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.
