Energizer won’t find this idea so charitable

Add this to your Potentially Disturbing Trends file. Panasonic Battery Corp. of America, whose Oxyride Extreme Power batteries compete with the Energizer Max brand, has launched a Neuter Your Bunny initiative. The effort includes a Neuter Your Bunny Day (June 14) and a $10,000 donation to the House Rabbit Society to promote bunny neutering. (As far as we can tell, the House Rabbit Society is for real.) And, of course, there’s a Neuter Your Bunny Web site. While Panasonic is paying lip service to the issue of unwanted bunny pregnancy—a phenomenon that peaks, evidently, in the aftermath of Easter, when some people unwisely give rabbits as gifts—it’s clear that the real target is the Energizer Bunny. If this ploy works, what’s next? One can easily imagine an Aflac competitor sponsoring a Neuter Your Duck Day or a Geico rival targeting the private parts of geckos. Nor would the trend necessarily be confined to nonhuman spokesmen. We can only hope it stops before some marketer launches a Neuter Fabio campaign.

—Posted by Mark Dolliver

June 6, 2006 | Permalink