Someone at the Miami Herald was either asleep at the switch this morning, or in total denial about what happened last night. Because this morning, the Herald ran a Macy’s ad congratulating the Miami Heat on the their NBA title. Here’s the ad:
Let’s look at how wrong this really is.
First, and most obviously, the Miami Heat did not win the title. The Dallas Mavericks did. Ok, so we’ve got that out of the way. Next: Macy’s has this ad ready just in case the Heat win so they can run it the morning after. That part is fine. But even if Miami won the game last night, they still would have had to play a Game Seven. So there was no way in hell this ad was supposed to be in the queue for this morning anyway. And finally, take a gander at the banner at the top that screams Dallas won, and the story analyzing the Heat’s loss. How do you even think to place this ad there?
Layout guy: “Hey Jim, where should I put this almost full-page ad congratulating the Heat on their championship?”
Jim: “I think it will fit nicely on page 11D. That piece on how the Heat lost the Finals can fit around it nicely, I think.”
Layout guy: “Great. Hey, did you hear what President McCain said last night?”
So whomever is in charge of this ad must have just heard “oh, the NBA Finals are over? Let’s run the Heat ad.” Meanwhile, Heat fans who just wanted to move on had this gut-punch of an ad staring at them in the face while they were… I don’t know, doing whatever it is people who read newspapers do nowadays. I don’t read them anymore. I have this thing called the internet.
But I know someone saw it. People who really like the Heat saw it. And someone at Macy’s definitely saw it, and is now pretty upset that the Miami Herald made them look stupid. Way to go.
