If you have worked with TSDG, you might know our designer-screw-up policy.
Everyone makes mistakes; we're only human. But we like accuracy and we like to eat. Put these two together and we have a policy whereby, if a member of TSDG makes a serious error, they have to buy lunch for the entire team. This applies to everyone - and we've all done it. It's a great policy actually; it's 'punishment' for the person who made the error (well, for their wallet anyway) and everyone's happy because we all get lunch.
The reason I'm writing about this is because the person who did the ad above, would owe several lunches if he or she worked at TSDG.
If your eyes are as bad as mine, see the enlargement below:
This is a photograph taken of an ad shown on TV last night.
I don't really know what to say. Well, I have plenty to say. Of course, my first comments have to be addressed to the person who wrote the ad in the first place. What on earth is your excuse? Whatever it is, I just don't buy it, sorry. I'll have butter shrimp with chapattis and lots of onion bhajis, please.
Now, the proofreader; I proofread every day and I understand that you can look at a document for so long that you just have to hand it over to a fresh pair of eyes. When you've proofed a 64-page brochure for the fiftieth time, you tend to become word-blind. But this is the seventh word of a short ad. Furthermore, the word isn't complicated, or in another language, it's what you DO. Also, and this is so obvious, it's an ad for yourself saying that you are the leader in cable advertising - am I going to trust you with my ads? I don't think so.
And this is going on TV, for goodness' sake.
As many of you know, our creative director worked for the BBC in London for many years, primarily in the busy news department. He tells me that in all the time he was there, he never heard of a typo being shown on live TV.
The only error he remembers was when a news producer wanted, at short notice, a map of Australia with a photograph of Darwin superimposed onto it. The designer superimposed a photograph of Charles Darwin, when the producer had actually meant the city of Darwin. So, that was the only error he could recall during his ten year tenure at the BBC. And even I couldn't have justified demanding that the designer buy lunch; that was a communication error.
Comcast are well-known in the industry for having dreadful ads, like the one where they are telling the work how hi-tech they are - and yet the background is showing Tetris, the falling-blocks video game which was invented in 1985 and which most people under twenty five have never even heard of. If that's some sort of subtlety, then it's too subtle for me.
Having the word online capitalized isn't a lunch-buying offense, but I would ask the designer why on earth the word was capitalized and I very much doubt that a designer would be able to justify it. It's probably worth coffee and cakes for the entire team.
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