You'd think a global (and public) company would know better

With great anticipation I opened up an article from the Houston Business Journal on computer company Hewlett-Packard's new Hispanic marketing effort.

I say with anticipation as I remember chuckling at the HP ad that Marketing y Medios profiled in their column that ridicules bad language and grammar use. The ad (see picture) promotes HP's customer service line, and reads, "Garantia y soporte al cliente." They intended that to translate to "customer support and warranty" but the word "soporte" that is used actually means "tolerate" in Spanish and not "support" as they intended. So, in essence, HP is promoting its phone number that "tolerates calls from its customers." Ouch!

So, back to the article ... it mentions HP's new Spanish website that I eagerly click on. To my great disappointment, not only does HP continues to use the word "soporte" where they mean to say "support," it's also riddled with other grammatical errors.

I personally don't know if they are using a Hispanic agency or not or if they paid a translation service to translate their site to Spanish or something else.

I'm also puzzled by the banner that reads, "HP te da la bienvenida a nuestra comunidad" (HP welcomes you to our neighborhood) as if we Hispanics are outsiders that are now being welcomed into the HP community ... rather than HP acknowledging that we Hispanics are already a critical and growing part of that community.

Semantics, perhaps, but none the less I hope this marketing effort isn't about communicating that HP is inviting us into some "exclusive" club (do we get to know the secret handshake too?) but rather recognizing that we are a critical part of the market and they are offering products and services that appeal to us.

Then again, maybe I shouldn't complain since once I'm invited in, at least I know HP will "tolerate" ... I mean "support" me ...