Kingston; Targeting China’s IT Stoners.

Here’s a good example of a “Lost in Translation” ad; likely either done by a local agency, or the brand’s localized marketing staff.The original message is: “Set your enthusiasm on fire”; followed by an English sentence that says “WE  are HIGH”… now there’s a line that has some stopping power.

Now I know this is just one of those translation things you’ll see in China; but lets suspend belief and treat this as if the message was intentional.

This ad seems to be targeting the wrong audience – with product like computer RAM that speeds up your computer, I’m not sure if saying “we are high” in English really appeals to this group… well maybe I’m wrong on that – playing by our “suspension of belief” rules, lets use our misguided insight to delve a bit deeper into Kingston’s USP.

“High” in this case means “top level” or you could say “elite” – if you have some geek hacker cultural experience then “elite” translates to internet slang “eleet” or “leet”, and 90’s hacker slang: 1337 (1 = l; 3 = e; 7 = t). So after all that, we find that 1337 has become HIGH客 in China. But are hackers equal to stoners? Not really.

On second thought, this ad specifically targets gamers, and as we all know, while trolling through WoW with your fire sword killing Orcs and goblins, there simply is no better way to enjoy the trip than by arriving fashionably late on puff the magic dragon.  Or maybe that’s something I know… wait no its something my friend told me. Wait – nevermind.

*Whistling*

I thought *I* was high when I saw this in downtown Shanghai. Unfortunately I wasn't.

Related articles by from around the web.

• Mind your language: Shanghai launches bid to end ‘Chinglish’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Shanghai to purge itself of ‘Chinglish’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Introducing SMTodayChina (socialmediatoday.com)

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