Google Gets A Fact Wrong In Full Page Ad On Pixel

Google doesn’t need to advertise its products too much. Much less front page double ads on a Times of India. But when it does, it has a factual mistake.

Yesterday, leading dailies sported a minimal looking ad for Pixel, Google’s latest premium smartphone.

The front page of the ad was a simple announcement introducing the phone, while on the second page it highlighted the built-in AI-enabled Google chatbot whose humorous responses have been creating buzz for sometime.

The ad was clean, Google-like, and brought out the phone in all its beauty. Though, there was one little problem. The question answered by Google assistant in the screenshot from a purported chat between the user and Google assistant was wrong.

On being asked about a flight, the assistant replies with a snippet of the flight information as per Google. The flight in question, United Airlines 83, as some keen observers called out is in fact from New Delhi to New York’s Newark airport, and not London Heathrow Airport.

Interestingly (and thankfully!), asking the question to Google Assistant in real life elicits the right response. Clearly, the team or the agency in charge of putting out the ad has goofed up. We wouldn’t want to be getting on wrong flights thanks to Google!

When the company in question is Google aka holder of all the answers, a factual mistake in an ad copy is inexcusable. Obviously, the oversight met with some tut-tuts.

Ok Google, bad job of copy editing.
UA 83 flies to EWR not LHR. pic.twitter.com/cKPyYo3hQE

— Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) October 13, 2016

Incidentally, this ad came out the same day when Google CEO Sundar Pichai made a gaffe about the death of C founder Dennis Ritchie and got the date wrong.

Perhaps, using its product – Google – thoroughly before rolling out any public facing communication should be the mandate within Google. (And outside.)