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US Army Appeals to Farsi Speakers Through Online Advertising

by tom on September 18, 2011

I spotted a cool US Army ad on a website a week ago. The ad itself was in Farsi, but I could tell that it was most likely meant to recruit linguists.

Since this is a pretty innovative way to use online advertising to recruit staff people, I was naturally curious and wanted to share it here.

Ad used by the US Army to recruit linguists

The translation is: “Words are powerful./Using them for building a bright future is as powerful as a strong army./More information<<” (I’ve bolded the words that are in yellow above.)

The page that this links to lists all the open linguist positions that they are recruiting, and that page, at least at the time, didn’t include Farsi speakers, so the campaign probably wasn’t as effective as it should have been.

Farsi, in case your middle eastern geography is a little rusty, is an official language in (among other places) Iran and Afghanistan, where various versions of “Persian” are spoken–both Dari and Persian Farsi. Worldwide there are, impressively, about 80-100 million native Farsi speakers, putting it on par with the German language in popularity.

The marketing campaign is pretty smart. The recruiters target their audience by literally communicating in their language, and their ad copy appeals to the reader’s interests. The connection between “linguistic talent” and the “bright future” of the reader.  You have to wonder how successful A/B testing ads with a more “patriotic” theme would look like. I would guess that selling the young potential recruit on scholarships and a guaranteed job in a bad economy by using talents they probably cultivated as a child is probably a successful campaign. On the other hand, trying to convince young people who may have extended family who are directly affected by the various wars that the US Army is involved in that helping the military is probably tough.

Not to read too much into the ad, but this also is a big indicator for me that the US Army is expecting to have a long-term need for Farsi speakers and the rest of us Americans should probably get used to having Iran and Afghanistan in our newspaper headlines.

Electric car gold rush alert: Chile dives into electric car community

by tom on April 25, 2011

The first “quick-charging” electric car station in Latin America has opened in Santiago, Chile, making the South American country the first in the region to join the US, Japan, Belgium, Portugal, Hong Kong, Sweden and Spain in making the stations available to the public, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Many owners of electric vehicles may prefer to charge them at home, but these public stations are notable indicators that a country is opening their arms to the new technology. Uruguay has offered incentives for purchases of electric cars since 2008.

As oil prices skyrocket, so does the interest and demand in the less-expensive electric car market, and companies around the globe are positioning themselves to take advantage of new opportunities to cash in on the technology shift.

LG, a South Korean company, claims to be the world’s largest producer of the specialized batteries for electric cars, and expects the market to grow to $16 trillion  annually, over 10 times the current size, in the next four years.

To be sure, the opportunities for global growth in this market are explosive. Recently, the New York Times has reported that Coda Automotive is looking to raise  about $200 million to finish their first sedan, while Nissan has already delivered 5,300 Leafs.

TTD Recommends:

Companies looking into working in Chile should make sure to translate their marketing documents, contracts, conferences and other materials into Latin American Spanish. Other countries and regions mentioned: Japan (Japanese), Belgium (French and/or German), Portugal (European Portuguese), Hong Kong (traditional Chinese, not simplified Chinese) and Sweden (Swedish). Note that you should always localize your materials for Spain using European Spanish, rather than the style of Latin American Spanish used in Chile.