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Good morning! Hope everyone had a good holiday weekend, as I did.
Speaking of which: As many observers have noted, Major League Baseball has finally gotten it right when it comes to Memorial Day, using simple but effective poppy patches and, in the Tigers’ case, handwritten cap inscriptions.
The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for one of MLB’s biggest advertisers.
During last night’s Nats/Dodgers game in L.A., a big Budweiser ad appeared on the ribbon boards at Dodger Stadium. It attempted to send a Memorial Day message by saluting “our heros” — but of course the proper spelling is “heroes.”
Or at least “heroes” would be the proper spelling if you’re referring to an outstanding person like a fallen military service member. Interestingly, however, “heros” — without the “e” — is correct if you’re referring to the plural of a submarine-style sandwich. So maybe Anheuser-Busch was just suggesting that a Bud would go great with a meatball hero.
Maybe the larger lesson here is that mega-corporations should just stick to their basic marketing campaigns instead of trying to leverage the goodwill generated by an important holiday.
(My thanks to @VintScoreboards and Trevor Williams for bringing this one to my attention.)
Call for “Ask Me Anything” Questions
The next quarterly installment of “Ask Me Anything” — the Substack series where you can ask me a question about uniforms, sports, Uni Watch, me, or anything else, and I do my best to answer — will be coming up next month. I’m dropping the paywall for this installment, so it will be available to all.
If you’d like to submit a question, feel free to email it here. (Please note that this is not the usual Uni Watch email address.) One question per person, please. I look forward to seeing your queries!
What Paul Did on Friday Night
On Friday night I went to Coney Island, where I attended a Brooklyn Cyclones game with my friends Bill and Brad. On our way back to the subway after the game, we came upon a guy with this adorable animal on a leash. “Look,” said Brad, “it’s a lemur!” But the guy corrected him: “It’s a kinkajou.”
I asked the guy if I could say hi, and he said, “Sure — her name is Honey.” So I kneeled down, but before I could reach out to pet Honey, she hopped right into my lap! She was super-sweet and super-soft. As you can see here, I was pretty delighted by the encounter:
Now, I am fairly certain a kinkajou does not belong on a leash on a Brooklyn street. But still: What a cutie!!
Can of the Day
Why would you call your product “mystery oil”? Very strange. In any case, the design, featuring that crazy “M M” icon in the center, is really something.
• • • • •
Sorry, no Ticker today, because the Uni Watch team had yesterday off. The Ticker will return tomorrow.
Blaming a corporation for an error made by the typist for the ribbon advertising board at a stadium seems a bit misplaced.
If that happened on every ribbon board in every stadium in which Budweiser advertised yesterday, then you have something.
Pretty sure the advertiser or their agency supplies the ad, and the stadium guy just activates it.
Not in my experience for the short ribbon ads. But, whatever.
Nah…it’s probably some underpaid 20-something-year-old who had 40 other ribbon and on-scoreboard graphics to make that day. A simple spellcheck would not catch this error and I can totally see my younger self making this same error. I think you’re underestimating how overworked sports designers, and designers in general are, and how fast the work has to turnover these days. The front-office staffs have only decreased in size the past couple of years while deliverables have multiplied exponentially. There comes a breaking point and things will slip through the cracks. Unfortunately for us, our typos are posted on gigantic boards for the whole world to see.
This was supplied by AB.
Bud seems to have a history with questionable ad placement link
Typos:
“On Friday night I want to Coney Island”
“On our way back to the subway after the game, we came up a guy”
– Even better would have been:
This Bud’s For Our Horse
Fixed!
Of course, they spelled “Bud” correctly. Priorities.
Avoided an apostrophe catastrophe too…kudos, King of Beers!
That’s one busy softball top the Nats were wearing.
You may not see the arrow and pyramid designs on a modern plastic bottle of Marvel Mystery Oil, but they do still rock the old-school logos!
If only that ad below that mistake had been for Subway instead of Advance Auto Parts…
The other “Marvel Mystery” -is why are their pyramids?? And are they Egyptian or Mayan?
It’s there, fella.
Researching online, kinkajous are kept as pets. They require a lot of exercise so that’s why the animal was being walked. Of course there’s a whole debate as to whether exotic animals should be pets.
For the few Celtics fans who might have stuck around to watch the post-game ceremony last night, how bitter it must have been to see the Heat awarded the Bob Cousy trophy and Jimmy Butler presented with the Larry Bird trophy.
Not really, both well earned.
Marvel Mystery Oil is still on store shelves. I used to sell it when I worked in car parts stores, but I never trusted it, mainly because it’s an additive that claims you can add it to gas OR oil and get benefit from it. Noooooo thank you.
My first thought was “that’s a kinkajou”. I think my kid watched the kinkajou episode of Diego about 600 times.
A hot dog at Nathan’s?
At least Budweiser doesn’t sell potatos.
“Nothing worse than a sloppy kinkajou.” –Johnny Carson
re: Kinkajou – Good thing a certain mayor is out of office now…
The Brooklyn Cyclones…happy to own a cap of them in the colors when they were a Blue Jays minor league team from St Catherines, Ontario. Sky blue, royal blue visor, white panel with a royal blue BC logo.
Yeah! Stick to beer, AB! Shut up and brew!
I worked in North Dakota 10 years ago and a hospital ran a statewide ad campaign with the same typo. I asked my people about it and the hospital was so embarrassed when we pointed it out
Blaming a corporation for an error made by the typist for the ribbon advertising board at a stadium seems a bit misplaced.
If that happened on every ribbon board in every stadium in which Budweiser advertised yesterday, then you have something.
Pretty sure the advertiser or their agency supplies the ad, and the stadium guy just activates it.
Not in my experience for the short ribbon ads. But, whatever.
Nah…it’s probably some underpaid 20-something-year-old who had 40 other ribbon and on-scoreboard graphics to make that day. A simple spellcheck would not catch this error and I can totally see my younger self making this same error. I think you’re underestimating how overworked sports designers, and designers in general are, and how fast the work has to turnover these days. The front-office staffs have only decreased in size the past couple of years while deliverables have multiplied exponentially. There comes a breaking point and things will slip through the cracks. Unfortunately for us, our typos are posted on gigantic boards for the whole world to see.
This was supplied by AB.
Bud seems to have a history with questionable ad placement link
Typos:
“On Friday night I want to Coney Island”
“On our way back to the subway after the game, we came up a guy”
– Even better would have been:
This Bud’s For Our Horse
Fixed!
Of course, they spelled “Bud” correctly. Priorities.
Avoided an apostrophe catastrophe too…kudos, King of Beers!
That’s one busy softball top the Nats were wearing.
You may not see the arrow and pyramid designs on a modern plastic bottle of Marvel Mystery Oil, but they do still rock the old-school logos!
If only that ad below that mistake had been for Subway instead of Advance Auto Parts…
The other “Marvel Mystery” -is why are their pyramids?? And are they Egyptian or Mayan?
It’s there, fella.
Researching online, kinkajous are kept as pets. They require a lot of exercise so that’s why the animal was being walked. Of course there’s a whole debate as to whether exotic animals should be pets.
For the few Celtics fans who might have stuck around to watch the post-game ceremony last night, how bitter it must have been to see the Heat awarded the Bob Cousy trophy and Jimmy Butler presented with the Larry Bird trophy.
Not really, both well earned.
Marvel Mystery Oil is still on store shelves. I used to sell it when I worked in car parts stores, but I never trusted it, mainly because it’s an additive that claims you can add it to gas OR oil and get benefit from it. Noooooo thank you.
My first thought was “that’s a kinkajou”. I think my kid watched the kinkajou episode of Diego about 600 times.
A hot dog at Nathan’s?
At least Budweiser doesn’t sell potatos.
“Nothing worse than a sloppy kinkajou.” –Johnny Carson
re: Kinkajou – Good thing a certain mayor is out of office now…
The Brooklyn Cyclones…happy to own a cap of them in the colors when they were a Blue Jays minor league team from St Catherines, Ontario. Sky blue, royal blue visor, white panel with a royal blue BC logo.
Yeah! Stick to beer, AB! Shut up and brew!
I worked in North Dakota 10 years ago and a hospital ran a statewide ad campaign with the same typo. I asked my people about it and the hospital was so embarrassed when we pointed it out