Another pet peeve
Another pet peeve I have is with TV ads that refer to a website address that's not valid.
It is popular for businesses to advertise their website address on TV adverts, and encourage visitors to enter a particular URL for their TV ad campaign. That's not the problem. The problem is when they direct you to a URL that includes backslashes.
Take Applebees. They are currently running a campaign where people can enter videos of patrons having fun in their restaurants. The advertisement directs you to their website where one can view or add these videos. The TV ad (the one I'm referring to is currently 'airing' on the History Channel) says to "go to applebees dot com backslash realvideos", which will not work.
If you try to enter the URL http://applebees.com\realvideos it can not and will not work. URLs can only handle normal slashes (known as a forward slash or simply 'slash') - see RFC 1738 to start with and RFC 3986 for syntax.
I do not know if this problem - especially with national and international businesses - sits with the production company that created the spot, with the final copy editor, the reviewer, or even the marketing department of the business being advertised. Or is it a result of the naiveté of any or all of the above entities?
n.b.: I say 'airing' above, in quotes, because a cable network isn't actually airing anything since they have no broadcast transmitter. Satellite doesn't count.
It is popular for businesses to advertise their website address on TV adverts, and encourage visitors to enter a particular URL for their TV ad campaign. That's not the problem. The problem is when they direct you to a URL that includes backslashes.
Take Applebees. They are currently running a campaign where people can enter videos of patrons having fun in their restaurants. The advertisement directs you to their website where one can view or add these videos. The TV ad (the one I'm referring to is currently 'airing' on the History Channel) says to "go to applebees dot com backslash realvideos", which will not work.
If you try to enter the URL http://applebees.com\realvideos it can not and will not work. URLs can only handle normal slashes (known as a forward slash or simply 'slash') - see RFC 1738 to start with and RFC 3986 for syntax.
I do not know if this problem - especially with national and international businesses - sits with the production company that created the spot, with the final copy editor, the reviewer, or even the marketing department of the business being advertised. Or is it a result of the naiveté of any or all of the above entities?
n.b.: I say 'airing' above, in quotes, because a cable network isn't actually airing anything since they have no broadcast transmitter. Satellite doesn't count.