Cuil review from a linguistic point of view…

 

I picked up a thread by Mashable on Twitter this morning talking about the new search engine Cuil, packed with ex-Googlers in their team. Cuil claim to be the world’s biggest search engine, with an index of 120 billion websites in the world. Rather than relying on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. The odd name Cuil is an Irish word for knowledge. 

Well dear Cuillers (cuillère in French means spoon), I have something to tell you… If you’re claiming to be the largest search engine in the world, you should think global and act local. And here I am talking about your brand name. Cuil sounds like ‘couilles’ (balls/bollocks) or cul (arse) in French! Not exactly enticing…

Despite such poor branding taste, I decided it was time to check out Cuil in more depth but sadly got the following message:

Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity.

Thanks for your patience.

When I did finally manage to take a look at their homepage, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the search results, although graphically speaking the site does look good and categorises information in an interesting way.

 

I have just done a quick Twitter search and the feedback so far isn’t particularly positive.

 

I am not quite sure how they’ll overcome so much bad publicity on their launch date but everyone is talking about them at the end of the day! 

So what do you think of Cuil? Am I being to harsh? Fire your comments away!

A sign I saw at Victoria station - let’s all learn Polish!

I’d like a coffee please

Photo taken in Poland - April 2007

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to blog about for while. Coffee!

Making my way to the office kitchen, eyes half-open, I reach out for an individual dose of Nescafé instant coffee. And every morning somebody asks me whether I’d like some milk. I politely refuse, and whoever is in the kitchen looks at me as if I come from planet Mars.  

Well I am certainly not from Mars but I am French – and the French do not put milk in their coffee! And they prefer fresh cafetière coffee to instant coffee. 

During my recent Italian trip, my friend made me some coffee for breakfast. I was expecting a nice large cup of Italian coffee but he gave me a small espresso cup… I should have known better!  

In a nutshell:

• If you ask for a coffee in England, people will most of the time add some milk 

•  If you ask for a coffee (un café) in France you’ll get a large black Americano 

•  If you ask for a coffee (un caffè) in Italy you’ll get an espresso

Understanding different cultures is an art… so is coffee making! 

 How do you take your coffee?

Adverts from Poland

I just thought I would share with you a few adverts I saw whilst on holiday in Poland (more about this on my travel blog shortly!)

Poland is a country of contradiction – on the one hand, thousands of pounds are being spent on advertising, but on the other hand, the average Pole earns around £200 per month! But what amazed me even more, is the size the adverts over there – they are absolutely GIGANTIC and very interesting graphically speaking.

• A Pespi can on Lodz’s main commercial artery, Piotrkowska – I also also saw this Pespi can in Krakow and Warsaw

• An inflatable dog advertising Velvet toilet paper on Piotrkowska in Lodz (photo taken from a rickshaw)

• A gigantic advertising screen in Manufaktura (shopping centre) in Lodz

• A Converse ad in Warsaw 

• An Era (mobile phone supplier)/Sony Ericsson ad on Market Square in Krakow

And finally, a Play (mobile phone supplier) ad in Warsaw

I was really surpised to see that both Eva and Play (mobile phone suppliers) advertise their products in a sexual way - do you think this type of advert would be acceptable  in your respective countries?

Thought of the day

You can take the girl out of the country but you cannot take the country out of the girl…

Lost in multi-culturalism?

An American businesswoman comes away from a meeting delighted; she finally got her Japanese supplier to agree to a price. A few days later, she receives questions about price. It’s almost as if she imagined the meeting. “What‘s going on here?” she asks. “We agreed on the price already, didn‘t we?” [1]  

The businesswoman recalls all the Um-hmms and Yesses she heard in the meeting. “They agreed to the price, they said yes,” she mutters to herself. “They even nodded and smiled.” Welcome to the world of intercultural business communication.

This American Businesswoman is not the first or last to feel frustrated in this way. Other people have misunderstood a “yes” response.

A lot of my work lies in internationally co-ordinated qualitative research. This involves regular contact with people around the world in the context of work colleagues, clients and respondents. Like most qualitative researchers, I love watching people. Observation is a crucial part of our work and is at the heart of ethnography, semiotics and general qualitative research consultancy.  I believe I am well placed to talk about cultural similarities and differences in an international context, being French and having lived in Italy and the UK.

1) Language
Clearly language divides.  English is entrenched now as business language but not everyone speaks it fluently and there is a need for compromise. In Europe, Nordic countries, Germany and some Eastern European countries speak perfect English while the French, Italians and Spaniards are in need of more lessons! I worked on an ice-cream testing project a few months ago for our Italian colleagues who asked us to keep a new yoghurt-based ice-cream in the fridge when they in fact meant the freezer – needless to say, none of us got to try that new ice-cream.

And between English speaking countries in general there is a lot of room for misunderstanding. If you ask for a rubber, I’ll probably give you an eraser instead!  

2) Religion and ethnicity Religion and ethnicity are two factors that should be taken into consideration when conducting qualitative research. Even today you have to be careful in mixing religions in group discussions in Northern Ireland.  Do not think of having mixed groups of Flemish and French speakers in Belgium. 

3) Body language The way people greet each other and the gestures they use are of absolute importance in international interpersonal relations.  Even after 7 years, in the UK, I still kiss people on both cheeks instead of one! My friends are now used to it!Don’t even think about shaking your Japanese client’s hand – take a little bow instead. It’s not easy to do business internationally but I feel that clients and suppliers should make an effort to understand and embrace these differences. It takes two to tango!  

Lost in Translation?

• When Coca Cola was first marketed inChina in the 1920‘s, the name was translated phonetically (”ke-kou-ke-la) to mean “female horse stuffed with wax” or “bite the wax tadpole” depending on the dialect. It was quickly revised to sound more like “happiness in the mouth.”

• Ignorant of foreign language, 3M introduced its scotch tape in Japan with the slogan, “It sticks like crazy.” The Japanese interpretation of the slogan was “it sticks foolishly.”

• General Motors couldn‘t understand why the Chevy Nova was not selling well inLatin America, until they were told that in Spanish, “no va” means “it doesn‘t go.”

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[1] When “Yes” means “No” or “Maybe”–Avoiding Cross-Cultural Misunderstandings in Global Business   

That sweet enemy (je t’aime, moi non plus)

It’s a well known fact that the Brits despise the ‘frogs’, while the French despise ‘les roast beefs’.  

 Napoleon once likened the English Channel to a mere “ditch that will be crossed when someone has the boldness to try it.” In 1994, it was permanently breached by the Channel Tunnel — a monument to Anglo-French collaboration that brought London and Paris into day-trip proximity by train. One wonders what Napoleon would have made of that.  

French advertising is all about language, culture and themes, right? I found this little gem in the Gare du Nord during my Parisian trip a couple of weeks ago.

The Battle of Austerlitz was a French victory (victoire) but a British defeat (défaite) and the Battle of Waterloo was a British victory but a French defeat.  

Being open to the world is about understanding cultural differences and diffent point of views.

Question time!

Is Austerlitz station in London or Paris? What about Waterloo station?

Going Underground… in Paris!

I spent the last few days in Paris on business and found the French ad, ’la musique vous parle’ (music talks to you)  for the Nokia music phone - I blogged about the UK ad last month.

Although there are lots of advertisements on the Parisian Metro, it’s easy to ignore this tsunami of information. The Metro, unlike the Tube is reliable so you don’t have to spend ages staring at the walls waiting for the Metro to turn up

On a more serious note, the achitecture of the metro makes it harder to place eye-catching ads, and the ads are sometimes far too large to take a closer look; I had to stand back to look at them, which can be life threatening I almost fell under a train!

The smaller clustered ads are in my opinion a waste of paper, as there are simply too many marketing messages to decipher at the same time.

And if you want to see what it is like to go underground in London, click here.

Big Brother - a lesson of tolerance and… marketing

Another year, another Celebrity Big Brother… I am not a big fan of reality TV shows, however trying to escape office gossip, and the media is almost impossible.

While this year’s series was as dull as ever, an argument over OXO cubes (stock cubes) caused a major diplomatic incident worldwide. The treatment of Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty on the Channel 4 show led to thousands of complaints being made to the broadcasting watchdog, Ofcom.

The housemates in the spotlight were Jade Goody, famous for appearing in Big Brother 3; Danielle Lloyd, a former Miss Great Britain; and Jo O’Meara, former singer with pop act S Club 7.

Was it racism or sheer ignorance? You decide…
NB: the argument reaches its peak after 5 minutes

I was in total shock when I first saw this clip; these ‘celebs’ shamed Britain, a beautiful country that stands for liberty and tolerance. Shilpa blamed broader social and cultural differences for the argument. During a Diary Room session, she concluded ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’

This also applies to marketing - it’s not easy to market a product in a country with different social and cultural values. If such lack of understanding doesn’t kill your product, it will make it stronger…

Too much NOISE!

Katia Adams and C.B Whittemore recently teamed up to write a terrific post on ‘Transcultural Perspective on the Retail Experience’. As it turns out, I recently wrote a paper for my company on consumerism (which I should hopefully be able to post on my blog shortly), and I felt their post was ideal to expand on the issue of ‘too much choice’.

Katia is a Brazilian national living in the USA who blogs about transcultural marketing, and shares her experiences of living in a foreign country. Katia’s ability to discuss cultural differences struck me, as I never really experienced a cultural shock when I moved to the UK 7 years ago… Well, the Brits do drive on the wrong side of the road, still use the imperial metric system, and the Queen is an A-List celebrity!  

Aged 14, I remember being terribly excited when spotting Amora (Amora relève le plat!) mustard or Bonne Maman jam (Confiture Bonne Maman, c’est toi qu’on aime tant!) at the supermarket; in fact, I was always trying to spot French products on the shelves. Interestingly, British supermarkets are usually much smaller than French supermarkets, but because of the wide variety of products available, consumer confusion is something companies still have to face and tackle.   

Katia says: ‘I had visited the US a couple of times before I came to live here, and one of the things that struck me most was the enormous variety of products available on store shelves compared to Latin America. The impact of “wide variety” alone has its effects on building size, and so one sees enormous super markets and drug stores in the US compared to relatively small to moderate sized stores in Latin America.’ 

Although an explosion of consumer choices may mean we sometimes get exactly what we want, too many choices can also overwhelm us to the point where we do not choose anything at all – this is what I call too much noise (cf. buying decision-making process) or information overload. And while this is a nightmare for consumers, it is a catastrophe for marketers! 

‘In Brazil, Colgate is the dominant toothpaste brand and, being a good conservatively minded consumer, I was a regular user of the “original” white Colgate. When I migrated to the US, I still used Colgate, but I “migrated” to some of the other varieties of my regular brand, like Colgate with fluoride or the whitening agent, the pump or some other attribute. Then, I began to engage in brand trial with one of the other competitive premium brands. What happened then is that I experienced “choice pressure” – perceiving that I “had to” choose from a wide variety of options rather than sticking conservatively to one brand. At that point, I would say, marketing had molded in me the mindset of a classic mass market consumer.’ 

‘Should louder’ than the competition!

I recently worked on a project for a major feminine care manufacturer (unglamorous, I know!!) on consumer confusion, however although due to confidentiality reasons, I cannot discuss the findings of this research into too much detail. 

The research helped us realise that product innovations such as scented liners and Always Freshelle created even more confusion across the category.  When we asked women to group different products in the feminine care category, we quickly realised that the perceived category landscape didn’t make any sense at all as consumers didn’t differentiate between liners and towels. We analysed consumers’ perceived product benefits and emotional needs to create a Decision Tree. The Decision Tree highlighted level by level the product and emotional needs that are important when making a purchase. Manufacturers can use this tool to decide whether they should launch a product or not.

Decision Trees are excellent tools aimed at helping marketers and consumers alike to choose between several courses of action. They provide a highly effective structure within which you can lay out options and investigate the possible outcomes of choosing those options. They also help you to form a balanced picture of the risks and rewards associated with each possible course of action. It’s definitely something businesses need to look into…  

To be continued…