(Pieter Bruegel’s “The Tower of Babel.”)

This week at Big, we were discussing a marketing project that will require reaching an audience whose first language is not English. There are, of course, a number of distinctive challenges with such a project, and accurate translation is only one of them. For example, you have to understand cultural differences, too. What happens when you don’t? Well, you may never get your audience’s attention. You may not be persuasive if you do. Or you may end up sending an entirely different message than you intended, even if your translation is technically correct. In fact, advertising is replete with cautionary tales, in which a company either didn’t get the translation of its message quite right, or it didn’t understand how the cultural differences at play would affect that translation. Below you’ll find a few of the more notorious examples, some probably apocryphal, but all instructive. Or at least amusing.

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Advertising, it’s often said, lies at the intersection of art and commerce. Some would describe it as art in service of commerce. Which is fair enough, as rough characterizations go, but advertising is hardly the only creative discipline in which this relationship with business holds true. Look at the entertainment industry, for instance—how much of its product (and it is frequently referred to as product) is developed without an eye toward eventual marketability? Art for its own sake is a rare thing.

But what about the inverse relationship—commerce in service of art? How often do you see that? Actually, it’s not uncommon, if your notion of commerce extends to foundations and fundraising and government programs and other financial means of supporting the arts. Of course, many would argue that what exists is not nearly sufficient.

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As long-time experts in Investor Relations, we at Big help our clients keep up with the latest thinking and best practices, both in print and online. Of course, online is where change is occurring most rapidly. So we not only monitor the ever-evolving best practices of IR websites, we also offer ways for our clients to implement these advances. From video, blogs, and message boards to social media integration to disclosure management software and XBRL, we can help our clients identify the upgrades that make the most sense for them, and then put together the resources to make it happen. And when we assemble these resources, we are completely vendor-agnostic. Thomson Reuters, Shareholder.com, Q4 Web Systems, SNL, BusinessWire—regardless of who you already work with, or who you’d like to work with, we can successfully collaborate with them all.

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Just when you think traditional advertising is past its prime and nothing can be fresh unless it’s got “2.0” behind its name, someone comes along to remind us that it’s all about the idea, not the medium. Take outdoor advertising, for instance. It’s not all billboards and bus cards. In fact, sometimes it’s something you’ve never seen before. Like an abandoned monorail truss. To most Jakarta motorists driving by one of these ubiquitous urban leftovers, they’re simply an eyesore. But to the creative minds at the ad agency Y&R Jakarta, they were an opportunity—an opportunity to spread an important message for an important cause, in service to the agency’s client Friends of the National Parks Foundation in Indonesia. The picture up top shows the trusses as they usually appear. After the jump, one of the trusses transformed with signage and imagination.

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Like a significant portion of the world’s population, we here at Big have our eye on the various balls being kicked around right now in South Africa. But our interest is due to more than a love of the sport and patriotric fervor—we recently completed a project tied to the games.

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