Friday, November 7, 2008

My eyes, my eyes!

Call the grammar police!

A potentially very awesome email just got ruined for me. Let's dissect this marketing FAIL!

Subject: "Whistler: over 40cm of new snow and more on the way"

So far so good. I am interested to learn more about this marketing message and will duly open your email.

Photo at top of message:

Cath says: "Sweeeeeeeeeet!"


I am glad I opened your email. This marketing message is relevant to my interests.


Next line:

"The snow has started to fly at Whistler Blackcomb with over 40 cm (16 inches) of snow has fallen this week and more is expected in the forecast. "

Erm... I believe the colloquial term is WTF, dude?

I am afraid that I did not read the rest of your message, which appeared to be an inducement to buy an accommodation package. Instead I raced to my humble weblog to encourage my readers to laugh at you. Please proof your marketing emails in the future to prevent a recurrence of this unfortunate situation.

Thank you.

----------------

It will soon be time to sharpen and wax my skis, and to start thinking about the first trip of the season. This is almost - but not quite - exciting enough to override my outraged sense of pedantry.

I'm sure I'll get over it. Quite possibly on my first ride up in the gondola.

Happy Friday everyone!

12 comments:

  1. This year is the year I learn to ski! Can't wait. It was so great to see some snow on the north shore mountains the other day. I can tell it is on the way because when I'm sat at my desk in work for any length of time my feet get cold so that and the river of water outside mean that November has arrived and with it snow :))).

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  2. I totally didn't notice that, but probably because I didn't actually read the email, I just scanned for the price deals. The snow on the mountains sure looks purty!

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  3. Dr J, you will have fun! I learned at Cypress in my first full winter. We don't get to go very often but a couple of long-ish trips to Sun Peaks have really helped me improve. I now do mostly blues although I did my first ever black diamond (very badly) last season!

    Skiing gives you such a different perspective on this miserable November weather - it is snowing in Whistler while it rains in town!

    ScientistMother, are you a skier or a boarder? I can't wait for this season!

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  4. I guess in theory I would be both as I boarded for 2-3 seasons about 10 years ago. In reality I am a skier.

    Dr. J - I totally recommend cypress for learning. Its where I originally learned about 15 years ago, and where Nick learned (and I relearned)3 years ago. We did a package that was around $400 each, but it included 5 lessons (each with a full day pass) plus a seasons weeknight pass that included ski rentals. We used all 5 lessons and went skiing once a week which lead to some awesome practice. He can now do blacks and I am only skiing blues and some blacks ..I fell behind as I lost a season to child birth

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  5. Thanks Scientistmother. That was my plan as I don't have a car so that is (relatively) the easiest place to get to for me when I can't get a lift - so great to hear it is a good place to learn - plus Cypress feels much more like my mountain as cycle up it a lot in the summer (unlike the more difficult Seymour!).

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  6. I did the exact same package at Cypress. The only negative is that the snow quality is not very reliable. As a beginner that won't bother you much, you just want to get the practice, but I was also relying on a friend with a car and as a much better skier than me she did not want to go on bad snow days. I only used 3 of my 5 lessons in the end (the other downside of relying on someone else - there were a couple of times when we arrived too late for me to get in on a lesson).

    Now that I'm a better skier I've become a snow snob too!

    Vancouver blogger ski trip anyone?!

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  7. aww... Whistler....

    Now I'm jealous. *pout* I'd better get back to work and realise that I would praobly hurt myself if I tried to ski now. It's been sooooo many years now. Maybe I can get my skates on when I go back to the mother country in Feb (lets just hope I get home as planned).

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  8. Skating... hurting yourself... I just heard that our work Xmas party is to take place at an ice-rink. Cue everyone laughing at the English girl who has been skating, oh, maybe three times?

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  9. It is obvious that you have worked in a position where reading and double-checking everything was part of the job. I think most of the time people skim for content, and don't notice even very obvious mistakes (like this). I would be interested in polling recipients to see how many people actually 1) read the complete sentence and 2) realized there was anything wrong! Could be scary......

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  10. Mermaid, that would be interesting - I'm a bit of a pedant so maybe only a very small number of people noticed.

    If you or I had ever put out this marketing email we'd have been completely mortified, regardless of who else noticed!

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  11. Now that I am back 'near' academia, I can't believe all the very poor emails I am subjected to, not to mention vendor show announcements with spelling mistakes, missing graphics, etc. As you said, you and I would both have been mortified to send out anything with such obvious mistakes. I can't tell if it has always been this way, or if I am just more 'sensitive' now?

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  12. Wow, I think we just identified a benefit of our last job that isn't "meeting awesome people" or "eating lots of cake"!

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