Prepare your Christmas campaign in multiple languages

Christmas season is in full swing. It's that time of year when sales of certain products skyrocket and consumer spending peaks. For many businesses, it's time to pull out all the stops in terms of advertising investment. According to a study by Spanish business Grupo Corporalia, 80% of the annual marketing budget of the average SME goes on the Christmas campaign. There's way too much at stake not to take certain key aspects like translation into account. Here are some tips we've got for you!

Adapt your message to each new country

When planning an advertising campaign, standing out is one of the challenges faced by brands as they make their way onto the market, looking for ways to boost sales. In a season as overwhelmed with advertising messages as Christmas, it's crucial to create new and original campaigns in order to catch the attention of your target audience.

In their efforts to stand out, many brands forget to adapt their message and creative elements to different target audiences and can overlook the geographical, ethnic and religious diversity and different social sensibilities of each country.

We recently saw the Dolce & amp case; Gabbana, who faces a boycott in China after announcing a parade in Shanghai with a controversial video uploaded to Instagram where a Chinese woman could be seen trying to eat Italian food with chopsticks. The people of China were so outraged that several Chinese celebrities announced they were pulling out of their collaborations with the Italian fashion brand. The event was finally cancelled and Dolce & amp; Gabbana has been accused of racism by the Asian community for attacking the country and the culture of millions of people.

Invest in a professional translator with expertise in your field

More than a few businesses trust machine translation to deal with their Christmas campaign translations. In spite of major technological advancements in this field, such as neural machine translation, at AT Language Solutions we always recommend that translations are carried out by a native-speaking professional translator with expertise in the brand's specific field.

Not giving a translation the care it deserves can lead to gross misunderstandings, as Pepsi found out in the late 90s with its "Come alive with Pepsi" global ad campaign. The debacle took place once again on the Asian market, where the slogan, which was emblazoned across every piece of the brand's advertising, was translated in Japan with a phrase more closely resembling "Pepsi will bring your forefathers back from the dead". The whole thing obviously had a negative effect on the brand in the region for some time.

Apart from avoiding mistakes like this, a professional translator, with expertise in the field, would be more accurate with technical terms, sector jargon and the culture of the target country. This would ensure that your message makes sense and your campaign's success is secured.

Transcreation, the ally of creativity

When translating advertising campaigns, it's not enough to just translate the texts into multiple languages properly. You've got to keep things fresh and embody the creativity of the original message whilst adapting it to its new audience. Transcreation will help you to translate ideas, concepts, feelings and reactions, and it will make sure that the message has the same impact and conjures up the same sensations regardless of where in the world it is received.

Although it's not a simple task, and not all translators can do it, choosing this type of service can make your brand stand out and really boost your Christmas campaign compared to your competitors.

Check your e-commerce translations

According to a study by Spanish consulting firm Hexagone, foreign visits to online shops go up by 120% in December, which means that only brands who adapt their website to the languages of their potential visitors will obtain a profit margin that could represent an extra 20% of their sales revenue. Therefore, translating your website into several languages can be a deciding factor when it comes to boosting international sales over the Christmas period.

However, when you decide to take the leap and internationalise your online shop, make sure you have it checked by a professional translator. Why? Well, according to Hexagone's research, 80% of online shops contain serious mistakes that could cause a business to lose 15% of potential sales to foreign customers. If you don't want this to happen to you, we recommend you try Website Translator, where you can translate your website into several languages free of charge, and then have it checked by professional native-speaking translators.

ATLS can help you with your international marketing campaigns. So, if you'd like to know more about our translation services, let me invite you to visit our website.