So began the now famous "Red Phone" commercial for Hillary as the camera focused in on two young children snugly nestled in their bed. Only problem was that the photo had been taken 10 years ago and one of the girls is now 18 years old and, wouldn’t you know it, a Barack Obama supporter.

It’s not exactly a major political scandal. Just a minor embarrassment for the Clinton people who had to grin and bear it while the young lady did the rounds of television talk shows pointing out that she was actually working as a volunteer in the Obama campaign.

The scene was what those in the business call a stock photo. Those are photographs for which anyone with rights to the scene has been compensated and has signed a release giving permission for their future use.

When I worked on Madison Avenue, many years ago now, I had an embarrassing moment with a stock photo. It involved an ad for a large chemical company. The stock photo depicted a man in the act of releasing a bowling ball.

Generally an agency is pleased when a client’s ad generates some response but this one triggered dozens of letters pointing out that the bowler in the photo was releasing the ball with his wrong foot forward. As the creative director behind the ad, it fell to me to answer the letters. At first I thought there was a simple explanation; the art department had flopped the photo and it was really a mirror image. But that didn’t make sense because everything in the background seemed proper.

Then I realized the bowler looked familiar. He should have. As a kid in high school, during the days before World War II, I had set pins for him at the Dumont Rec. His name was Lou Campi, a right-handed bowler who ended his slide at the foul line on his right foot, an abnormality for which he had been nicknamed "Wrong Foot Lou." By the time the photo ran in the ad – this was sometime in the early 1960s – Campi, who would eventually become a member of the Bowling Hall of Fame, had won considerable fame as one of the leading bowlers on the PBA’s televised tournaments.

I drafted a form letter with background on "Wrong Foot Lou" and even had the audacity to claim we had used it on purpose just to see if any of the readers would be astute enough to notice.

One thing I never did find out for sure, however, was whether Campi had been paid and signed a release for that photo. Since we never heard from him I assumed he did. Unless, which was just as likely, he never saw the ad.