Honda Dealer Gets Into Ad Accident
Printing Gaffe Causes Every Scratch-Off Card to Award Grand Prize
By Jean Halliday
Published: July 23, 2007
It sure seemed as if Mr. Opportunity came knocking for residents of Roswell, N.M., last week. A lucky 30,000 of them received scratch-off tickets from their local Honda dealer that pronounced them all $1,000 grand-prize winners.
Except that potential $30 million payout was a printing error -- one that's forcing the agency behind the "Make an Offer" promotion to offer amends to would-be winners.
Jim Fitzpatrick, president of Force Media Group, Atlanta, said he knew within 15 minutes he had a problem with the Roswell Honda promotion his company handled. The dealership called him and said the first person who came in with a game piece last week had won the sole $1,000 grand prize, and called again 15 minutes later to say there were five more winners. [...]
For some reason, I imagine the next few hours were like that scene from Airplane, when Lloyd Bridges as Steve McCroskey says, "Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing glue."
It's Roswell - can't the agency claim the tickets were tampered with by aliens?
Posted by: Diane at July 23, 2007 02:51 PMLet's see, a car dealership and an ad agency...
Yep, no reason to distrust them in the least.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at July 23, 2007 03:00 PM