An Odd Lack of Attention to Detail

So. Proctor & Gamble (P&G) is probably one of the most fanatically detailed, obsessive, paranoid brand manager-driven organizations in the world. Therefore my jaw kind of dropped when I saw a coupon in a recent Sunday coupon section.

young Venus and Tide

I guess the big question is if you are going to pay a gazillion dollars to use one of the most recognizable athletes in the world, why you wouldn’t use a photo that maybe people could recognize is that person. I did a double take and I am a tennis fan. I thought it was Venus Williams, but it looked nothing like Venus Williams.

This is one of those situations where someone designing the coupon probably didn’t know the difference between Venus Williams and Venus de Milo. Without that knowledge, it was just a picture they picked up from some image database they had and sent it out. And then some brand manager, fairly sure that no one could screw up the photo of Venus Williams, was too busy to look at it. It gets sent. It runs. And then some asshole like me takes the opportunity to poke the consumer products elephant called P&G in the hindquarters.

Still. What a waste of a lot of celebrity spokesperson cache. Of course, if I weren’t such a goober for flipping through the coupons (a lingering habit from my days working on Texize and P&G brands that ran full circulars worth of coupons every weekend) I would have never noticed.

Written by Bruce