So we’ve just been doing some ads for one of our clients that features well known people media personalities.
Obviously, as part of the process, we have to get things approved, so we recently sent one of the ideas over to the client and ‘talent’ for their feedback.
Fortunately for us, everything was fine – but the talent did say he had to send it to his managers in London for their approval.
It was then we realised we had a potential disaster on our hands.
When we were going through the ideas, we realised that in the copy, we had said “she” instead of “he”.
Obviously it’s just a slip of a copywriters hand, but it’s not right and just because the ad was a ‘work in progress’ doesn’t mean we should be slack in checking things before we send them out.
Now you might think, “what harms done, the client and talent didn’t pick it up either” and you’d be right, but I don’t think that’s an excuse – however it gets worse. Potentially much, MUCH worse.
You see the talent who has been subject to our inadvertent ‘sex change’ is a very well known gay man … except he hasn’t actually ‘come out’ so I am waiting for the explosion when his managers see the mistake and think we’ve just been taking the piss.
Do I think they will accept it was an innocent mistake?
If it was anyone other than us, possibly – but something tells me I’m going to be buying a lot of dinners over the next few weeks.
I’ve always said it’s the little things that can make the difference and here’s proof –the letter ‘s’ has the potential to make my life very painful indeed!