World's worst website

I'd like to nominate the English-language edition of the Tokyo 2020 Candidate City website as the worst English-language site in the world. The site is built in support of bringing the 2020 Summer Olympic Games to Tokyo.

Where to start. Well anywhere, really. So let's look at content.

How about Vision:
"Tokyo 2020 will bring together dynamic innovation and global inspiration. It will unite the power of the Games with the unique values of the Japanese people and the excitement of a city that sets global trends. It will be a unique celebration that will help reinforce and renew the Olympic Values for the new generation. And will contribute to more young people, worldwide, sharing the dreams, hopes and benefits of sport."

Huh? WTF?

This is about as gobbledygook as any paragraph I have ever read. And I've read a lot of bad ones over the years. We've got weasel words like the number one most over-used phrase in English language marketing: "innovation". Then there’s "global inspiration," "unique values" plus other world-class, cutting-edge, mission-critical nonsense. These phrases are so overused to have become meaningless.

A fun test of superlative-laden content like this is to substitute a competitor. So how about substituting into the paragraph above for Istanbul 2020 with the words "Istanbul / Turkish" or Madrid 2020 with "Madrid / Spanish." If the paragraph still makes sense with the competitor city substituted, then vision has failed.

Buyer personas... Or not.

While I could poke at additional content aspects of this terrible site that make it stink so much, I'll stop. Because what it really comes down to is the typical mistake of not understanding buyers.

I lived in Japan for seven years and my wife is Japanese. What we've seen so often is Japanese organizations that enter the global markets by simply translating the content they created for the local Japan marketplace. That's likely what happened here.

And it's too bad, really. Because Tokyo would make an excellent host city. But I fear the candidacy is doomed because of this rotten site.

For an example of missing the buyer persona, consider the use of animated characters that are so big in Japanese marketing. The people who made this site assumed that everyone in the world is attracted to anime so they carried it over to English too: All-Time Cartoon Hero Doraemon Joins Tokyo 2020 as Special Ambassador. Well not everyone is into the same stuff as the average eleven-year-old.

Who should be the buyer persona for this site? I'd argue the 115 voting members of the International Olympic Committee who choose the location of the 2020 games are the most important buyer persona. I'd have a tough time believing that this site reaches those people effectively.

When your organization goes global

While it is easy to sneer at this site and other crap-filled sites like it, imagine what happens when *you* simply translate *your* materials into the local languages of countries whose markets you enter. It is likely a similar thing happens to your site in the eyes of the local market if you translate your content.

To really globalize, you need local content creators who understand the local buyer personas and create content especially for them.

Voting for the Olympic host city takes place on September 7, 2013, as I write this a little more than 4 months away. There is still time to fix this site and increase Tokyo's chances.

++++++++++++++++

UPDATE May 2, 2013 - I am not a consultant (I write books and deliver speeches around the world. I have no interest in trying to generate consulting business from this blog post. I am simply pointing it out so we can all learn from it.

Comments

[Ian Lamont]

Interesting post, David. I agree that the site and its messaging is ineffective. But is it really going to torpedo Tokyo's chances? I suspect that the 115 IOC members are probably being lobbied via other channels, hopefully using messaging that's more sophisticated than this.

Another question: You say that many Japanese organizations merely translate their Japanese site for external markets. Do you know of any Japanese companies and brands that do not follow this path, and create effective and/or unique sites for other markets?

[CatieRagusa]

While Tokyo's Olympic Candidate website may be a large influence, it probably isn't the only source that the voters will use to decide whether or not Tokyo will be an adequate venue.

I do have to agree that they did a terrible job on the site. It looks like they ran the Japanese version through an online translator and posted it as-is. That's a mistake I quickly learned from in my high school Spanish classes (Oops).

I think Tokyo would be a great place to host the Olympics, however, because of the culture and innovation that we constantly see coming from Japan (anime-based characters and all). I think it would do a great job with boosting tourism as well.

Thanks for sharing!

[David Meerman Scott]

Ian and Catie - Yes, certainly the IOC voting members will use more than this site. But as one piece of the puzzle, I think it is lacking. Let's hope, for Tokyo's sake, that the site is a small factor in the choice.

[Bryan Shaw]

This is why I have LATAM and EMEA leaders on my team. They repurpose everything for the audience in their region. Without them, our global marketing operations and attempts to promote best practices would be doomed.

[David Meerman Scott]

Bryan - You're doing it the right way!

[EricTTung]

I still say this one ;) http://heaven.internetarchaeology.org/heaven.html#bottom

[David Meerman Scott]

Eric - wow that gave me a headache!

[Rj_c]

I make a living making websites and sometimes my biggest hurdle is helping the client realize the website is not their personal shrine or better yet the possible customers will be looking at their business from another perspective.

As humans we tend to see the world around ourselves as an extension of the rest of the world. It sometimes takes a few blocks walking from your home to realize everyone is very different even at a close distance. I hope they get a chance to read this and think about fixing the site.

[David Meerman Scott]

Raul, thank you for your wise words. Coming from you, this is very helpful. David

[Felipe Jose]

You are completely right! The website you cited here is terrible. I like to spend some time improving my own sites so that it will look good, but it seems that not every webmaster worry about design anymore. :)

[Stan Dubin]

The gobbledygook is top of the line! But it also has grammar errors. Folks (creating this web site) please! Get a real person to vet your copy.

[catywang]

em, u are right , the website designer should read ur post and make some changes:)

[Brian Landberg]

I do hope Japan can get the selection, but fully agree that Doraemon may not be the best character for the purpose. Also this is a horribly written vision statement... it reminds me of some of the recent hoax papers that were successfully published in scientific journals (passing the peer reviews) and the related and funny MIT tool to generate your own gibberish paper automatically!
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

[Andrew Homer]

You make a good point. I've lived and worked in Japan for more than twenty years, and this is a common problem. As you point out, what has likely happened is that somebody created the original material in Japanese, and then just translated it into English as closely as possible. This is problematic because it's still relatively normal for websites and promotional information for Japanese companies to be set very high up on the abstraction ladder. I remember about ten years ago reading a brochure for a small company. The brochure predominantly featured paragraphs on the need for a clean environment and world peace even though the company's main products were pachinko machines!
Interestingly, some of the content on the Tokyo Olympic bid website seems to be different depending on the language you are looking at. I had a quick look at the Japanese content and couldn't find a matching paragraph for the one you quote. I did find this pdf though: http://tokyo2020.jp/en/promotion/pdf/brochure/WhyHowBook_English.pdf
I'm curious to know whether you think this PDF in its entirety is equally bad. Some of the reasons listed in the "10 reasons How" section are persuasive for me, though I may be biased as I lived in Tokyo for more than ten years. ;-)

[David Meerman Scott]

Brian - that vision statement is so bad that the last sentence is not even a sentence!

Andrew - I lived in Tokyo for seven years. You may have been there too long. In my opinion the PDF is terrible.

[Halfdan]

Haha, I agree about the quality of the site, but personally I hope that Tokyo will fail to draw the games. Would just be a hassle to everybody :P