t noted the numerous msm attempts to make racism a daily used word and problem …
Just driving more division and hatred. I didn’t read the article but didn’t really see the need considering that I’ve seen so much of it.
It’s crap.
The population will be beige by 2042 or some such. and then what will they drive hatred with??
July 31st, 2007 at 9:30 am
Vox: Beige??? Are we diversifying or painting a house?
July 31st, 2007 at 10:57 am
C.W.: LOL ! I thought the same thing!!
Just repeating what I read in the Tampa Tribune. Before they promoted racism they proposed that we would all be beige.
I’d be happy to provide a link but that’s not possible with the TT. I probably have the article at home, however. I finally had to buy a HUGE bin for all the things they publish that horrify me. But they are needed. Nothing wrong that a staff and editorial change can’t fix. Honest newsmen would be a breath of fresh air.