French advertising campaign ©Daily Mail
Vagabondish is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Read our disclosure.
France’s tourism bosses spent more than £500,000 on a ad campaign to showcase northern France, and the French Mediterranean coast only to discover that one of the images used is of a South African beach.
The advertising campaign–an attempt to lure British holidaymakers to France during the Olympic Games–shows a family running on the beach with an Olympic related slogan.
Unfortunately, the beach used in the poster wasn’t located in France, but in Llandudno, a suburb of Cape Town. The mistake was spotted by London fashion photographer Bradford Bird, who grew up in South Africa and recognized the familiar outcrop of rocks.
The British advertising agency in charge of the campaign has taken responsibility for the incident and French tourism officials have replaced the image on their website after being made aware of the mixup.
Read more at the Daily Mail.