The importance of checking when your copy breaks.

in Marketing gone bad, Random Crap

I sent my friend Cat a link to these tiny metal models I love to make.  This is what Amazon passed on to her phone:

harshAnd that’s why it’s important to test how much of your ad copy shows up on a cell phone.

PS.  The missing part: “…emble them and enjoy!”

Yeah.  That does change the tone a bit.

88 thoughts on “The importance of checking when your copy breaks.”

Read comments below or add one.

  5. Members of the Double Unicorn Success Club can read all the dirty into every potential line break and abbreviated text. ~cue Beavis laugh~

  7. Also at the top it sayes 3D Black P…..I was all..hmmm…turns out, it got better. LOL

    (How the hell did I miss that? You people are awful. And fantastic. ~ Jenny)

  8. I LOVE these models. I also enjoy reading the scathing reviews by impatient, ham-fisted builders who don’t know the difference between 3″ and 3′, who are pissed that their model is 12 times smaller than expected.

    (I love how minuscule they are. It helps hide the flaws because you have to get so close to see the details. ~ Jenny)

  9. Oof, guilty of that little snafu. Too many times. Also problematic when you hit the return button on accident while still in the middle of typing your mess

  10. Lol, we actually HAVE this exact item, my husband is current building it. The Black Pearl, that is. Not an ass.

    (I could never get the very bottom to curve right but you can’t tell unless you’re not holding it. If he can do it perfectly my hat is off to him. ~ Jenny)

  12. Are those fun? I see them at the bookstore and want to buy them, but was wary. Been burned before.

    (I love them. They’re tiny and frustrating and occasionally break, but very satisfying and you can complete them in a few hours. Plus, they’re simple enough that Hailey can help and it’s nice to build something together. We do it while we listen to Thrilling Adventure Hour or Nightvale. I just bought some of the Star Wars ones and they seem like they’ll be fun. You’re supposed to use needle-nose pliers but I use tweezers. Barnes & Noble sells them cheap every once in awhile. ~ Jenny)

  15. Yes, sometimes we need to take an objective second look. I once wrote about being a fashion consultant, and said, “I grew to like the idea that no matter what my customer wore, she had my taste all over her.” A proofreader suggested that I re-write that.

  19. That is so funny and true. I’m sure I’ve messed up since I like to tease in the first sentence of a paragraph and then save the punch line for the last.

  22. A friend of mine sent me an evite, where the subject line was “Love, cocktails, games, fun.” But it was cut off on the notification, so i didn’t see the ‘tails, games, fun.’ part.

  23. My cousin used to be the county tax assessor. She said she was always getting checks made payable to Tax Ass. Not sure if that was an abbreviation or a statement.

  24. Jenny – I just have to give you fair warning that the use of the word “ass” will cause you to get very strange Google queries in the future (well, probably a bit weirder than usual). I found this out the hard way on my own website. I never knew there were so many people who wanted to insert things into their butt. It’s rather disturbing.

  25. Personally, I think there are some instructions and/or warnings for things that should be a little more harsh.

  27. I read the last sentence as ” you just poop out the pieces,” which made the “ass” reference make total sense. And really tells you all you need to know about how my mind works.

  29. Way harsh, Tai.

    In my work, the word “analysis” is used a lot. After 14 years in the business, I still giggle when the line break leaves a line ending with “anal-.”

  30. OMG! Thank you Jenny! I was floundering as to what to get my husband for his birthday and they have his favorite plane in a model kit! He can be an ass sometimes, so it all fits!

  32. Jenny, you need to go look at Architectural Digest. There’s a feature about Neil Patrick Harris’ new townhouse in NYC. Believe it or not, there’s a ton of taxidermy. I saw it at Huffington Post and they have a video that shows a bunch of the taxidermy. I immediately thought of you. Enjoy.

  34. my cousin posted a job listing for a friend in FB, and the truncated text was “prepare monthly anal…”

  35. In college, one of the assistant directors of something had such a long name that the “from” line of her emails always said Her Name, Ass. I always felt like I should respond and tell her that everyone was seeing her emails that way. I didn’t, but I felt like I should.

  37. I just signed up for a newsletters called The Penny Hoarder, and they keep sending me emails and suggestions on FB about making as much as $13,000 a year selling my poop. So, finally, apparently one CAN now pull money out of their ass, so to speak. Yes, completely off topic to your post except for, well, ass.
    If they don’t move on to another topic I’ll ass_ume I’ve been punked and unsubscribe.

  38. Ugh, I never see the error until I hit send. I’m truly not an incoherent reprobate.

  39. I think these should be the official icons of the CoB. Having said that – I LOVE the copy on the mobile site- from top to bottom, fabulous.

  40. I just checked my ass and there was nothing there….well…that wasn’t supposed to be there. Also, my husband has a horrified look on his face and is telling me that I need to go to sleep now. He really hates crafts.

  43. You gave me my first belly laugh of the day at 9:42 p.m. I love that. It was overdue. Ass can be a term of endearment. I’m sure it was when my Nana said it. At least I think so. Wait a minute . . .

  45. I have just read the “advertisement” and am now sitting here chuckling maniacally! I can just imagine some receiving that and wondering WTF? “Just pop out the pieces, you ASS!” pmsl

  51. I love those models! I have all the buildings in a little line at work. And R2D2. Which was the hardest one yet.

  52. I used to paint small metal D&D figurines and totally loved them and displayed them. I wonder if the pieces can be painted before assembly? That would be awesome!

  55. Haven’t done models since I was really little – great dinosaur plywood things. Lots of bits of splintered wood you could step on. They were super fun. Don’t know if they make them any more…or even if they sell them in the U.S. or if it was a S.E. Asian thing…..
    But while we are discussing COOL THINGS I need to mope a little bit. Jenny, I NEED this t-shirt in my life (or possibly the apron) and it’s only available as part of a Kickstarter thing and I’m really worried it’s going to fail. THIS IS WHAT KICKSTARTER DOES TO ME – IT DASHES MY HOPES TO THE GROUND LIKE …. LIKE GLITTERY HOPES DASHED TO THE GROUND. I just… well… you post about ‘the one that got away’ taxidermy critters frequently, so I figured you might understand how upset I am that I am never going to get to weird people out on the un-hip streets of Washington DC with a ‘Werewolves Not Swearwolves’ t-shirt. (Don’t want to post a link on your blog without permission, but if you want to see the glory that is this t-shirt you can see it on the Kickstarter page for ‘What We Do In the Shadows’. It’s a mockumentary about vampires in New Zealand. Independent of my t-shirt woes, I suspect you might be into it, and I have no idea where/when it’s playing in Texas.)
    Ok, done moping on someone else’s blog, off to work. SIGH. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. My chest with no werewolves on it.

  57. It sounds like one of the tiny metal models of awesome that we bought for my 12 y.o. son for Christmas that we gave up on after a few minutes because the pieces didn’t easily separate, and we were bending the shit out of them. Any tips for us? Clearly, ass was the correct word for us.

  58. Yeah, I’d be a little leary if I saw an ad describing how you have to pop those metal sheets out your a**. I mean, really.

  60. Oh, my 16-year-old daughter loves Metal Works! Did you know you can get them at Barnes & Noble? And if you’re a B&N member, the coupons they send you work on models. She also loves Lego Architecture, also available at B&N!

  64. I work for a company that services many businesses. I did change my predecessor’s unwitting abbreviation of [town] Assembly of God from Ass. of God as soon as I saw it. I also re-wrote a title— it was rather unfortunate to use the format [organization] of [town] when the organization was ([group] in Need) of (Dick Lick, MO).

  65. That’s so funny! I was reading an Amazon description recently and it cut off on dick… Finished off as Dickinson but the lack of a capitalized d and the cut off really threw the reader for a loop.

  66. Love it – I’m going to start people that they can emble their ass on over anytime they like

  71. of course the ass…. thing isn’t too bad when you read their instructions.
    “3D metal model is very precise, it will takes 30 minutes to several hours to complete build the complexity of the model, so please do not irritable when assembled, be patience, small parts must use pliers clamp downone by one, do not directly by hand to breaking, otherwise that will easily lead to operating parts break.”

  76. Hi – this comment is completely inappropriate to this post subject content. However, after seeing your post with the link to the cat in a space suit t-shirt link I figured I should share this shower curtain with you. And I mean really? When is it not appropriate to post a comment sharing a link with a shower curtain with an armour wearing, narwhale riding cat.

  77. Now I’m thinking of poor Thomas, working at the hotel in s5 of Being Human (UK), and his unfortunate nameplate.

  78. First I thought you were building tiny “mental” models, which is helpful in remembering things. And then I was excited and confused to see that your mental model/mind castle was actually a mind pirate ship. Mine would be too.

    In other news, student schedules for Freshman Literature Analysis for years were abbreviated to Fresh Lit Anal on their schedules. I did not want to admit to teaching that class.

  79. For our first Valentine’s together I gave my then boyfriend now husband the Giant Microbe plush toy of chlamydia specifically so when people asked him what we did he would have to say, “I got chlamydia.” We haven’t really celebrated Valentine’s since and I like to think it’s because he knows he could never top the first one.

  82. Huh. My uncle gave my mother an anatomical gold painted heart box for her birthday one year many years ago. No explanation. No particular reason that any of us can see for it, no family interest in anatomy or anything, no card saying ‘ha! this was so weird it made me think of you’ jammed into the aorta, just….a a gold-painted anatomical heart in a box. it was never spoken of again – completely forgot about it til seeing this post. Memories….

  84. that made me laugh… but I have bronchitis and my asthma is acting up, so rather than coughing, I squeaked and then started to cough… I am currently not as amused as I was in the beginning… but it was funny enough to make me involuntarily squeak/cough/giggle

  86. My husband’s employer has apparently decided this kind of thing is “embarrassing” and “unprofessional”, so now one of his jobs is to find and fix anything that gets abbreviated “ass”.

  87. I work for amazon, don’t worry…we all laugh at the choking hazards of so many items you couldn’t possibly imagine. I have found sex toys with a choking hazard and says WARNING not for children under 3 years of age.

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