18th Article published (11th October 2014) in The HANS INDIA. - It is titled "World's best (worst) Goof Ups - Part II".

18th Article published today (11th October 2014) in The HANS INDIA. The article has come out very nicely. It is titled "World's best (worst) Goof Ups - Part II".

 E-Version of the article 

World’s best (worst) goof ups – part II

October 11,2014, 03.02 AM  IST | Dr M Anil Ramesh

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SiloUSA a discount appliance chain, had too many stereos in stock and wanted to sell them at shockingly low prices. They ran advertisements saying, “it costs only 299 bananas for a new stereo”. Obviously according to Silo "bananas" means "dollars". This was pure slang and many Americans themselves were not aware of this fact. Calling dollars as bananas was popular during the presidency of Calvin Coolidge.

Dozens of customers flocked to stores with literally 299 bananas (worth about $40). The appliance store had no choice but to accept all the bananas from dozens of customers. Silo lost over $10,000 in just one day, pulling in the advertisements of the next day before other customers could get the same idea. Silo couldn’t even get rid of the bananas (they had  thousands of them) as the local zoos stopped taking them (1986). 

Cartoon Network USA: launched a marketing campaign in which they set up LED signs in various places throughout cities in USA to promote one of their cartoons. A resident in Boston, however, thought the devices were bombs and called the police. This turned into a terrorism scare, resulting in the shut-down of many public transportation lines, bridges, and roads. The problem cost the head of Cartoon Network his job and the broadcasting company $2 million in compensation for the emergency response team(2007).

 

KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) USA decided to promote its new grilled chicken by giving it away for free. Wanting to keep their promotion subtle and discreet, they did the announcement on the show of Oprah Winfrey.

KFC underestimated the influence of Oprah who told the viewers that they could print out a voucher for free lunch at KFC on the May 5 episode of her talk show.

Approximately 16 million people printed out the Winfrey approved coupon and showed up at KFCs nationwide to have their free chicken. The fast food chain was unprepared and ran out of stock before lunchtime. KFC’s market research team had suggested that the average US citizen doesn’t like chicken and that he hates not having to pay for things.

Angry customers in New York, responded by starting mini riots and sit-ins. Managers at some locations did damage control by telling customers they couldn't accept any coupons ending with the serial numbers ‘1234’, which incidentally consisted of every PDF copy of the coupon in existence. KFC president Roger Eaton tried to win back customer confidence by issuing a public statement, but the damage had been already been done (2009).  

Railway advertisement shows Delhi in Pakistan: The advertisement, announcing the inauguration of a luxury tourist train, the Kolkata - Nalanda Maharaja Express by the then railway minister Mamata Banerjee, contained an erroneous map. 

 

This is what the map showed - New Delhi is no more India’s capital. It had become part of Pakistan. Varanasi is now a part of Orissa. Kolkata and Gaya are two islands in the Bay of Bengal, and the north Indian city of Gwalior is now a part of Maharashtra. (March 2010).

Karnataka advertisement stars farmer who committed suicide: A farmer shown in a Karnataka Shining advertisement had committed suicide after he failed to repay his loans.  The advertisement has a smiling farmer singing praises of the Yeddyurappa government.  But the truth was that the farmer, Nagaraju from Mandya district had committed suicide as he couldn't pay off his debts(Dec 2010).

SM Krishna reads Portuguese minister's speech at United Nations, Washington: India’s then external affairs minister SM Krishna, inadvertently read out the speech of the Portuguese foreign minister at a UN meeting. He realised his mistake a couple of minutes into his speech and went on to read the correct speech but the damage was done (Feb 2011).

Pakistan Navy goofs up: An advertisement issued by the Pakistan Navy for a multi-national exercise prominently featured images of Indian Navy warships even though India is not among the countries participating in the manoeuvres being held in the Arabian Sea. 

The full-page advertisement for the Aman-11 exercise, which appeared in The Nation and Nawa-e-Waqt newspapers, featured images of the Indian Navy's Delhi, Godavari and Talwarclass warships under the slogan: “Together for peace”. (March 2011). 

New Delhi: Delhi's state government put out an advertising campaign on the occasion of World Sparrow Day.  The advertisement carried a picture of the ‘Eurasian tree sparrow’, which is neither found in Delhi nor in most parts of India, mistaking it for the ‘Indian house sparrow’.

The picture had been downloaded from the internet and while the environment department officials accepted the error, they said the idea was to depict a sparrow which is what the advertisement did (March 2013). 

Big OOPS by Macy’s:  A catalogue of Macy’s that was mailed to customers had quite a bargain. The advertisement listed a $1,500 sterling silver and 14-karat gold necklace for just $ 47. The advertisement was supposed to be $479, but a copy editor left off the “9″. Dozens of customers showed up at a Macy’s store to snap up the deal before Macy’s caught the mistake and put up signs saying there had been an error! (April 2013).

Google goofs up, shows PoK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) as Pakistan:  Google Insights of Search shows the Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir as a part of Pakistan. (Nov 2013).  

 Following this, the Government of India issued a notice to the internet giant Google for the same. "Any wrongful depiction of Indian map and its boundaries is liable for action under the India Information Technology Act. Google was asked to immediately correct this inaccuracy by the Sachin Pilot, the then Minister of state for telecom and IT. 

RBI goofs up, puts invalid notes in circulation:  The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued currency notes carrying the signature of its former governor D Subbarao, who retired in 2013. 

Amid reports of goof-up in printing of notes, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that the new notes bearing signature of former Governor D Subbarao are legal tender and the process of changing signature was underway. (March 2014).

France’s Train operator SNCF: landed itself in a mess. Its new trains delivered by Bombardier proved to be a major goof up. The trains that were delivered were too wide to be used in the existing network of platforms. SNCF has ordered 200 new trains at an astounding value of over twenty billion dollars (over 120,000 crore Indian rupees). 

The rail operator RFF calculated the dimensions and gave it to SNCF who passed it on to Bombardier. RFF made all calculations based on platforms made 30 years ago where as in reality France still has many platforms made over 50 years ago. SNCF will have to spend over 68.4 million US dollars as it will have to redesign the existing platforms. In all over 1000 platforms will have to redesigned. (May 2014).

17th Article published in HANS INDIA (6th October 2014). It is about Goof UPs!

17th Article published in HANS INDIA (6th October 2014). It is about Goof UPs!

 

E-Version of the article 

World’s best (worst) goof ups – part I

October 06,2014, 02.57 AM  IST | Dr M Anil Ramesh

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“Bite the wax tadpole, brings your ancestors back from the grave and a car that says I will not go”. The first is how Coca-Cola would sound phonetically in the Chinese language, the second was the translation of Pepsi’s slogan, “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation,” and the third is how ambassador Nova car would sound to Spanish customers. In Spanish Nova means no go. 

A goof up is a stupid mistake. Companies, governments and even famous personalities do goof ups. Some of these are plain funny but many of them lead to tragedies or even severe financial losses.  Many goof ups lead to loss of face and prestige to the organisers or even the country.  

Postal Stamp released during the Asian Games 1982: 

Commemorating the Asian Games the Postal department had released a stamp. The stamp created a furore. It had a scene from the Mahabharata – the swayamvar of Draupadi. The story goes like this – Drupad, her father designed a wooden fish that was suspended from the ceiling. A bowl full of water was placed on the ground. The suitors had to see the eye of the fish in the reflection and nail it with an arrow. Arjuna nailed the fish and walked away with Draupadi.

The stamp released showed Lord Krishna (considered a brother by Draupadi) shooting the arrow even as Rana Pratap the Rajput king (wonder what Rana Pratap was doing in Drupad's court?) watches on in total perplexity. How the stamp was passed and allowed to be printed in a country that prides itself on its history, mythology and centuries old culture is still a mystery!

Lessons to be learned: Many claim to be experts in Indian Mythology and culture. They give instructions correctly but need to check and recheck the final copy especially the visual imagery. Mistakes once made can’t be corrected. They will exist in the annals of the history as mocking reminders!

Safety inspectors forget to replace a valve at the ‘Piper Bravo’ oil rig: 

This led to a massive explosion. Oil workers had to be evacuated from the Piper Bravo oil rig after an explosion. The explosion killed 167 of the 226 men working.

During a routine check, inspectors removed and replaced all safety valves, except for one, which was never put back. Unaware that the safety valve was missing, a worker pushed the start button, and gas began to leak, leading to a loss of 3.4 billion US dollars in repairs (1994).

Lessons to be learned: Safety is every one’s business. All should be involved and know the importance of safety. Overriding technology should be installed that would override any manual mistake to see that such tragic accidents are not repeated.  

NASA uses the metric system while Lockheed Martin uses the English system when building a satellite: 

A team of Lockheed Martin engineers used the English system of measurement, while the rest of the team used the metric system for a Mars orbiter. The use of two different measurement systems prevented the spacecraft's navigation coordinates from being transferred from a spacecraft team in Denver to a lab in California. The orbiter was then lost in space and NASA lost $125 million. (1999).

Lessons to be learned: Can we possibly have a software or an app that would pop up when calculations (either in English system or in the Metric system) especially the type of calculations when experiments as serious as the ones carried out by ISRO or NASA are attempted.

Flyover: 

A flyover constructed at Tank bund in Hyderabad become the visible example of a goof up that a government can commit. The flyover was half completed before the government realised that it did not know where to land (on the tank bund side) the flyover. The contentious issue was due to some political issues that got connected with the landing of the flyover and it was a visible symbol of governmental inaction for many years. Finally the flyover got its landing on the lower tank bund (2001). 

Lessons to be learned: Proper planning is needed when attempting mega projects. Project managers need to anticipate difficulties, problems and bottle necks. Otherwise loss of opportunity and wastage of public money is a big possibility.

Foot over bridge: 

The GHMC (the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation) built as many as seven foot over bridges at a cost of seven crores. One of them at Mehdipatnam had to be pulled down immediately. It was in the way of the PV Narasimha Rao express high way flyover that connects the city with the Rajiv Gandhi international airport.  As many as four other foot-over bridges had to be dismantled to make way for the proposed metro railway network (2009).

Lessons to be learned: Coordination and cooperation is needed by various departments that are involved in carrying out public work. They need to work together like well-oiled machines. All the departments should be signatories for any work that involves all of them to avoid any inconvenience for the general public.  

An advertisement issued by the police force in Pakistan's Punjab province featured the logo of its counterpart in India's Punjab state: 

In an advertisement issued by the Pakistan Punjab Police where they asked the people of Pakistan to help end terrorism, the logo of the Indian Punjab Police was used. The logo on the left is that of the Pakistan Punjab Police and the logo on the right is that of the Indian Punjab Police (2009) 

Lessons to be learned: Expect that outsourced work will have mistakes. Develop healthy skepticism.  Advertising copy need to be checked again and again. The buck will stop at the advertiser and not the advertising agency. 

Firefighters die in an elevator: 

Six firefighters died in a Thane fire accident. A fire had broken in a 14 floor apartment in Thane, Mumbai. The six fire fighters had gone to the Thane apartment to extinguish the fire. The tragic goof up committed by the firefighters – they got into the lift (elevator). The cardinal principle in firefighting – ‘never get into a lift doing a fire’. It is very common for the lift mechanism to fail in a raging fire. It is also very common for the electricity boards to cut off electricity supply during a fire so avoid more damages (October 2009).

Lessons to be learned: Following Mandatory drill is sacrosanct. No one can make any exceptions in following mandatory rules and regulations at any time even in the time of emergencies and massive tragedies that unfold suddenly. 

Pakistani Air chief featured in Indian ‘national girl child day’ advertisement:  A government of India advertisement featured the photograph of a former Pakistani air chief alongside Indian icons in a campaign to mark ‘national girl child day’.

The advertisement was an appeal to stop female foeticide and it showed some accomplished names from different fields like Kapil Dev, Virender Shewag and Amjad Ali Khan and alongside, it had the photograph of a former Pakistani air chief in uniform, identified as Tanvir Ahmed Mahmood.  Pictures of then PM Manmohan Singh and congress chief Sonia Gandhi also figured in the advertisement (Jan 2010).  

Lessons to be learned: In the present times many things have been made easy by Google. Anyone can become an expert by simply googling. Expect that many of the google images could be wrong. Google downloaded images and matter need to be checked and validated before using. 

World's best (worst) goof Ups - Part - V

 15. NEW DELHI: The Delhi's state government's advertising campaign on the occasion of World Sparrow Day on Wednesday carried a picture of the Eurasian tree sparrow, which is neither found in Delhi nor in most parts of India, mistaking it for the house sparrow.

It was an ironic reflection of the plight of the sparrow, declared Delhi's state bird last year when it had all but disappeared from the city. The matter would have escaped attention but for the massive number of bird lovers in Delhi.

Some furious bird lovers called the environment department while a discussion was launched on social networking sites.

The picture had been downloaded from the internet and while the environment department officials accepted the error, they said the idea was to depict a sparrow which is what the advertisement did.

"For a large part of the public, the bird in the ad is a sparrow and it becomes immaterial that it is the wrong species. We managed to get the message across. The difference would have been evident to only a trained eye. However, such an error should not happened and will recur in future," said an government official.

 

16. NASA uses the metric system while Lockheed Martin uses the English system when building a satellite: A team of Lockheed Martin engineers used the English system of measurement, while the rest of the team used the metric system for a Mars orbiter. The use of two different measurement systems prevented the spacecraft's navigation coordinates from being transferred from a spacecraft team in Denver to a lab in California. The orbiter was then lost in space, and NASA was out $125 million. (1999)

17.   Safety inspectors forget to replace a valve at the Piper Bravo Oil Rig: This led to a massive explosion. Oil workers had to be evacuated from the Piper Bravo Oil Rig after an explosion. The explosion killed 167 of the 226 men working.

During a routine check, inspectors removed and replaced all safety valves, except for one, which was never put back. Unaware that the safety valve was missing, a worker pushed the start button, and gas began to leak out leading to a loss of 3.4 billion US dollars in repairs (1994)