When good marketing campaigns go bad...

No - this post is not about the idiots from Cartoon Network and Turner Broadcasting who scared Boston half out of its wits this week.

This is about a much more benign form of incompetence.

My wife and I took a trip last week. On our flight to New Orleans (a discussion for a separate post) I was reading the American Airline inflight magazine - American Way.

The cover story was about their big "Road Warrior" contest, which has been going on for months. Basically, American Airlines asked people to tell their business travel stories and the best ones win prizes. The grand prize winner gets a million frequent flier miles from American, two million Hilton points and a Panasonic Toughbook laptop.

Pretty good stuff.

The grand prize winner is a consultant from Deloitte. There is a full page photo of her, along with her profile, at the beginning of the article. In the photo, she is posed sitting on a rock, with her laptop on her knees.

And the laptop is clearly identifiable as... wait for it...

.. an IBM ThinkPad.

That's right. An IBM laptop.

You would think that with all the marketing and PR people from all the companies who participated in this promotion, not to mention the writers, editors, photo editors, designers and layout people who contributed to putting the issue together, that someone didn't stop and say "Hey! Wouldn't it kind of be a good idea if she were holding a Panasonic laptop?"

Don't get me wrong. I've made my share of editing faux pas in my day, but this one seems like a whopper.

If I were the senior marketing guys at Panasonic, I would be freaking out right about now.

P.S. While I am sure my friends at IBM PR might get a chuckle out of this, they won't get any actual business, since IBM turned its ThinkPad business over to Lenovo two years ago.

No winners here.