Don’t Put Your Dangly Bits in the Bread

As all advertisers know, sometimes the best of marketing intentions can go horribly wrong, especially when the advertising is cross-cultural. You would think that by now the major global adverting agencies would have figured out that they should always hire local language consultants or transcreation agencies to make sure what they’re saying in their ad is really what they’re saying.

But what about when you’re advertising in your own native country? As Marks and Spencer’s recently found out with their new campaign for vitamin D enriched bread, even then it’s possible to miss the obvious. The ad’s tagline “Putting the D in bread” was quickly mocked on Twitter and elsewhere online for missing the obvious euphemism for a man’s , er, dangly bits.

Obvious, that is, if you’re British. In America there’s no such double entendre. D is simply D. So perhaps it’s a case of the copywriter being from across the pond. But even then there are those double entendres that have no basis in language, as Twitter user Jess Brammar wryly observed about a recent ad for South West Trains. Is that a phallic reference, or simply a poor comparison?

Whatever it is, even when marketing in your home country it’s always a good idea to have an outside set of eyes look over your campaign to make sure there’s nothing inadvertently naughty dangling about.