SAUDI FLAG FAUX PAS TOPS MARKETING BLUNDERS LIST.

Byline: Jeremy Bagott Staff Writer

When cross-cultural gaffes are discussed in corporate boardrooms, few come up as frequently as one leading up to the World Cup of Soccer in Los Angeles in 1994.

It occurred when McDonald's and Coca-Cola decided to reprint the flags of each of the 24 countries that had qualified for the tournament - soccer's great quadrennial spectacle - on pieces of throwaway packaging.

The hitch: The green-and-white Saudi flag contains the Koran's sacred passage, ``There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet.''

Muslims in Spain, where the Coke cans first appeared, and those in Britain, where McDonald's first released the carryout bags bearing the sacred passage, were outraged.

It was bad enough, said Muslim leaders, that the holy inscription was being used to sell drinks and hamburgers. But that the image was then crumpled up and thrown away was intolerable.

``As the Saudi flag contains the Muslim Shahada (the Islamic declaration of faith), the Saudi government never allows its use for commercial or promotional activities, or in any way that is not consistent with the respect due to the Shahada,'' said a statement released by the Saudi government at the time.

Another example of expediency winning out over proper planning, said William Axtell, author of ``Do's and Taboos of Using English Around the World'' (John Wiley & Sons), was General Motor's snafu in Belgium, when the automotive giant translated the marketing tagline ``Body by Fisher'' into Flemish to mean ``Corpse by Fisher.''

Other gaffes have occurred when names weren't translated.

``A telephone system known as Chat Box became, in French, the Cat Box (since chat is the French word for cat),'' said Axtell, a former vice president for worldwide marketing at the Parker Pen Co.

``Parker Pen's well-known Jotter ballpoint pen could not be marketed with the name in Latin countries because that word also happened to be slang for jockstrap.''