Originally Published PMPN April 2005
BRAND MATTERS
Block That Overlabel!Multilingual challenges are at the root of much of today's overlabeling, a practice that isn't recommended for a consistent brand image.
Robert C. Sprung, TippingSprung LLC
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| Robert C. Sprung |
Overlabeling—the application of a new label on top of, or in addition to, an original label—presents a host of problems. Overlabeling clearly dilutes a brand's impact, in addition to causing regulatory and other concerns. In many cases, the parent company is unaware of the precise details—or in some cases, even the existence—of overlabeling, which raises issues of traceability, quality, and process control.
A lot of overlabeling today is due to multilingual issues. In this series of two articles, we address three of the major culprits, each of which has a relatively straightforward solution.
One of the main reasons for overlabeling is to meet regional requirements, a keystone of which is local language. In the past, the Japanese, Saudis, or other countries may have needed to put on their own labels because a U.S.- or Europe-based headquarters did not have the knowledge or technology to reliably apply another language to the source label. Not long ago, the only way to produce high-resolution Japanese artwork was with specialized software and expensive printing equipment.
With language-labeling requirements exploding today (it is not uncommon for a device or pharmaceutical firm to require labeling in 22 languages), the problem has become acute. The head office is now faced with the prospect of overlabeling in many more countries if it cannot adequately deal with multilingual characters.
Fortunately, a solution is readily available, and its direct cost is cheap (in many cases, zero). That solution is not a piece of software but rather a computing standard called Unicode. Unicode is already supported on all major platforms (PC, Mac, Unix), software packages, and content-management systems (Oracle, Documentum, Quark, InDesign).
In a nutshell, Unicode is a character-encoding standard that allows the storage and display of all the world's languages (including Japanese and Chinese, as well as right-to-left reading languages like Arabic and Hebrew). It doesn't require specialized software or need to store these languages as graphics. In other words, one can receive the Japanese or Arabic text in a Word document, use it to populate an Oracle database, or place it directly into a Quark or InDesign layout. In a Unicode world, Japanese text is no different now from English or French.
The costs of not adopting Unicode are significant. When the only "nonstandard" language that one had to deal with was Japanese, it was simply inconvenient to make a change. One had to go back to the source file, edit it, reoutput the graphic, and place it again in the layout. But graphics departments could still rationalize the effort required to convert the Japanese language into an EPS or bitmap graphic and place it into the layout.
The thought of doing this for, say, 15 new languages that do not use the Roman alphabet (such as Czech, Russian, or Korean) is practically inconceivable due to the work involved. In addition, once those graphics are created, one has made a sizeable investment into a nonleveragable asset: static artwork that cannot be easily edited.
So, why not simply adopt Unicode as the standard? There are two hurdles to overcome. On the technical front, a company must first ensure that its systems support Unicode. Many companies are still using older versions of software that don't support the standard (e.g., Quark 4), or one piece is not Unicode-compliant (e.g., a legacy document-storage system). On the cultural side, procedures must be updated and refined to allow for the layout and quality control of the new languages. Organizations typically need a Unicode "evangelist" with the vision and energy to spread the word of Unicode's benefits and to help ensure that the same Unicode-compliant software is used throughout the organization.
The benefits of Unicode adoption far outweigh the costs. These include far less overlabeling, far less rework and custom graphic production, and far more process and quality control. There may be some adoption issues today, but within a few years, Unicode will have become as commonplace in the life-science industries as it has already become in many others. To read more about the standard, visit www.unicode.org.
Robert C. Sprung can be reached at robert@tippingsprung.com. TippingSprung (New York City) offers brand strategy, naming, and design services with a focus on the needs of technology companies.
Copyright ©2005 Pharmaceutical & Medical Packaging News
