Featured Project

Little Caesars: case study

Little Caesars is a global leader of pizza brands, with stores and franchises throughout North America and international markets around the world. Since 2005 we have helped them launch their seasonal ads for the Hispanic market in the U.S and Canada. Here are a few samples of the linguistic solutions that our creative team has provided to their marketing campaign:

This ad was apparently inspired by the 1886 story written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This best-seller is known for its vivid portrayal of a split personality, split in the sense that within the same person there is both an apparently good and an evil personality each being quite distinct from each other. Little Caesars wanted to keep this visual ad but needed to have its message interpreted functionally for the Spanish-speaking customers, for whom Dr. Jekyll is an unknown character. This 'weird' message indicates that the customer may have a "normal" side and a slightly crazy side, but at Little Caesars both sides can be pleased: in one mood, you can order pizza, and in the other, you may order bread. Babel Linguistics reproduced the idea by keeping its humor and making it clearer for functionality, thus sacrificing the rhyme component of the original: "¿No te decides?... ¡Complace tu doble personalidad!" It literally means: "Can't decide? Please your double personality."

"Head in for a scary good deal" is the advertising text we had to work with for the Halloween holiday that takes place nationwide in October. Again, another literary reference that challenges communication for a completely different language and culture. This ad was inspired by the 19th century legend of The Sleepy Hollow, created by Washington Irving. This story really would not translate visually for the Latino community in the U.S. unless we make it more idiomatic while we keep its humor: "Pierde la cabeza con esta oferta tenebrosa". It literally means: "Lose your Head over this Scary Deal".

Thanksgiving Day is only celebrated in Canada and the United States. The rooted Hispanic community in those areas may try to follow the turkey tradition, but they would rather (and usually do) roast pork based on their own local cultures. Latinos rarely eat turkey or cook it. One more time, we had to keep the visual ad but change the text content. Had we designed the Spanish ad, we would have used a pig in lieu of a turkey. The equivalent message would have been, “Don’t be a pig, eat pizza”, with the underlying intentional meaning, "don’t be ‘disgusting’ or “don’t have bad taste, eat the good stuff”. Little Caesars needed to run ads that were visually consistent for both audiences. And so we chose a suitable Spanish idiom that uses the turkey animal to indicate foolishness. There is a Spanish euphemism for a live turkey ("guanajo"), which is listed in the Spanish dictionaries. Therefore, our Spanish ad became, "¡No seas guanajo, come pizza!
Interestingly, there is also the more usual term “pavo” for “turkey” (a dead/cooked turkey). However, the term “pavo” also means "homosexual" in the Spanish slang, particularly that of Mexico! It is a fact that Mexicans are the largest and most spread Hispanic population in the areas where Little Caesars would have its sales. Luckily, the Spanish expression “to be a ‘guanajo’ means to be silly, foolish, fool, stupid….So, the literal meaning of our message in Spanish would be, “Don't be a turkey (a fool), eat pizza!”