Typo happens

Has this ever happened to you? You work on a commercial for weeks, concepting it, selling to the client, getting the budget approved, shooting it and then finally seeing it on the air. Only to discover there's a typo in it.

Not talking about a little teeny typo buried in the legal copy. I'm talking about a big ass typo right out there for the world to see.

It happened to me years ago. I was working on the Coco's Restaurant account, and they wanted to promote a Prime Rib, Steak and Shrimp offer. Should've been easy enough.

Except when the spot got to air, the end title card read "Prime Rib, Steak and Shimp."

The interesting part is the spot ran for three weeks before some eagle-eyed viewer called to say there was a typo.

Afterwards, I did a little math and figured out that between myself and my partner, all the account people, all the clients, all the production and editorial people who had seen it before it was released for air, over 61 pairs of eyes had missed the typo.

The promotion was over before we had to do anything about it. To this day I don't know if the client even knew.

In today's marketing wars, I'm sure heads would roll if an obvious mistake like that somehow made it out the door.

But back in the day, we all had a good laff about it.

Well-placed blame

My good friend Michelle Purcell once said you can never underestimate the power of well-placed blame. As usual, she was right.

Clearly this is something all ad agencies, or marketing communication collectives, or integrated media-agnostic think tanks, or whatever the hell they're calling themselves this week have a deep understanding of.

At agencies, blame gets passed around faster than a Kennedy driving to the liquor store at closing time.

Or to paraphrase Groucho's "whatever it is I'm against it", the internal battle cry is "whatever it is, I didn't do it."

The reason is pretty obvious. If you've ever been fired from an agency, all it means is that you showed up. But agencies, especially the ones owned by holding companies (is there any other kind?), run on fear and no one likes getting fired, especially for a mistake they made.

Like underestimating the client's budget by $12 million.

Scheduling a shoot on a Vancouver beach in winter.

Telling the client you can get it done without checking with anybody if what they're asking for can be done. Then not getting it done.

Rather than man up and face the music, walk into an agency and you'll see so much finger pointing it looks like a master class in giving directions. Ironically for a business that believes consumers have to have an emotional attachment to their product, many of the players have no personal attachment to their decisions or actions. At least if they backfire.

However if they succeed, then the ground shifts from the blame game to the taking credit game. That's the one where anyone who was in the building and passed a meeting in the conference room where they were presenting a successful campaign takes credit for it.

Agencies don't have a monopoly on either behavior. Anytime you have an office with the kind of politics, ego and ambition found in agencies, the same primal survival instincts kick in.

I don't mean to paint in broad strokes - this is not to say you can't find responsible people with a finely honed sense of integrity, grit, decency and honor in agencies. You can.

But if you can't, don't blame me.