Add Naomi Osaka’s new company to the Marketing Blunders Hall of Fame.
The tennis star announced earlier this week that she has partnered with Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James’s SpringHill to start a media company. She expessed the hope that it would produce TV shows, documentaries and branded content.
The name of the new venture, Osaka said, was Hana Kuma, which she claimed means “flower bear” in Japanese.
It didn’t take long for the Japanese-Haitian Osaka to discover it had another meaning in Swahili, where it translates to “Woman without a vagina.” An estimated 200 million people speak Swahili, the majority in East Africa.
Dozens of Twitter users in Africa piled on, urging Osaka to reconsider the name, which many called offensive.
Osaka’s venture isn’t the first company to make such a lost in translation error.
One of the most famous was chicken producer Frank Perdue,...
The tennis star announced earlier this week that she has partnered with Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James’s SpringHill to start a media company. She expessed the hope that it would produce TV shows, documentaries and branded content.
The name of the new venture, Osaka said, was Hana Kuma, which she claimed means “flower bear” in Japanese.
It didn’t take long for the Japanese-Haitian Osaka to discover it had another meaning in Swahili, where it translates to “Woman without a vagina.” An estimated 200 million people speak Swahili, the majority in East Africa.
Dozens of Twitter users in Africa piled on, urging Osaka to reconsider the name, which many called offensive.
Osaka’s venture isn’t the first company to make such a lost in translation error.
One of the most famous was chicken producer Frank Perdue,...
- 6/24/2022
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
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