Council's communication bloopers!

By Annie Waite, Editor of the Internal Comms Hub (North America), Melcrum

In the case of double-bloop, can the defendant please make himself known?

*Birmingham City Council waves a limp hand and holds its head in shame.*

Why?

Bloop # 1: the council sent out 720,000 pamphlets at a cost of £15,000 - praising residents for their recycling efforts.

Bloop # 2: instead of showing (in)famous Birmingham (UK) landmarks such as the Rotunda and the revamped Selfridges building, it actually showed images of downtown Birmingham, Alabama (US)!

According to a story from the BBC, Jon Cooper, a Birmingham resident who received one of the leaflets, spotted the error and said the council had thanked him for pointing out the mistake. He said: "I had a really close look and didn't recognise any buildings that I know from Birmingham so I thought there's just something wrong here."

Having looked on Google, Cooper found a picture of the downtown area of Birmingham, Alabama - which matched the image on the leaflets.

"We accept that the wrong photo was used, but the text and detail contained in the leaflet is wholly correct which is the most important message," Birmingham City Council responded.

Although it seems a fairly harmless and isolated mistake to have made, is it really the most important message? What about the messages conveyed by the perception of "waste" concerning the pamphlets produced to praise recycling efforts? What about the damage to Brum City Council's communications department and reputation as a whole?

Please let us know of any other comms bloopers you can remember. Perhaps you've seen the story that was doing the rounds a couple of weeks ago about a newspaper in the US, Valley News, that managed to spell its own name incorrectly on the masthead?!

Comments

[jacquesderrida]

Unbelievable stuff – what kind of idiot could mistake one 'Birmingham' for the other?! For example, while I'm sure Alabama is lovely, there's only one Birmingham that can lay claim to Aston Villa... (This single distinction is significant enough!)

Being serious, what this kind of mistake reveals is: communications are all too often put together by folk who aren't at all interested in what the comms they produce are trying to say (via whatever media). Personally speaking, this failure to 'take an interest' equates to a failure to do the job properly.