Brand Matters: Words That Broke the Label's Back
Robert Sprung By Robert C. Sprung - TippingSprung LLC
The growth of the European Union this May by 10 countries is a general cause for celebration. But the expansion is already causing headaches for marketing and labeling professionals, forcing them to make strategic decisions affecting label design, translation, printing, and delivery.
The 10 new nations represent only eight languages (you can apparently get by with English on Malta, for example). But if you wish to sell across the European Union, you are still looking at up to 20 languages on the label and associated product literature.
Where do we draw the line on significant markets?
Conventional wisdom says that overseas sales are driving U.S. profitability. To build brands in these new markets, one must "ante up" the price of market entry, whatever the cost.
But some now argue that adding each language and market needs careful cost-benefit analysis. Will you really sell enough of this aging device to justify sale in Finland or Estonia? Are sales for a given product sufficient in each market to offset the cost of translation, package redesign, and printing?
What are the physical limits of our packaging?
Even if you decide to translate into 15 or 20 languages--where can you put them? Companies already selling in Europe have reduced type size on labeling to the point of illegibility.
The first solution is regional packaging. Instead of 15 languages on a single package, one can create three groups of five (e.g., north, south, and eastern European). But this, too, comes at a cost: increased pressure on accurate sales projections per market and more-complex inventorying of packaging components.
The second solution is more painful. Even though the payload is identical, many companies are increasing package size to accommodate the added label text and newly bloated insert. This is not without irony given the importance of environmental considerations in the EU. The new languages are eating up more paper and increasing costs to the consumer through higher production costs.
Are we using too many words?
Others take aim at another culprit: the number of words in translation. "We encourage our services to write documents that are shorter," says EU spokesman Eric Mamer. This will dramatically reduce the space required as well as translation cost.
Can we leverage technology?
Pushed to labeling's edge, managers are taking a hard look at solutions that include expanded use of icons to replace text, and technologies like accordion folds.
Many are girding up to go paperless, with package inserts being delivered electronically via the Web (as a PDF or XML file) or an automated fax-back service (with prompts in the user's local language).
A five-page original insert that now pushes 100 pages in translation is, by common consent, read by very few people. For regulatory and safety reasons, though, it needs to be available.
But packaging and marketing professionals are finally asking whether the package-design and translation tail is not wagging the dog. Stay tuned as we report on how companies are solving this problem.
- Official EU Languages Prior to May 2004: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, modern Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.
- New Languages, May 2004: Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak, and Slovenian.
Robert Sprung is CEO at TippingSprung, which offers brand strategy, naming, design, research, translation, and cross-cultural services. Visit the company's Web site at www.tippingsprung.com
