Are typos the latest marketing fad?

Earlier this month, news emerged of PUMA's latest billboards and store signages featuring the word "PVMA" in India. This triggered questions on whether or not it was a marketing mistake. After much talk about the possible "blunder", PUMA India revealed that it has partnered with Olympic medalist and badminton icon PV Sindhu.

In an Instagram post, the brand featured photos of the athlete in a fuchsia set with the caption "Welcome to the PUMA fam," and the hashtag #PVMA. Fans in the comments stated how the signages finally made sense, with some claiming it was a "mystery solved". The move has drawn mixed reactions online, with some netizens saying it's a bold and smart marketing move to promote the partnership between PUMA and Sindhu, a check by MARKETING-INTERACTIVE saw on Instagram.

Similarly, beer brand Coors Light released a series of ads misspelling "refreshment" as "refershment" leading up to the Super Bowl. It issued an apology claiming that it "had a case of the Mondays".

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"This morning, we released a series of ads leading up to the big game intended to make the most refreshing beer in the world look even colder, and we're aware that they didn't have our signature chill. Coors Light wants to thank everyone for letting us know about the errors. Mondays, am I right?" said Coors Light in its apology.

Soon after, the brand released limited-edition Mondays Light packaging, a play on the idiom "a case of the Mondays". In a statement, the brand said it was giving a playful nod to the kind of mishaps Mondays are notorious for.

Typos are the Achilles' heel in advertising. What could have been a strong ad can sometimes be overshadowed by a grammatical mistake or the missing of a letter, leading to social media mockery. However, in recent times, brands seem to be intentionally leveraging typos to create engagement, gain virality and use it as a tactic to reveal or announce something bigger behind the curtains.

Shouvik Prasanna Mukherjee, EVP global creative innovation and chief creative officer APAC at Golin told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that to be successful in this tactic, brands need to have the right amount of tease, with a hint of doubt and a simple 'aha' moment - all working together to capture consumers' imagination.

The PVMA campaign is a smart idea executed at the right time, he said. "Indian audiences are finally properly celebrating their sporting heroes beyond cricket, from chess to athletics, boxing to badminton. With the booming popularity of racket sports in India, incorporating the initials of PV Sindhu in PUMA’s logo felt like an apt tribute to a national icon," said Mukherjee. 

Are typos always effective?

According to Mukherjee, this won't be the first or the last campaign with brands tweaking their logos or making spelling mistakes to convey a particular message. "Any brand can potentially use such techniques to attract attention to itself or a cause - as long as the idea is aligned to its core values," he added.

As early as 2018, McDonald's flipped its golden arches on its head to form a 'W' to honour the accomplishments of women for International Women's Day. Though, users on X (formerly known as Twitter) we're not exactly loving the upside-down logo. This is especially since the fast-food giant had been accused of "ignoring" sexual harassment allegations in 2016 after complaints were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, reported Today.

Meanwhile, within the same year, KFC in the UK used a similar tactic during its chicken crisis due to a supply chain failure. The fast-food brand took out an apology ad and rearranged the letters of its name to spell out "FCK" on a chicken bucket. "With this masterstroke, they transformed a chaotic crisis into a marketing moment - and rewrote the manual for corporate crisis management," explained Mukherjee.

Jamie Thorp, senior writer at verbal branding agency Reed Words said that he loved PUMA's confidence for its PVMA campaign, but stated that Coors Light campaign "felt gimmicky".

"Our brains love spotting mistakes, and PUMA’s not the first brand to tap into this. Coors Light recently tried it with their 'refershment' billboard, which the tinfoil hat wearer in me is convinced was a not an accident. But where Coors’ response felt gimmicky, PUMA’s PV Sindhu reveal doesn’t come across as a cheap trick," said Thorp, explaining that:

The wordplay is what saves it. With that one little language twist, you get the best of both worlds: attention for your 'mistake', and then all eyes on you as you reveal it wasn’t a mistake at all.

"This could have just been a press release, but instead they made a moment out of it. And sometimes, to do that, you have to say f*** the rules," added Thorp.

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