An unsuspecting U.S. blogger realised this week that her family were depicted in a retail advert in the Czech Republic of all places! A family friend was travelling in Prague when he spotted some familiar faces grinning out of a poster advertising a grocery store’s home delivery service.

He took a photograph and emailed it to his friends in St Louis – translating the caption that promises “we will prepare and deliver your requests in two business days”.

The picture had previously been show-cased on Danielle Smith’s blog ExtraordinaryMommy.com and other social networking sites, including momlogic.com

Danielle had no idea the image could be used, and admits she was naive in putting up a high-resolution version on the website.

The smiley Smiths have now gone global. The site has registered 180,000 hits but Danielle writes that she is blocking the small percentage “who are commenting only to say that a member of my family (or all of us) are ugly”.

The shop owner was equally shocked. Mario Bertuccio, who runs the Grazie store in Prague, said he found the image on the internet and thought it was computer-generated. He has promised to remove it and email an apology to the Smiths – and said if they lived nearer he would send them “a bottle of good wine”.

At McCann we’re delighted whenever our work goes global, our family photos on the other hand…