What's the most embarrassing mistake you've ever made in your career, and what did you learn from it?

Replies8

  • @Caleb Wynne Yikes! It's always hard when you disagree with your client... we've all been there! Thanks for sharing :D
  • @Elizabeth Mellor Ouch!!! Your manager sounds really great - and that sounds like some pretty solid advice. Thanks so much for sharing!!!

  • @Caleb Wynne Thanks Caleb! E-marketing isn't my speciality at the best of times, I'm print rather than digital, and agree that it's UX could be improved, especially for the :)
  • My client wanted to run Google Ads on their competitors business name. I advised against it however they wanted to go ahead. I created the campaign and duplicated the best performing ads into the new campaign. Of course these ads had dynamic keyword insertion meaning it appeared as if my client was advertising as their competitors. They received a cease and desist letter :/
  • @Elizabeth Mellor I feel like Mailchimps UX is so terrible that user errors happen far too easily.
  • Way back when I was promoting club nights in London, I once accidentally put my mum's phone number on the information for a club night I sent to the person designing our flyer. Needless to say, she wasn't best pleased. :'-D
  • Lol, my most embarrassing mistake was almost a decade ago when I sent a MailChimp template (complete with Chimp cartoons) to a client mailing list of 1000+ despite several successful test attempts.

    Having almost died with shame, I confessed to my boss and he just said to me "mistakes happen, but make sure it doesn't happen twice" and we never spoke of it again. From this I learned two things;
    1) You can be made to look a fool at any point, but it's best to own your mistakes
    and
    2) My manager dealt with it so calmly and with no fuss, which meant that I respected him much more because of it - and this is the kind of manager I want to be. Plus it definitely improved my attention to detail - I always triple check everything I have ever done since!

    I do have an inbuilt fear of MailChimp now though....

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