Stronger Culture. Better Performance.

March 19, 2008 in Misc 4 Comments

Truth in Advertising

There is an ad on the back cover of HBR this month for a company called Realization Technologies, touting their "Execution Management Systems." I like the ad because it has a certain 37-signals-like "get real" attitude. The first paragraph of the text talks about how so many companies bow to "politically and corporately correct gods" that spout nice sounding terms, but don’t "tell you what needs to be done and when."

They specialize in the latter and can save you a bunch of money (and they gave an impressive example). Okay. So far, I’m impressed.

Then I saw a typo in the last line:

"If you think, corporate correctness might be playing havoc with your execution, give us a call at…"

The comma after think shouldn’t be there. It was glaring.

They must have paid HUGE bucks for this ad, and they are touting assistance with execution, and they didn’t proof the copy?!

Little things can make a big difference.

4 Comments

  1. Rick Brown
    19.03.2008 at 9:52 pm

    Hi Jamie,
    Based, on your attention to detail note, you’ll enjoy this if you haven’t seen it – very quick vid: http://www.dothetest.co.uk/
    -Rick

  2. Jamie Notter
    19.03.2008 at 10:28 pm

    Hi Rick, thanks for chiming in. Yep, that video was the topic of YESTERDAY’s post!

  3. campbeli
    20.03.2008 at 2:30 am

    Hi Jamie,
    Fully concur with your comment that ‘little things can make a big difference’ and can undo all the hard work (and money) that has gone before. I find it amusing that the second word after the comma is ‘correctness.’
    ian

  4. Russ Capps
    24.03.2008 at 4:57 pm

    Check out this clunker of a sentence from their website:
    “With clear and synchronized priorities, time is better used, more projects get done faster.”
    Really.