Video Wednesday: English in German ads

Germans use a surprising amount of English in commercials and advertising. Here’s a Media Markt commercial where Oliver Pocher takes on a British couple.

7 Responses to “Video Wednesday: English in German ads”

1. philipp on May 28th, 2008 12:36 pm

   yeah, english is gaining more and more importance in advertising. i dont think it is a bad idea. at least media markt now moved away from the STUUUUPID OH SO STUPPPPPPID commercials they used to have.
   there actually is a nice story concerning this topic.
   austria’s mc donald’s spots have I’M LOVIN IT in it, Germany got the translated version of ICH LIEBE ES… Austria obviously doesn’t care that much.
   I also think that a lot of Austrians think that if they know some English (LITTLE TINY LITTLE ENGLISH!) words and can use them in every day conversation or when founding a company (SUN CITY for a solarium or I just saw CYBER SHOP for a cellphone shop for example) they think they are cool, hip or whatsoever. I think sometimes you can overuse anglicisms. NOT COOL, PEOPLE!

2. silvia on May 29th, 2008 4:24 am

   I have never been very fond of Media Markt commercials.
   This one is even more stupid than any other one in the past.
   And if they only could omit that “Ick bin dock nickt bloed” thing…very annoying, don’t you think?

3. Christina G on May 30th, 2008 9:34 pm

   @philipp: The only problem with English in advertising and on products is that not everyone speaks English. And Austrians aren’t the only ones who like to give their companies odd English names (at least they sound odd to native speakers), Germans do it all the time too - especially hair salons for some reason!

   @silvia: They’re dumb, but occasionally they crack me up. This is better than the one making fun of the Turkish and the one making fun of Italian men at least!

4. phil a on May 30th, 2008 10:47 pm

   I agree, christina. not everybody will understand the pun of good bye and good buy - i just liked it that they moved from the stupid commercials they have, although the last jingly clip sucks too

   oh there is this huge tendency amongst hair salons. here in austria it is unbearably stupid sometimes. And a women’s shoe shop is called feel good shoe’s (with a apostrophe) ARGHHH

   phil as last blog post..Be Efficient w/ Dz crAZ lNgwij bT it obVuslE works

5. lynda on May 31st, 2008 7:13 am

   Aaahhhhh! so frustrating. 20 years ago my in-laws didn’t speak a word of German so I worked my butt off to learn and am now fluent.. suddenly they have started slipping more and more english into their conversations and it drives me batty. Phrases that can’t be properly translated I can do.. but just using an English word instead of the correct German word makes no sense. I hear it more and more in German television.

   lyndas last blog post..Tinker, Tailor…..Rock, Paper, Scissors

6. phil a on May 31st, 2008 9:15 am

   do you have a specific example? I’d love to see the anglicism-over-utilization from another perspective…

   phil as last blog post..Be Efficient w/ Dz crAZ lNgwij bT it obVuslE works

7. christina on June 2nd, 2008 9:52 am

   I kind of like those Media Markt commercials compared to some of the other junk out there. Of course if one is bilingual it’s easy to get the joke, but I see so many of the poor monolingual Germans, especially the older generation, trying to figure it out and getting really confused and frustrated. Not really fair.

   In the past when I booked DB train tickets online and had them sent to me, they arrived from the ” Deutsche Bahn Fullfillment Center”. That really cracked me up. I think they have changed it now to something that Ottonormalverbraucher can actually understand.

   And hmm, speaking of hair salons, the one I go to is called Top Hair. So weird.

   christinas last blog post..1001 creative uses for aluminum foil

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