HP: We're so down wid da kidz! Look at... er, Smithers, what DO yoof look at these days? So desperate was HP's desire to get down with the kids that it made a child-like error in a job ad aimed at recruiting graduates. University leavers should forget trying to bag a role at one of the new breed of tech firms because there's plenty of positions in the, er, marketing department up for grabs at the grand old lady of …
Unfortunately proof reading is a skill that seems largely lost nowadays, scarily I've seen PR people drafting press releases without any proofing what so ever.
A proof-reader might tell you that "whatsoever" is usually written without spaces, and that you shouldn't join two sentences with a comma. A semicolon or colon would be appropriate here.
Sorry.
Well, there's always the old joke that hp marketing would sell sushi as "cold, dead fish", so I'm not surprise they'd be a little stumped! But apart from the massive editorial fail (was it because they've laid off so many office staff there was no-one to proof read?), I'm surprised hp are even trying direct marketing. I though all the large companies used cookie-cutter job specs, tick-box interviews and recruitment agencies nowadays?
"Our marketing teams make sure we’re sending out the right messages to people and businesses all over the world, so they know about what we and how we can help them."
Re-read that last phrase
"So that they know about what we"
&
"and how we can help them"
I'd say that the message they are sending is that their people are not too bothered about accuracy. As for the help, probably to spend lots of money for something that is of poor quality and doesn't do what it should.
You'd be suprised. My kids (15 & 17) routinely spot minor typos on posters when we are out and about. In fact, I had the gotofail code open in an editor the other day and the eldest (whose closest brush with coding is having just started doing a bit of scripting in game mods) glanced over my shoulder in passing and asked if I'd made a mistake by writing 'goto fail' twice!
This is from a teenager whose ambition is to be a firefighter: I'm sure a large dose of FPS must be increasing their observational skills!
Direct quote...
""What do you think about when you hear the name HP? Is it printers? Laptops? Maybe it's Beat Audio? Most people do. It's understandable – these are our products people see every day," the ad stated."
The trademarked name is "Beats Audio" -- which they license, by the way. And it's not a product, it's a feature.
Quality control -- alive and well at HP.
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