I found this post originally at: http://www.4to40.com/fastforward/index.asp?id=468 I thought it was it very applicable to doing research prior to marketing that I reposted this here.
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Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea."
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Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."
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Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into German only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "manure stick."
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When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the U.S., with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what's inside, since most people can't read.
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Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.
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An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I saw the potato" (la papa).
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Pepsi's "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave", in Chinese.
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Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "it takes a strong man to make a tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate."
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The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Ke-kou-ke-la", meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax", depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "ko-kou-ko-le", translating into "happiness in the mouth."
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When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, "it won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you". Instead, the company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."
Prior to search engine optimization, Ramon's Resort was receiving 1,000 - 2,000 hits per month. Because their organic placement was nonexistent, all traffic was being generated by print marketing.
After 4 months of SEO, Ramon's Resort was receiving 9,000 - 12,000 hits per month with 30 of their 60 keyphrases on the top two pages of major search engines.
Ramon's web site currently only has 7 pages. Just goes to show you, you don't have to have a large site to have great success with SEO.
Statistics show that over the past few years "blogging" (web logging) has increased exponentially in popularity. People today will blog about almost anything you can think of (and a lot that you can't think of).
While some choose to blog for personal expression, others choose to blog for reasons pertaining to business. Perhaps, it's to keep clients informed of corporate offerings. Or, maybe, it's because you've heard that a blog can increase your influence with your readers and elevate your web site's performance in search rankings.
Does your mailbox ever look like this one? If you're like most people, you receive tons of junk mail – advertisements, credit card offers, magazines; the list goes on and on. 
Ultimately, we know where the mail will end up – in the trash. And, what a waste for the advertising company. But, what an even bigger waste if you don’t take a moment to capitalize on this opportunity to increase your network and turn junk mail into profits.
I recently read an article by the same name discussing an e-mail marketing campaign executed by United Airlines. The campaign asked recipients to add United's From Address to their address books. Why? There are two fantastic reasons for doing this. First, to avoid the "Junk Mail" folder and ensure the message will be delivered to the Inbox and; second, so that all images will be downloaded and displayed automatically with the message.
You may be asking, "What if my messages are already going to the 'Junk Mail' folder?" There are two possibilities for overcoming this obstacle.
