This is not the first example of this I’ve seen, but it’s particularly annoying. I’m talking about when a national brand (or at least an out-of-region company) tries to show they’re “one of us.” Invariably they fuck it up. Call it a pander fail.
I grew up in Philadelphia and currently live in one of its suburbs. Geico is currently running a radio commercial that’s a particularly shitty version.
It starts with that stupid gecko saying how we in Philly love Geico because we always know a better way of doing things (or something like that). It cuts to some nitwit saying (paraphrase), “You want to get from Manayunk to Center City? No need to take the Schuylkill Expressway. Take Ridge Avenue to Kelly Drive, but if you see brake lights, don’t be a hero. Just take the Parkway. Problem solved!”
Just one problem. The Parkway isn’t an alternative to Kelly Drive. Kelly Drive is how you get to the Parkway (dumps you off right in front of the Art Museum and the Rocky steps). If Kelly Drive is backed up, the only way you can immediately get to the Parkway is if you have a teleporter.
Jesus Christ, Geico, don’t you know anyone in Philly you could have run this by? Dopes. “We get you, Philly!” Yeah, fuck you.
Any examples from your neck of the woods? Some carpetbagger pretending to be a local?
At least the writers of that ad probably have the excuse of ignorance. Hollywood inevitably gets Los Angeles geography totally wrong about half the time a film or TV show takes place there…right in their own fucking backyard.
It’s bad enough they won’t look at a map*, but for LA, they live there! As does the director, the actors, the cameraman, the editor…someone could say something.
*If you’re leaving your girl in LA, and going back to Oklahoma via Albuquerque, by the time you get to Phoenix, you’ve gone hundreds of miles out of your way, Jimmy!
The Geico ad in the Chicago area makes fun of a guy who puts ketchup on his “Chicago Dog.” Yeah, it’s a running thing that you don’t put ketchup on a hotdog. But I lived in Chicago for 14 years and my wife was born and raised there. We’ve never heard a Chicagoan refer to a hotdog as a “Chicago Dog.”
I had a lawyer, during voir dire, tell us (prospective jurors) that the case was like an episode of Columbo, where you don’t know what happens right away, you have to wait to get all the information before coming to a conclusion.
I should’ve just told the judge not to let me on the jury because I decided this lawyer is an idiot.
I don’t have an example for the OP, but my pet peeve is newscasters who can’t be bothered to learn how something not from their area is pronounced. The other day it was some twit trying to pronounce Inupiaq and coming up with something like "InnuPEEkak. Granted, it’s not a common word, but a simple Google search would have cleared it up.
I have the same issue with my hometown, Green Bay, which is mostly mentioned on TV in the context of the Packers; it frequently gets pronounced as one word, with an emphasis on the first syllable (i.e., “GREENbay”). It’s two words, both syllables equally stressed.
What was particularly noticeable was when former Packer player Paul Hornung worked as an announcer on Packers TV broacasts; he pronounced it GREENbay, and he lived and played there for a decade!
(And, don’t get me started on pronouncing the state name “WES-con-sin,” or even worse, “WEST-con-sin.”)
