I’ll have the aromatic duck …

Printing typos are an occupational hazard.

Some are harmless and go completely unnoticed, but others can kick off World War 3 before the blame certificates are off the press.

One which did cause a bit of a stir was the story of the party conference chocolate bar howler, which I wrote about a few weeks ago.

No sooner had it gone live on LinkedIn than my good friend Stuart Mason popped up in the chat to share an hilarious episode of his own.

Back in the day, Stuart printed millions of takeaway menus, and one Chinese client was furious about an absolute whopper of a typo on dish No. 87 – their Aromatic Duck.

They’d proofread it and signed it off, but they only spotted the mistake after thousands of menus had already hit people’s letterboxes.

The mistake?

Look to the right of the ‘D’ on your keyboard, and the Aromatic Duck had taken on a whole new meaning.

It can’t have been pleasant at the time, but after a furious exchange of blame-game top trumps and ritual door slamming, the customer left.

But then something very interesting happened.

Eight months later, he returned to order another 30,000 menus and requested that the typo be left in place.

When asked why, he said it was because it was the most talked-about dish ever.

In fact, it went on to be his best-selling dish.

Those who say there’s no such thing as bad publicity may have a point.

Sometimes, standing out from the crowd needs a touch of creative mischief

Food for thought?

Until next week.

Alec