Why You Should Always Proofread Your Advertisements

by derek on October 16, 2007 · 13 comments

Whether you are advertising for a brick and mortar business or an online dot com business, you should always be sure to proofread your advertisements. You might event want to have a handful of people proofread any advertisement before it is distributed to thousands of people through direct mail coupon packages.
Sounds like a good idea, don’t you think?
Apparently that memo was not distributed at Eyeland Optical as today we received the following coupon in our mail:

Eyeland Optical Advertisement Mistake

I wonder exactly what type of contracts I can receive at the eye doctor for $99.
I don’t know about you but I would have serious doubts about trusting an eye doctor to provide me with top-notch service if they cannot catch a glaring mistake like that in their advertising.
Hopefully they can blame this on the fact that they had their eyes checked at the eye doctor down the street! 🙂

Stay In The Loop!

Subscribe to the Derek Semmler dot com feed via RSS or Email to receive notifications when new posts are published. Follow the WordPress ninja on Twitter too!

{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }

Leo October 17, 2007 at 1:53 am

Maybe they’re hoping that the people reading the ad will have such poor eyesight that they won’t see the booboo. You obviously don’t fit into their target demographic 😉

Reply

Prison Break October 17, 2007 at 8:21 am

Good info you bring us right here in your post, indeed they are based on the observe the ad.But what can you say, they have to do some jobs, if not, others sure will do the same thing, this is just my opinion !!

Reply

Aurelius Tjin October 17, 2007 at 10:04 am

Thanks for bringing it up man!
This is very simple but we oftentimes neglect very minute details such as this.
Let us not confuse people with our ads.Lol 🙂

Reply

derek October 17, 2007 at 10:52 am

@Leo :: I’d love to see their reaction when they realize what they did. It reminds me of the episode of Seinfeld with the nip slip on the Christmas card. 🙂
@PB :: Thanks.
@Aurelius Tjin :: You’re welcome, thanks for commenting. This is a great example of why it is always recommended to have someone else proofread your work as it is more difficult for you to catch your own mistakes.

Reply

Waldo October 18, 2007 at 2:22 am

It’s not near as bad as the advertisements/spam that says “Your Invited!”

Reply

derek October 18, 2007 at 7:55 am

Lol…the misuse of “your” versus “you’re” is a pet peeve of mine but is one that I see quite often.

Reply

Rose October 18, 2007 at 1:01 pm

Excellent posts and good catch. Now I don’t feel so dumb with my typos. lol
Ps- Thank you for dropping by. I thought you deserted me.

Reply

derek October 18, 2007 at 1:25 pm

Thanks!
I haven’t deserted you – still reading and commenting as time permits. 🙂

Reply

Api October 18, 2007 at 8:24 pm

How ironic that eyeland optical didnt spot that typo with their own eyes, and Im suppose to trust them with mine? lol. Maybe the typo was a publicity stunt?

Reply

Annie October 24, 2007 at 7:06 pm

Heh, I haven’t watched much tv in a while but that was one of my favorite segments of The Tonight Show: all the goobered up newspaper and magazine ads and stories people would send in.
It’s amazing to me though how many people spend money on advertising and don’t have someone proofread their ads. I see horrible ones with Adsense a lot.
The people renting apartments or selling their homes on Craigslist are even worse. Do you really want to rent from someone who can’t spell the name of the town his rentals are in?
Believe it or not, there are literate folks out there who judge you on your ability to put together a grammatically correct sentence…. 😉

Reply

derek October 24, 2007 at 10:15 pm

@Api :: That would be a bad publicity stunt in my opinion as like you, I wouldn’t trust my eye care to someone that misses a glaring typo like that.
@Annie :: Some of the ads on the Tonight Show are hilarious, although I always get a kick out of when someone sends in a clipping from The Onion and they treat it like a legitimate story/headline.

Reply

Brewster February 17, 2008 at 5:23 pm

What a terrible mistake to make. I would have thought that proof readers would have checked the ad before sending it to the printers.

Reply

Printer Supplies August 12, 2008 at 11:26 am

Thanks for the informative post.. and thanks for adding our comment to the blog. I searched for a while to find the right answer to my questions!

Reply

Leave a Comment

Previous post:

Next post: