How about Italian or Japanese? Just as a pickup

How about Italian or Japanese? Just as a pickup line might sound more palatable in French or Italian, several U.S. advertising campaigns are featuring foreign-language soundtracks as a way to add a certain je ne sais quoi.Toyota is advertising the Corolla with a spot that was filmed in Rome and uses Italian dialogue with English subtitles. "We wanted to say a lot of things about the car," says Miles Turpin, creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi, Los Angeles. "Often that can get pretty dull. [The foreign language] tricks you into listening to the benefits the client wants to get across—there's something about subtitles, you just naturally want to see what they are saying."Team One Advertising, in El Segundo, Calif., went a step further with its campaign for the new Lexus SC 430 convertible. Titled "Parlez-vous désir?" the campaign is entirely in French, with no translation. The agency determined that the "essence" of the car was "seductive," says Tom Cordner, executive creative director at Team One, and that's where the idea came from. Four campaigns were tested, and the series using "the language of love" worked best. The script was kept simple, emphasizing words that ring familiar to the American ear—cleverly, words that might not work well if translated, like mag nifique. "If you said it in English, you would puke," says Cordner. The precise meaning, however, is beside the point. "The French language became a soundtrack," he explains. "It's a sexy car and a sexy language."The public was seduced—the car sold out shortly after the campaign first aired this spring.Response to the un-American approach has not been all positive. "I am insulted that I must watch your commercial in Japanese," reads one e-mail on the Web site of microchip maker Applied Materials, which is running a spot featuring images of a bustling Tokyo intersection set to a Japanese pop tune. "I am an American, living in the Dallas area, and I don't need to see you pushing your product as if I'm sitting in my living room in Tokyo." The spot, created by San Francisco agency BigMouth and directed by Pucho Mentasti of Palomar Pictures, brings an element of the exotic to a familiar formula, the lifestyle montage. As Tokyo pedestrians fill a crosswalk, a bright light shines from each piece of technology that Applied Materials helped create—a woman's cell phone, a young man's stereo headphones, a portable computer. A super explains, "We make the systems used to produce virtually every microchip in the world." The tag is, "In formation for everyone.""A big part of the creative ap proach was demonstrating that they really are a global player," says Mike Yoffie, creative director at BigMouth. The irate e-mail notwithstanding, response has been "tremendous," he says. "It's been incredible in all the ways we like to measure it." The spot is one of three in the Santa Clara, Calif., company's inaugural consumer advertising effort, a $30 million global branding campaign titled "Ubiquity." "The general sense we're getting from people is that they are getting the message," says Tom Hayes, managing director of global corporate affairs for Applied Materials. "It is a good first introduction to the company." The spots will run in American, European and Asian markets.

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How about Italian or Japanese? Just as a pickup

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