I’m skeptical that Old Navy’s latest bargain clothing line of U-shirts was a mistake. I dont think it was, (yes, I did that on purpose).

Old Navy recently produced a ton of t-shirts sans an appropriate apostrophe and it made news headlines for, supposedly, a marketing mishap.

That said, the spelling error got free press coverage, where if they were just printed, they would have just sold to their existing customer base.

Take me, for instance. I haven’t shopped at Old Navy since high school – hell, I couldn’t tell you what any of their clothing even looks like, but if you showed me one of their “limited edition” t-shirts, I would make an immediate connection to (perhaps a brilliant marketing) mistake.

So I ask, is it a bad thing to get noticed for a bad thing?

In the case of Old Navy, I don’t think so. It’s not like they did something malicious – killed a seal, punctured the ozone, or broke a sub-sea oil pipe.

Hindsight is always 20:20, and I’m pretty sure they planned on making the news with this latest round of university-themed t-shirts no one [present at college game-day] will actually notice.

I highly doubt this was a mistake.