This has been bugging me ever since I first saw this. I figured maybe blogging about it would be cathartic.

Watch:

First off, let me say that I think this is an awesome program and I don’t mean to disparage it or the recipients of its services in any way. That said…listen again to what the woman at about 0:14 says:

You don’t know how very basic essentials are until you have none.

Huh? That sentence makes absolutely no sense. It sounds like it should. I understand what she means. But what she said makes no sense. I think maybe she meant:

You don’t know how essential the basics are until you have none.

That would make sense.

Now I don’t fault the woman. In an ad hoc interview, I’m sure I’ve said all kinds of stuff that didn’t entirely make sense. But what I’m wondering is who at Tide (or their ad agency) let this get through. I can’t imagine that out of the hundreds of people they’ve provided this service to, that was the best quote.

If you’re in the business of communicating, you need some quality control. The amount is proportional to the amount of exposure/risk you have. A freelancer lifestreaming to Twitter? Not a big deal. A national PR campaign across multiple media? A big deal.

Maybe I’m being a grammar nazi. But you know what? If you’re a multi-national corporation, or an ad agency who works for them, you should have a grammar nazi on staff who reviews everything – twice — before it goes out.

This is what started it all…

When I was in 5th grade, our English teacher implemented something called “Grammar Gremlins”. Whenever you heard someone make a grammatical error, you were supposed to holler out “grammar gremlin”, at which point you jotted down what they said in a little notebook and they had to sign it. Some silly prize was given out to whoever collected the most (guess who?).

Needless to say, I barely survived 5th grade.