As the Chinese New Year is approaching, the motherland is full of joy and peace. In the festive atmosphere that is gradually warming up, everyone is eagerly preparing to welcome the ringing of the New Year bell.
Major brands have also stepped up their Spring Festival marketing campaigns to capitalize on this annual marketing opportunity.
Lemony Snacks favored this critical time, bursting thunder.
In its New Year’s greeting text posted on overseas social media platforms, it used Lunar New Year to refer to Chinese New Year. Not Spring Festival, let alone Chinese New Year.
As soon as the news broke, the topic Lemony Tea Ji Overseas Network quickly hit the hot search.
However, Lemony Snicket also quickly apologized for the improper translation.
But the netizens did not buy this, in the topic Netizens do not buy the king of tea Ji comment area apologized under, verbal criticism of public opinion is still fierce.
Translation error was scolded
Cultural negligence is the key
Lemony Snacks, as a tea drink brand centered on national trends, has always emphasized that it is rooted in the cultural soil of China.
And when it comes to Chinese New Year marketing, since January, Bawang Tea Ji has also been making frequent efforts.
First, it joined hands with the Suzhou Museum to launch the Jiangsu region’s limited lucky co-branded peripherals, and then it joined hands with the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum to create a Spring Festival themed visual inspired by the Tang Dynasty’s Fuxi and Nuwa drawings, celebrating the Year of the Snake in 2025, and ushering in the first non-heritage version of the Spring Festival together.
Source Lemony Snake CHAGEE on Twitter
This kind of warm and generous marketing should have ushered in a wave of applause, but a translation error has caused Lemony Snake to be scolded on hot searches.
In the Chinese New Year text posted on overseas platforms, Lemony Snacks used Lunar New Year to refer to the traditional Chinese festival of Spring Festival. This detail was caught by keen netizens and quickly sparked a heated discussion.
On January 24th, Lemony Snacks released an article on WeChat public number Celebrate the first non-heritage Chinese New Year globally together, HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!
Chinese people around the world celebrate the Spring Festival in the same mood, and now CHAGEE’s global media team consists of partners from more than 10 countries, and we are sorry that we did not pull together the overseas local team to use a more consistent translation of the Spring Festival, and we will follow up to strengthen the management of the overseas accounts and communication, to ensure the accuracy of the content of the expression!
The timely apology made up for the mistake to a certain extent, but it was not fully accepted by the majority of netizens, but instead attracted a new round of criticism.
From the outside, Lemony Snack’s apology was sincerely worded, and there seemed to be an emphasis on consumer opinions in its words.
Source: Weibo Hot Search
However, looking into its content, it is not difficult to find that the apology did not touch the core of the problem, the crisis of brand cultural identity.
There is no real answer as to why this mistake of cultural negligence was made.
The essence of the problem is not just poor translation, but the fact that the brand, in the face of globalization, ignored the uniqueness of the Spring Festival as an important cultural symbol and the importance that Chinese consumers attach to a sense of cultural belonging.
Some netizens pointed out that as a brand that honors Chinese culture and traditions, Bawang Chaji should have handled its marketing strategy related to Chinese culture more carefully. Especially in the process of globalization, a brand that ignores cultural sensitivity is like digging its own grave.
Translation has its say
Culture has power
First of all, there have been many controversies about the translation of the word Spring Festival.
However, there is a standard international translation of Spring Festival.
This translation has not only been recognized by the United Nations and widely accepted internationally, but has also been included in the English-Chinese astronomical terminology, and is also the official term used in our country’s bid for heritage.
Therefore, Spring Festival is more formal than Lunar New Year in foreign expression.
Source: Little Red Book Phantom
Secondly, why can’t we use Lunar New Year?
The mainstream calendar used in China since ancient times has been a yin-yang calendar, including the current lunar calendar.
Since Lunar represents the moon, Lunar New Year can only represent the lunar calendar.
From the calendar point of view, it is inaccurate to use it to express the Chinese New Year.
Chinese New Year is now an official holiday in nearly 20 countries around the world, and about one-fifth of the world’s population celebrates it in different ways.
The international use of Lunar New Year is used to refer generally to the Lunar New Year in many East Asian countries, such as South Korea Japan Vietnam Thailand Singapore Malaysia and so on.
The origin of the Chinese New Year can be traced back to the ancient times when the Chinese people prayed for the first day of the year.
Therefore, using a generalized term to express Chinese New Year in overseas copywriting is the reason why Bawang Chaji was scolded.
Going back to the 19th century, the use of Chinese New Year to refer to the Spring Festival has been widely recognized in Western countries.
Add to that the fact that in December 2024, the Spring Festival, the Chinese social practice of celebrating the traditional New Year, has been inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Therefore, the Year of the Snake in 2025 will be the first Chinese New Year after China’s successful bid for the inscription of the Chinese New Year.
Source: Weibo, Xinhua
The use of Chinese New Year to express China’s Spring Festival is both subject-specific and less confusing, and more in line with historical and cultural facts.
In this way, the use of the term Lunar New Year by Bawang Chaji is not only an uncritical behavior, but also exposes its negligence and shortsightedness in cultural marketing.
As the most important traditional festival in China, the cultural significance of the Spring Festival is not only a celebration, but also the inheritance and promotion of China’s long history and culture.
In the process of globalization, it is worth thinking whether brands can accurately understand and respect cultural differences.
The Apology of Lemony Snacks
Why it was not accepted
On the same day that the topic of Bully Chachi extranet hit the hot seat, Bully Chachi was quick to respond.
Only its way of apologizing was, well, a bit unusual.
In the public number Lemony Snacks CHAGEE’s article of the day in the comment area released a relevant apology text.
Source: Lemony Snacks CHAGEE
The netizens called out that they had searched for a long time but could not find the apology text, which was hidden in the comment area.
Not even a separate apology text or statement, such unconventional operation is really unacceptable.
Even if the words are sincere, it will still make people feel that the king of tea Ji does not pay attention to this incident, and the attitude of apologizing is too frivolous.
Just on January 24, 2025, Lemony Snicket CHAGEE released the 2024 membership report.
It was mentioned that the number of global members of Bawang Tea Ji has reached 178 million, with an annual year-on-year growth of about 160, equivalent to an average of 300,000 people joining the club every day Purchased 13,000 tons of raw tea leaves in the year, creating 60,000 jobs Added three new types of stores, stationed in the Singapore Hong Kong market, with the number of global stores exceeding 6,000, and the cumulative sales of the classic product, Bei Ya Jiexin, have exceeded 600 million cups.
Overall, the entire year 2024 was a bumper year for Bajaj Tea Ji.
And when it comes to 2025, the start of the year seems to have gone badly for Bao Wang Chaji.
The butterfly effect triggered by the Ice Bronx incident set off a storm of public opinion. The incident itself is not big, but under the aura of the industry’s head, it still puts Bawang Tea Ji in a crisis of confidence.
Coupled with this incident, the path of global expansion of Bawang Tea Ji is indeed worrisome.
The reason why Bawang Cha Ji has been able to rise rapidly from the domestic market is precisely by virtue of the empowerment of the national tide culture.
How to balance the demand for multiculturalism and the insistence on local culture is an unavoidable problem in its overseas expansion.
The biggest problem with Bawang Cha Ji’s translation is that it ignores the importance of cultural identity and weakens China’s cultural confidence.
It is undeniable that brands do need to take multicultural inclusiveness into account when expanding into the international market, but this does not mean that brands can arbitrarily compromise the accuracy and depth of their culture.
In overseas markets, especially when dealing with consumers from different cultural backgrounds, brands need to be more precise in conveying their cultural connotations, rather than reducing them to a universal linguistic symbol.
At a critical juncture in time, the overly casual apology from Lemony Snacks has once again stung the people’s nerves.
Write in the end
In the process of globalization, the brand’s cultural communication is not only the output of products, but also the embodiment of cultural confidence.
In the context of the sweeping wave of globalization, Chinese brands must show strong cultural confidence in the global market if they want to go farther and better connect with the world.
This cultural confidence is not only reflected in the innovation of products and technology, but also in the transmission and expression of culture.
More attention must be paid to cultural details, especially when it comes to the expression of local culture, which cannot be casually compromised or simplified.
The incident of Bawangchaji also reminds us that the internationalization of a brand is not a process of abandoning the local culture, but a process of going global through the power of the local culture.
Arranged by Huang Jiajun Audited by Huang Jiajun
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