[rburgoss]

I believe them. I don't think any agency's quality control would be so bad as to let this slip through the cracks. It's poorly executed AND misleading. That's a really bad combination.

In my experience in the advertising and commercial artwork production, there is one type of add agency whose lack of contact with the real world (competition), leads to errors such as the ones discussed on this thread. That is: IN HOUSE AGENCIES.

Many large companies worlwide create their in house add agencies because they think the volume and add material needs do not justify to outsource such needs, and at the same time, they can save substantial sums of cash by cutting "the middle man" in the production-creation-distribution-production & broadcasting this material.

In house agencies are great when the product and marketing material deals more with "informative" issues than with real world "durable" consumer products, such as technology, traveling, cars, etc. In other words, in-house are good for supermarkets, drugstores, foodstands and groceries, but not for ipods, cameras, cars, airline tickets or home appliances.

I dunno if Ricoh is resorting to in-house practices for their advertising and promotional material, but truth be told, it feels like that. BTW, in-house agencies are the main users worlwide to use commercial stock images and clipart, and an unbelievable amount of royalty free photos and clipart.

[EarlVonTapia]

Ming Thein (I have read his Facebook updates) raised the smoke immediately, because it was a very bad practice. No one asked him for any permission. It took a couple of days for him to get an apology from Japan.

I've commented on the Ming Thein episode. You can read my response here.

For those that don't want to click the link, Ming Thein was being a big unreasonable baby.

I can't comment on the other points you brought up as I'm not familiar with them.

I wonder if there is a website that tracks the number of mistakes that large corporations make, to see who is screwing up the most. Maybe there can be some sort of competitive mistake league, with an annual championship to determine the most mistakiest company of the year.

I think Apple might take the league cup this year.

[wed7]

KS-1 is Doomed no matter what apology Ricoh makes.

[normhead]

Most company names are misleading advertising. Quaker oats employs not one Quaker. Never did, the guy who started it was aMethodist. But who would buy Methodist Oats? If you start complaining about misleading advertising, this is pretty minor.

[BrianR]

So much stuff these days is purchased sight unseen over the interwebs, especially Pentax stuff that can be pretty hard to find in stores. Sure you should go by the actual published dimensions if size is important to you and you don't have a chance to handle it, but given there are no visual clues that the girl in the photo is a giant, it's a pretty deceptive ad. The charitable course is to chalk it up to incompetent marketing staff.

[Nass]

Fwiw, I tend to agree - I don't think 'misleading advertising' is the thing that stands out with me, or even the fact it's a Pentax ad without a Pentax being used (evidently). Photoshop incompetence, marketing department incompetence and dumb looking ad yes, rest no. Ultimately it probably matters little though, what a drama

[mrNewt]

Most probably they use the stock photo for creating the concept, before shelling out the money and actually do it. Is cheaper that way.
Most probably someone goofed up and in the actual release they added the concept images rather than final version (whatever final version that was).

As a designer I can tell you that is normal to use this kind of approach.
Is like a story board of how the ad might look or what kind of pose/setup they are looking for the final picture.
I believe them.

This is hardly a Photoshop incompetence... is more of failure of approving the right material before going live... and failure from QA team.
This should of failed in staging and it should have never gotten the approval to be release to production. Someone is going to get fired for sure... .

[rburgoss]

Most probably they use the stock photo for creating the concept, before shelling out the money and actually do it. Is cheaper that way.
Most probably someone goofed up and in the actual release they added the concept images rather than final version (whatever final version that was).... .

Totally agree. Back in the days where "cut & paste" actually meant using scissors and glue, this sort of things never happened because everything was hand sketched and ONLY the final artwork used real photos, fonts and graphic arts help.

Today, any designer all of a sudden has "93 versions" of the same "concept", and when its supposed to be done, approved and finished, its quite easy just to send any of the "wrong" versions to the media or production.