I'd be hard pressed to find a musician or singer who hasn't felt angry or embarrassed that his name was misspelled on a poster, a sign, CD or in a news story.
Marketing today is all about building your "brand." We train, we practice, we work hard at our craft, and who we are and the journey we've been on is in our name. It may feel like a punch in the gut to see your "brand" corrupted.
I wonder if early in his career Jimi Hendrix suffered such a gut punch.
Maybe he signed contracts properly; maybe his people proofread copy before sending out a press release. But somewhere down the line, low on the responsibility chain, someone was told to "Put Jimi Hendrix on the show card out front."….and so he put Jimmy Hendricks on the show card out front. I'll bet it happened.
My friend Gene Bertoncini, internationally known jazz guitarist has a huge poster hanging in his apartment from a jazz festival he played in Italy that boldly announced "Gene, Bert & Cini." He laughs about it now, but I bet he was angry when he first saw it.
Recently, Lionel Richie accepted a BET Lifetime Achievement Award and the caption on the TV screen read Lionel Ritchie! A lifetime in music and this is what he got...somebody doing sloppy work at the bottom of the media chain.
People misspell my name a lot. Sometimes it's Conti instead of Conte, "i" being more common than "e". Most painful to see was my name on a lit marquee as RoseMarie Conti. I bristled. My name is my biography. It represents everything about me.
That's identity.
The misspelling of anyone's name --famous or not, can imply sloppy work by a promoter, lack of respect, and loss of credibility. If it's your name, you may feel "dissed". I think we've all misspelled someone's name at some time. I have, and it feels terrible. I can't apologize enough. I suggest that all parties follow up and check spelling of names before they're published. Artists aren't generally on top of this, but they should be.
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