Generally speaking, and not just because I toiled at Ogilvy for five of the best years of my so-called career, I have a great deal of respect for the work they do for IBM. It's engaging, smart and breakthrough. Though I can't buy anything IBM makes, I still feel good about the company and if my personal fortune hadn't been wiped out by Madoff, I'd likely feel good about investing in the company.
I came across this ad in the digital version of The New Yorker, which arrives in my email box about 18 hours before the paper version arrives in my analog mailbox. About four pages in, I saw this typographic monstrosity (I was only able to copy the left page.) Would it have killed anyone at Ogilvy to bring the word chain up to line one of the headline? Supply chain is a compound adjective. A chain saw is something else altogether. In any event, someone wasn't minding the store. Or decided that the very arrangement of the type was more important than the actual meaning of the words.
