The University communications department took the blame for creating a TV advertisement that contained a misspelled word – “enigineering.”
The commercial aired once on the Tom O’Brien show before the mistake was found and corrected. To be aired during football games and football programming nationwide, the revised commercial is ready to go.
Tim Jones, interim associate vice chancellor for web communications, said the error will result in structural changes within the communications department.
“What we are doing is changing the process to include more reviews in the process before [advertisements] go to mastering,” Jones said.
All audio/visual products must go through mastering before being sent out to media outlets. Different broadcasting networks, such as CBS and ABC, require differently formatted videos.
Pulling and changing the commercial cost “a couple hundred dollars,” according to Jones. He said he did not have the figure right in front of him, and therefore could not give an exact amount.
“Clearly the process needs some improvements,” Jones said. “We made some last minute changes before we sent it to mastering, and there was just a typo in it.”
Jones said he could not comment whether anyone would lose his job over the incident.
The University saves money by producing audio/visual products in-house. If the communications department were not on campus, then production would have to be exported to a private marketing firm.
A blog, called Pack Pride, went wild over the error. One comment, made by user Spacewolf , read, “Yesterday I couldn’t spell ” enigineer “. Today I are one.”
User Wufwuf1 posted a photo of the mistake on the blog. With a veterinary hospital scene in the background, two lines of text in large font dominated the screen: “NC State’s Vet Med is 3rd largest in the country,” and below that was, “Its enigineering program is 4th largest in the country.”
Another user on the blog commented that engineering was misspelled on his graduation program – it was spelled “enigineering.”
“We really need to stop doing **** like this,” user thewolf10 wrote Wednesday morning.
Jones made it clear that the University communications department was fully responsible.
“We clearly made a mistake and University communication is taking full responsibility for that. We have done everything we can to repair it and correct it,” Jones said. “It’s unfortunate and we are not happy that this happened, but we really are proud of the final product, and I really hope that the wolfpack family will be proud of it as well.”
The new video is available for viewing on YouTube. At 31 seconds long, it says N.C . State and its alumni provide “$7.3 billion in economic impact in North Carolina.”
