Company approved a campaign with a glaring typo NO ONE caught until it launched. My creative director is furious with me. And okay, I made the typo, but him and one other person looked at it before it ever got to go live. How worried should I be?

I missed a typo as a CD. It wasn’t in any of our art files. It came about because someone in post-production retyped it by hand for some reason and misspelled it.

At the end of the day, I didn’t catch it when reviewing. And that’s my job. The fact that no one else caught it doesn’t matter.

If your CD throws you under the bus, it just shows he or she is not a leader. And was not doing their job.

They’re probably more protected than you, but if you keep your cool and state these facts, as you did, I don’t think you’re in a position to lose your job. Mistakes happen, even expensive ones. I’d add in something to the likes of “My role is to produce, and yours to review and approve.” Good luck.

You are human and their proofing procedures failed. It happens. Make a practice of spell checking - but even then these things happen. Improve the proofing process and offer a solution, with sign offs for future work.

Is there a dedicated proofreader on the team? I agree with the other comments and would point out that you followed the review system. I would also add that you should ask for a discussion on how to avoid this in the future.

The best thing you can do now is approach this in a solution oriented mindset - ie how to prevent this mistake again.

Some ideas:
1. Updating the QA checklist to be more comprehensive
2. Updating QA process to ensure a 2nd or 3rd team member reviews and completes checklist in addition to yourself
3. Pre launch reminder guide of items to check before setting live
4. Time window for client review/approval before going live. This copy shouldn’t have been approved by anyone if it had a typo. Since it was it might mean more rounds of review are needed before moving to the finish line - particularly someone on client side (if you are agency side)

Finally mistakes happen! It’s how you respond and learn from them that will define your career! Wishing you luck!

Had a similar thing; 1.5 seconds of screen time a rig was JUST visible in an actor's sleeve. Was cut, finished, color corrected, approved, captioned, trafficked and shipped to air. Had shared with entire production department in a meeting. I counted My very first national commercial, and I counted; 75 people had seen it. I mitigated all the costs I could, and kind, amazing colleagues VOLUNTEERED their time to fix it. In the end the client paid to re-ship...and forgave me/the agency with the help of a great account person. And we all just moved on...human beings make mistakes.

1. You never proof your own writing. Try to make it perfect, but it’s always another person’s job to proof. Fault should go there.

2. Sure, your boss is mad at you. Their boss is mad at them. Their boss is mad at them. Etc. notice how your boss’s boss and their boss aren’t mad at you? That’s how it works. No matter where one person tries to pass the blame, their boss will still be upset at them for letting it happen.

3. When layoffs come around, this isn’t what they’ll be thinking about. They’ll be looking at a spreadsheet and making math decisions. Then probably laying off middle management (your boss).


So don’t sweat it too much. Just a little, then move on.

Yeah - def point out that QA is everyone’s job. Especially if they didn’t have someone who is not producing the work doing a QA pass. Leaving it to just one person is begging for things like this to happen. Don’t let anyone make this solely your fault!! That’d be unreasonable.

I would think this is edits fault, not copy. Although everyone loves blaming copy lol

Only three people looked at a campaign before going live? Is it just digital or something? Agree with all the other comments, but it also seems weird for such a small group to review. That should tell you more about the situation than the typo, lol.

The fact that you are waiting for them to acknowledge responsibility, you should be worried.

It depends upon how easy it is to fix. A digital piece is not such a huge sin. A run of 60,000 high-quality oversized brochures (happened on a job I was working on but thankfully not my fault) might be a fireable offense.

lol wouldn’t the accounts team be blamed for this? It’s not a CW’s job to proofread the final assets for typos

I tell folks ALL the time to check anything spelled out in my Edits. I can spell I just can’t type for a crap.
I also try and “copy-paste “ anything typed out to avoid this. Not sure how that would work on the copy side of things

Don’t worry about it. This happens. And, has probably happened to everyone. But, never forget proofing and spell check often and up to the very last minute is our best friend.

I've had that same situation occur but fortunately I worked with superiors who actually had integrity and took the blame equally since the mistake made it through 2 or 3 other people after me. It's a tricky situation when they're trying to pass the blame and ultimately it was your job to ensure the campaign was error free but it's also their job to ensure everything is correct as well. Hopefully this blew over since it's been a week but if not, I would approach it in a way that suggests how to best avoid this kind of issue in the future by ensuring it has a 2nd and 3rd pair of eyes on it for the good of the company as a whole.

Hmm they maybe more protected but you can say it’s your job to do the work, it’s there job to check the work prior to becoming live. Therefore, they failed at doing their jobfailed at their job s