Spice Hunter has a cow

PETA, please don’t take it out on me! New ads for The Spice Hunter line of cooking spices and sea salts are out, and the spokes-cow does not look very pleased.  Ad agency execs at Advertise Here of San Luis Obispo, Calif. dressed Pumpkin, the big red bovine, in a straw hula skirt.  May I repeat: The cow is named Pumpkin. The cow has been dressed in a skirt. An agency rep points out that Pumpkin may look moody, but she is not. This is her serious "Zoolander" modeling look. The agency is also quick to mention that in the day of computers and PhotoShop, Pumpkin’s photo is the real deal with no touch-ups or manipulation. Pumpkin is a resident of the Cottontail Creek Ranch in San Luis Obispo. “Her owner says she has always been a poser,” said Heather Hellman, an agency rep. Pumpkin’s beefy 140” waistline will be seen on sales sheets and point-of-purchase displays, to promote the 10 varieties of Grill Shakers spices.

—Posted by Celeste Ward

Published on April 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Get well soon, Paula Abdul

After watching American Idol this season, I was beginning to wonder why Paula Abdul was acting trippier than the average Valley Girl. Not only did she sway to the music like a sorority chick just before last call, she slurred, stammered and slipped through her usual gushing commentaries. In an upcoming issue of People, Paula puts my fears to rest, assuring the Idol faithful that there is no rum in her iconic Coca-Cola cup. Instead, she is on medication for Reflex Sympathetic Disorder, a painful disease that has plagued her for most of her life but only was recently diagnosed. Sure, she may burst out into dance pretty often, but it’s only because she’s finally feeling good. Yet unaddressed are some of the side effects of the meds. I don’t know, but considering her unvarnished praise of even the most mediocre AI performers (read Scott Savol), they might allay aural pain, too.

—Posted by Deanna Zammit

Published on April 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tom Waits udders a complaint about an Opel ad

We are accustomed to celebrities getting annoyed when their likeness or creative output is used illicitly in advertising, but we think that Tom Waits has raised such complaints to an art form. He described the recent use of a Waits imitator in an Opel commercial in Scandinavia, as like, “having a cow’s udder sewn to my face. Painful and humiliating.” (Hmmm. Sounds like he has experience in this area, but we'd rather not delve any further.) Waits, who is exploring his legal options, says his shtick has been used to sell cars in Europe twice before, in an Audi ad in Spain and a Lancia ad in Italy.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on April 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4)

KFC puts the fried back in "F"

It turns out that the ‘F’ in KFC is going to stand for fried again. Officials at the fast-food chain have come to this stunning conclusion as in their latest attempt to reconfigure the restaurant around contemporary tastes, whatever those are. KFC will “banner the name” Kentucky Fried Chicken, according to this story in USA Today, in the launch of new concept store today in Louisville, Kentucky that plays up the chain’s southern roots and is supposed to expand to 49 other domestic outlets in the next year. The rethinking also includes a new, updated logo of the Colonel, in which he dons an apron. (Although, in what may be a sign of continuing schizophrenia, there’s no mention we could find of the changes at the company Web site.) Whatever you think of KFC’s return to its roots, we think the timing couldn’t be better, since the big health news of the week is that carrying around a few extra pounds might not be so bad for you after all.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on April 21, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Filed under KFC

At least it’s not a Spongmonkey card

This Mother’s Day, Quiznos is offering an alternative to the traditional card and chocolates cliché, ’cause that’s so yesterday. For moms out there who just can’t get enough of Baby Bob, Quiznos’ talking “celebrity spokesbaby” and former sitcom star, direct your attention to the company’s Web site, where you can craft your own e-mail greeting from frisky Robert. A picture and pre-recorded message from the tike provide an alternative to “over-priced flowers” and “silly greeting cards,” according to the company. Says Quiznos: Bob “blends baby appeal with a sophisticated 40-year-old personality.” Again, we ask: And that’s a good thing?

—Posted by Lisa van der Pool

Published on April 21, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Filed under Quiznos

A boomlet of baby Benedicts?

Those dismayed by the selection of the very orthodox Joseph Ratzinger as pope might calm themselves by couching it in the rhetoric of Howard Dean and Paul Wellstone: The cardinals simply chose someone from the Roman Catholic wing of the Roman Catholic Church. (You could also boycott this blog about the new pontiff.) As pundits try to forecast the influence Benedict XVI will exert on the wider culture, they’ll no doubt comb through the writings of Benedict XV—including an encyclical in praise of Dante. The one thing I’d bet on, though, is more people naming their babies Benedict. And not a moment too soon. A Web site in which the Social Security Administration lists the most popular baby names over the years tells us that Benedict doesn’t even make it into the top 1,000 names for boys.

—Posted by Mark Dolliver

Photo: Arturo/Mari/Agence France Presse/Newscom

Published on April 20, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

The case of the missing Giants

The San Francisco Giants have started the season a lukewarm 6-7, but their ads are hot. Posters of Barry Bonds, Moises Alou, Jason Schmidt and J.T. Snow, created by Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, have been disappearing from city bus shelters—15 of 80 have been swiped so far citywide, and a new one is reported missing every day, according to the agency. The ads are being replaced as soon as they are lifted. The Giants are combating the thievery with two upcoming poster giveaways at lovely SBC Park: J.T. Snow on Saturday against Milwaukee and Jason Schmidt on Tuesday against the San Diego Padres.

—Posted by Celeste Ward

Published on April 20, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (5)

TBWA\C\D makes the weather disappear

Nothing stops a newspaper reader in his tracks like a printing error—or what seems to be. That’s the reaction TBWA\Chiat\Day’s Craig Crawford and Rui Alves were counting on when they designed this clever ad for Infiniti (click on it to see a larger version). Flipping through the paper casually, you come upon what seems to be a weather page with all the data missing. Three-day high/low forecast? Nothing—in any of the dozens of cities listed. Weather map? There are no pressure zones, temperature readings or pockets of precipitation anywhere. (Maybe the U.S. is blanketed entirely with snow?) Your five-day? More of the same. Only when you see the full-color ad tucked at the bottom (“With intelligent all-wheel drive, the weather doesn’t matter”) do you realize you’ve been had.

—Posted by Gregory Solman

Published on April 20, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Jerome Corsi’s explosive new spot

Jerome Corsi, one of the authors of Unfit for Command, the book that attacked John Kerry’s Vietnam record, has authored a new book, Atomic Iran. To help tout his new tome, Corsi and filmmaker Tim Watkins crafted this TV spot, which broke yesterday in markets including Dallas and Los Angeles. It shows New York City streets, along with Corsi quotes like “Terrorists don’t stockpile weapons, they use them.” Footage of a mushroom cloud closes out the ad.

—Posted by Lisa van der Pool

Published on April 20, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

The darker side of viral marketing

Surely FedEx’s competitors can make something of a USA Today news item from Monday, as summarized on the HealthScout Web site: “Samples of the potentially deadly flu virus mistakenly included in thousands of laboratory test kits have turned up in FedEx warehouses in Mexico, Chile and Lebanon, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). A WHO official said for reasons unknown, the kits were never delivered to their destinations but were kept in the warehouses under lock and key, USA Today reported on Monday.” In this case, that’s just as well, since it made it easier for health officials to locate and destroy the errant samples. But if you wanted to send a deadly virus hither and yon, you’d certainly think twice about trusting FedEx to do the job, now wouldn’t you? We await ads from UPS, DHL and others that assure consumers, “We wouldn’t let your shipment of lethal pathogens languish in a warehouse.”

—Posted by Mark Dolliver

Published on April 20, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you don’t have anything nice to blog ...

Interesting story the other day in The New York Times about blogs, bloggers and companies that fire employees caught blogging messages they don’t approve of. What about freedom of speech? Well, remember, your employer has rights, too. Among them is the right to fire you pretty much at will for pretty much no reason at all (unless you’re under contract, but that’s for the privileged few). The Times story tells of a Delta Airlines flight attendant who posted some racy pictures of herself in uniform on her Web site. She got the boot, as did Google employee Mark Jen, for musing about the company’s financial condition in a personal blog (for more info, you can Google him and get 34,500 hits in .08 seconds). If you value your paycheck but still feel an irresistible urge to spew less-than-politically-correct thoughts about the hand that feeds you, take this advice from digital-rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Blog anonymously. The group recently posted a manual with lots of technical advice on how to do just that. For the truly paranoid, there’s even a special traffic router called Tor that hides your IP address (or so they claim). Of course, if you have a huge mortgage and college bills to pay, maybe you should just come out and say what you really think. You know: This is the best darned company in the country. No, make that the world.

—Posted by Steve McClellan

Published on April 19, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Wisconsin, advertising’s latest twins

The Boynton twins of Madison, Wis., (not shown here—click on the link to see them) are getting a taste of what it must be like, on a smaller scale, to be Britney Spears. Ever since one of them (we can’t keep track of which is which, frankly) began appearing in a new ad campaign for the University of Wisconsin’s hospitals, complete strangers have been approaching them to tell their life stories. So far, the twins seem pretty amused by all the attention. But given the addictive nature of fame, it’s always possible they’ll resort to something drastic once the novelty of having one’s (or one’s sister’s) face everywhere wears off. (Heck, we caught a snippet the other day of one of those first-season Apprentice runners-up saying he’d pay $50,000 to be on another reality show.) Can an audition for the Boyntons to become the next Doublemint Twins be far behind?

—Posted by Aaron Baar

Published on April 19, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

The classics: old and in the way?

The classics are doomed as an influence on modern culture—or rather, even more doomed than they used to be. An article in The Independent, a British newspaper, says a technological breakthrough is suddenly enabling researchers to enhance the legibility of some ancient papyrus texts that were unearthed in Egypt more than a century ago. The documents had mostly been too decrepit to read. But now, thanks to infra-red gizmos and satellite-imaging technique, the trove of ancient material is revealing its secrets. “In the past four days alone,” the newspaper wrote, “Oxford’s classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia.” The progress made so far portends a dramatic increase in the the number of “great Greek and Roman works” available to modern readers. That’s a shame. The great appeal of the classics, after all, has been that there aren’t too many of them. Get to know a dozen texts really well and you can be considered an expert in the field. But now, if technology can abruptly expand the bibliography, prospective fans of the classics will rightly feel they’d be placing themselves at the mercy of the Fates. Can you blame them if they decide to skip Sophocles and company altogether?

—Posted by Mark Dolliver

Published on April 19, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Those healthy Starbucks employees

We’ve never really understood where he finds the time, but Jim Romenesko, the Poynter media-blog guru, continues to operate a pair of groovy side-blogs: The Obscure Store and Reading Room, which celebrates weird news, and Starbucks Gossip (tagline: “Monitoring America’s favorite drug dealer”). On the latter this week is an interesting link to a Chicago magazine piece about why artists in the Windy City are eager to work at Starbucks—primarily, for the healthcare insurance. Tapping the artist community is a good move, too, as Starbucks looks for smart and personable employees. Now if we could only do something about that weird disclaimer on the bottom of Starbucks cups.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on April 19, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

For sale: extreme Christian T-shirts

A while back, we wrote about baby clothing with peachy slogans like “Bitch better have my bottle” and “Sir Craps-A-Lot.” Now, get ready for extreme Christian clothing. Stores in Kansas are selling T-shirts with lines like “Satan sucks,” “To Hell with the Devil” and the ever-so-tolerant “My God can kick your god’s butt.” Yes, they have gotten some hate mail. But as one store owner says, “Our shirts are a little extreme, but I think God is spreading the word and having the youngsters shout out their faith.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on April 19, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3)

A Tax Day stunt that really made ’em sweat

The after-business-hours party at the mammoth post office on 32nd Street in New York City was in full swing at 8 p.m. last Friday, Tax Day. Eleventh-hour filers waited dozens deep at windows for their April 15 stamp and scratched out their forms with blotty, government-issue pens. Still others wrestled with big yellow books titled Taxes for Dummies. (Tip No. 1—Don’t wait until tax day!) And there to capitalize on the sweaty mess was Mitchum, which seemed to have hired actors to further lather up the crowd. Not only did they hand out non-functioning calculators—thank you very much!—but they reclined in barcaloungers with an air that indicated they couldn’t possibly know what the teeming masses were up against. Sure, the Mitchum Men were calm, cool and collected, but the crowd was not in the mood to be sold to, certainly not by actors who smelled as if they swabbed even the soles of their feet with the stuff. And don’t get me wrong, but having someone jump out of his recliner and bellow “You look like a Mitchum Man!” at you does not have a calming effect.

—Posted by Deanna Zammit

Published on April 18, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mini-taxis that are pretty honking cool

Hey, who needs overpriced cabbies in smog-inducing, gas-guzzling sedans when tourists can pedal around town for free on these ad-friendly bikes? Spain will soon have these covered tricycle-like taxis available for tourists to wheel around Valencia, coste libremente. They work like a bike, with pedals, but also have an electric motor for some extra oomph. A similar version was used in Berlin. We’re not sure if these could play out in the States (they might prove extra-challenging going up Bush and Jones in San Francisco), but it looks like one of those win-win situations. What about Seattle? Peddle around, see the sites, get exercise, save the environment. Any takers?

—Posted by Celeste Ward

Published on April 18, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Return of the King, with a PG rating

After reintroducing the Burger King by showing him in a man’s bed, inspiring claims both of homoeroticism and homophobia (considering the awkwardness when the King put his hand on the guy’s knee), it seems Crispin Porter + Bogusky is trying to portray a bit more of a wholesome image of the King, while keeping his oddball edge. In two recent spots, he makes just as an abrupt appearance but keeps his distance and pets only the dog. In one ad, he turns up on a doorstep with a Western Omelet Croissan’wich on a platter; in another, he appears at a window with an Enormous Omelet Sandwich. Both ads seem to feature gratuitous shots of the men’s female mates somewhere in the background. In “Dog,” after spotting the King lurking in his yard, a man turns with a puzzled expression to his wife or girlfriend washing her face in a bathroom in the distance. When he turns back around, the King is smack in front of him in the doorway. In the other, “Curtain,” a woman passes by in the hallway in the far background while a guy yucks it up with the King. The plastic-headed character still has an unsettling quality about him, but both spots end with exaggerated happy-go-lucky play—in one, the King rolls around the floor as the dog licks his face; in the other, he’s got all sorts of animals (a bunny, a deer, a squirrel, birds) flocking to him in a Snow White-like scene of purity. Last time we saw the King, wasn’t he pushing a bombshell in a swing at the racy David LaChapelle-directed “Fantasy Ranch,” starring Darius Rucker? Can’t wait to see where he’ll turn up next.

—Posted by Eleftheria Parpis

Published on April 18, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (5)
Filed under Burger King, Parpis

A life less ordinary (in L.A.)

“I walk around my house naked.” “I look in people’s windows.” “I own leather pants.” Unusual messages are appearing around Los Angeles, on billboards and sidewalk clings, in nightclub bathrooms and on gym locker-room mirrors. On brightly colored backgrounds, they’re hard to miss. And they’re partnered with the Web address, www.amiordinary.com. Crafted by Dentsu’s Colby & Partners for Beverly Center, an eight-story mall known for its high-end boutiques and rooftop views of the city, the messages are meant to convey the “Less ordinary” attributes of the mall’s fashion-forward shops and shoppers, says Rick Colby, president and creative director of the Santa Monica, Calif., agency. “When you’re serious about shopping, you go to Beverly Center,” he says. Those intrigued enough to visit the Web site can “rank themselves in terms of normalness,” Colby says, via a multiple-choice “fab or drab” questionnaire. Results teetering on normal? “Keep the hope alive. Consistent visits to Beverly Center would add so much more panache to your life,” the site advises. Barbara Bach Garrison, marketing and sponsorship director for the mall, admits the “Shop less ordinary” project “was a tall order, [with] a somewhat different tactic. But the big-picture brand idea is great, it really speaks for itself.”

—Posted by Randi Schmelzer

Published on April 18, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)