Ad Transcreation

In our experience, transcreation is the best approach for ensuring the effectiveness of international advertising. As anyone can see from the various examples on this page, the translation or adaptation of advertising headlines, straplines and taglines is often a tricky business, with the challenge being as much cultural as linguistic. During the normal creative development of a campaign, most global advertising agencies like JWT, TBWA or Publicis will come up with several alternative concepts for consideration. Once a concept has been selected, the process is repeated in each country to meet local market needs and sensitivities.

However, budget constraints in particular can limit the luxury of a country-by-country approach to creative development, so why not apply a similar process but without the high fees? Far from just providing a translation, our well-established Conquest™ ad transcreation service provides several alternative translations for each target language based on the treatments provided by the client or creative agency. To support the selection process for all concerned, we provide an English back-translation and a commentary on phrase selection, idiom and cultural appropriateness. We will also make our own recommendation of which alternative best meets the brief for each language but, ultimately, the choice is the client's or the company's local marketing representative's.

Wordbank's Conquest™ ad transcreation service enables the agency, marketing team and country representatives to make a value-judgement on which alternative is most suited to local sensibilities while supporting key campaign messages and branding. Brands as diverse as Hertz, Microsoft, DDB and Autodesk have already successfully employed this approach in global campaigns. For more real transcreation examples, check out our transcreation blog.

 Don't sacrifice good international marketing communications for the sake of a cheap translation. Contact us now to find out how ad transcreation can help you to save time and money while maximizing local appeal.

For a festive diversion, why not spend a few minutes playing the Wordbank puzzle, featuring a couple of examples of literal translations in need of some transcreation.