Advertising Fail - Thank You, Language Barrier

So far, I haven’t really had any troubles with the language barrier
living here in Italy. Particularly because I go to an American
University, and the little Italian that I know can get me by in
restaurants and when asking for directions. However, I made a “fatal”
mistake in the last place that I ever thought I would need to
understand Italian- in class. In my advertising class, I had to
research a brand the way it is marketed in the Italian Market and
present with a group. Easy enough, right? I found an ad on youtube
that I thought was an Italian commercial for the product. I added it
in my presentation to show the positioning of the brand. However,
about ¼ of the way though the commercial my professor literally says
“you should stop this, anyone who speaks Italian would know that this
is not a real ad.” I obliged, but I was confused at the time as to
why she asked me to stop. (I thought it was perhaps because it was
getting to long) My group continued with their parts, and at the end
of the presentation we learned that the ad that I showed was actually
a spoof of an ad, and its voice was dubbed over with curse words that
were talking negatively about the product. My professor basically
said that showing that ad was a fatal mistake, and if I was presenting
to a company I would have lost the business immediately for not
knowing more about the culture. It was quite embarrassing when I was
up there because I honestly had no idea. How was I supposed to? I
never learned the “bad” words in Italian so I just assumed they were
adjectives or verbs that I just didn’t know. True, I should have dug
more into the ad before I showed it, but if I was giving this
presentation in the American Market this goof would not have happened.
It’s a perfect example of how a language barrier can ruin a business-
or in my case, a presentation. Hopefully my next presentation for
this class will be a lot better, to make up for the less than desired
grade I’ll probably get for this one. Either way, it was a learning
experience- and as embarrassing as it was, I will never again show
something to a class/client/etc.. without knowing EXACTLY what it is
that it is talking about.