Typographers and moral crusader beware! A risqué Samsung billboard promoting their Galaxy 3 notepad has been, ahem, erected in four countries, leaving the South Korean company with a potentially embarrassing public relations mess. The offending ad must have been designed by someone who forgot to turn off the autocorrect feature before editing, making for an unintentionally hilarious billboard. Click below to find out what the racy sign says!
While it seems like Samsung was going for a reference to the familiar English saying “The pen is mightier than the sword,” to illustrate the Galaxy Note’s superiority over finger-based tablets, the lapse in spelling judgement led to some juvenile phallic boasting by the tech giant. Adding a comma, the typically thought-provoking adage becomes “The penis, mightier than the finger” and makes the 10 year-old in all of us giggle until we cry.
Twitter user Archie_Hendryx caught the sign and suggested that Samsung rethink their branding strategy in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the naughty billboard has apparently gone up in France, Egypt, Pakistan and Kenya. Although some of the Kenyan billboards have reportedly been taken down.
Whether it was a kerning mistake, an autocorrect error or a broken space bar, we have to wonder what the marketing team was thinking when they cooked up this ad. It is hard to believe that all of the English-speaking staff was on break the day the sign’s wording was approved. What do you think? Was this an honest mistake or an intentional prank?
Image: Twitter (Archie_Hendryx)
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