What he said.
OK. So this always happens. The minute I post a new Advertising F*** Up, my inbox is deluged with other examples.
What does this say about the abilities of the advertising industry worldwide, or it’s quality control levels? It says they are frequently crap, and, er, frequently crap.
Anyhow, we should be grateful for small mercies, because they are very funny and/or cringe inducing. This one falls into the category of “Oh, no, surely that was done in Photoshop, no one would really do that, right?” But as it was Mrs Wellthisiswhatithink that emailed it to me, I think it deserves a run, or I won’t get my tea.
I actually think it could be real, because what I know about the outdoor advertising industry is that it is more than capable of producing “skins” in a factory somewhere and all they are interested in is the technical accuracy of the production run, and not the creative content.
Personally, I once ran a double-page full colour ad for a client that read “Oustanding Value”. It got through our agency quality control process, the client signed off, the magazine quality control process signed off, and, indeed, had been in the public arena for half a week before anyone spotted it.
So without further ado, here is today’s contender. Further comment superfluous.
Yummy.
Well, This Is What I Think 
This one is from long ago, but still makes me smile when I remember it. I worked for 38+ years for a local bank, and up to the mid-eighties, all advertising was designed in-house. (That should tell you a lot right there.) There was this one ad that was supposed to indicate that the bank was “on the go,” forward looking, and all that. So the name of the bank was supposed to bleed off the edge of the page. Unfortunately, where the cut was made was in the middle of the “n” in Bank, which made us into __________ ________ Bar. Oops! My boss, who had a wonderful wit and absolutely no responsibility for the advertising, had great fun with that one.
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Lovely story. Yes, I have often seen items lost to bleed – the other crazy one is when the gutter is very tightly bound (the crease in the middle of a spread) and an incautious art director hasn’t allowed for it – logos, headlines, edges of pictures and copy disappear. You see it with ads for the biggest brands, especially in beautiful but large magazines. Often the art director has done one lot of artwork of the same size to be dispatched to various media outlets and it looks quite different according to which mag or newspaper it is in. Or the media buyers haven’t even bothered to advise the agency which side of the magazine an ad is going on …
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Sadly, I think it is photoshoped – if you look at the space to left of the anus (steady everyone) there is more white space than on rthe left of that line of type. If the G was there then the type would be properly centered. But hey – it’s a great image and tell’s its own story – epecially as it turns out today that Findus Frozen ready meal lasagne is 100% horse meat.
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Lord, really? Is that a breaking story? Neigh, say it ain’t so!
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