Errant GPS Ad
Upon occasion marketing professionals are under such onerous deadlines that even they make mistakes. Here’s a good one.
The photo to the right was scanned from a Sunday newspaper circular by Office Depot. Like a lot of folks, OD is peddling GPS units, this year’s hot gift. They had a pretty good price on this model that was advertised in a San Francisco newspaper.
It might have been so cheap because it evidently has road maps of Europe and not America (despite the ad claiming maps of the U.S. and Canada). But unit above is clearly giving directions in a Germanic language (“Ungarn- auf Louise-Schroder-Platz” translates to “Hungary at Louise Schroder place” according to Bablefish). The turn distances are in meters, not yards, and the arrival time of day is labeled “Ankunft.”
Now, you and I know some harried intern or first-year graphics employee likely grabbed an image from the Garmin marketing resources library without stopping long enough to look at it aside from admiring the colors. But I’d bet a buck that at least on Hungarian expat went down to Office Depot that day to buy as many as they could to send home for the holidays.