Clay Aiken fans threaten to sue record label, gaydar manufacturers

A group of women who were fans of American Idol star Clay Aiken are threatening to sue his record label for false advertising after reading recent tabloid reports that the crooner is gay. Aiken denies the rumors. The nine women, who call themselves “aggrieved consumers,” say they were duped by marketing campaigns from RCA and Sony/BMG that attracted them to the star. They claim that the record labels knew Aiken was gay but withheld the information. “This is tantamount to a manufacturer concealing information about a defective product,” the ladies state in the a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission. A spokesman for the group said, “As consumers, we feel ripped off. It is obvious now that the private Clay is very different from the manufactured packaged public Clay that was marketed to us.” Hmmm. Many of us suspected Aiken’s sexual orientation long ago. Work on that gaydar a little, ladies.

—Posted by Jim Lovel

Published on February 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (23)

Lisa Loeb: Single and selling out

With A-list actors and musicians scrambling to sign on with big name advertisers, it's time we assign a new meaning to the words "selling out." My suggestion: Trading your privacy for a half-hour time slot. It seems that '90s alt-pop sweetheart Lisa Loeb is doing just that with her E! reality show #1 Single, which airs Sunday at 10 p.m.  It’s been 12 years since she hit it big with "Stay" and, save the odd appearance at the Hello Kitty store in Times Square and a short-lived Food Network series, she’s stayed squarely off camera.  Now 37, Loeb is shucking her privacy (and perhaps her dignity) by appearing on the same network that delivered us laughingstock Anna Nicole Smith. In an AP video clip, Loeb explains that after two failed six-year relationships she’s looking for a marrying man. And while her site describes her as “a real life Carrie Bradshaw,” she comes off less fabulous than sad. (Though still cute as a button.) Besides, with bowdlerized TBS reruns of Sex and the City and the complete DVD collection, there’s no shortage of the original Carrie Bradshaw.

—Posted by Deanna Zammit

Published on February 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (7)

In 'Confederate States of America' advertising takes a sinister turn

University of Kansas film professor Kevin Willmott is sure to get a rise out of the South with his documentary send-up CSA: The Confederate States of America. But the movie that presupposes a Confederate victory in the Civil War also spoofs the ability of advertising to adapt to any historical paradigm. Instead of the Home Shopping Network, we have the Slave Shopping Network. Devices to keep your slave from running away are promoted in contemporary style, as are other similarly shocking products.  Lest Willmott be tarred with the racist brush, note that the film is produced by Spike Lee and that Willmott earned his credentials fighting for racial equality in his equality-resistant high school. Some critics found it hard to laugh at scenarios such as a Confederate flag on the moon or children reciting the pledge of allegiance to the CSA. Too close to our current reality, they say.

—Posted by Richard Williamson

Published on February 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Morrison mania gets bloody

Gonzaga’s junior basketball sensation Adam Morrison is on his way to becoming an icon. In addition to leading the country in scoring and powering tiny Gonzaga to the No. 5 ranking, he’s inspired a bizarre eBay auction, a sure sign that he’s arrived. One zealous fan tried to sell a gauze Morrison stuffed up a nostril to stop a bloody nose during a game against Pepperdine earlier this week. The fan under the basket apparently scooped up the bloody wad when Morrison discarded it. (Bloody nose and all, the Gonzaga forward dropped 26 points on the Waves, a so-so performance by his recent standards.) Bids apparently reached $64. (The auction was disabled because eBay doesn’t allow the sale of items with blood on them. Check out the helpful restrictions in the “human remains” section of eBay sellers’ policy. Who knew?) Zags coach Mark Few was hardly amused by the auction, claiming, “The stalkerazzi have reached an all-time low.” Now that Jake Plummer and Ben Roethlisberger used their sports fame to show off the charms of beards, Morrison has an opportunity to spruce up the decidedly déclassé image of mustaches. All season he’s sported a wispy stache reminiscent of Larry Bird, porn stars and middle-relief pitchers. The furry lip has become an object of derision for opposing teams’ fans. During a recent game against Loyola Marymount, Morrison was showered with “Shave your mustache!” chants during an uneven 7-point first half. He responded in the second half with a 37-point outburst, perhaps spurred on by the need to defend the mustache. Morrison, a fan of the mustachioed Che Guevara, is amused by the attention the upper-lip noise attracts. “It’s kind of funny that some people make a big deal about it, he said last month.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Published on February 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (6)
Filed under Morrissey

Where are the last few cans of New Coke?

For a product so widely despised, New Coke (aka Coke II) still gets an admirable amount of ink. Malcolm Gladwell spends three pages on it in Blink. Paul Ormerod discusses it at length in Why Most Things Fail. It’s been mentioned in the past week in magazines ranging from Forbes to Sports Illustrated (though not in the smutty swimsuit issue). Basically, if you need to trot out an example of bungled corporate marketing, this is your can. However, if it’s an actual taste of New Coke that you want, that’s another matter—and, for cultish acolytes, a pressing one. So, can one still buy New Coke? Not in the U.S., outside of eBay—it seems to have survived in some Midwestern markets until the late ’90s but was discontinued by 2002. If you really can’t live without it, you should hop on a plane to the Federated States of Micronesia. They’re apparently still selling it in Yap, one of those states. But prepare to be ridiculed. As one commenter rants on the New Coke thread linked above: “Why don’t you put … effort into things that actually matter, like your job or taking care of your families? No, you would rather search the Internet and travel over great masses of land endlessly complaining for a final sip of some stupid drink you can make yourself by mixing Coke and Pepsi. It’s the same sugary concoction, you morons.” Nicely put.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on February 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Malcolm Gladwell finally launches a blog

As Random Culture points out, Malcolm Gladwell is bringing his insights and unruly mane to the blogosphere. We knew he read blogs. (A year ago, he told us his favorite was Derek Lowe’s In the Pipeline, about pharmaceutical drugs and chemistry.) But for a while, the author of The Tipping Point and Blink didn’t see the point of having his own. But now he writes: “I have come (belatedly) to the conclusion that a blog can be a very valuable supplement to my books and the writing I do for The New Yorker. What I think I’d like to do is to use this forum to elaborate and comment on and correct and amend things that I have already written.” Now we’re just waiting for Noah Tall’s blog.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on February 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Anti-smut brigade targets ‘SI’ swimsuit issue and its advertisers

“Lust-producing.” “Highly erotic.” “Outrageous.” “Smut mag.” The American Decency Association isn’t mincing words when it comes to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. The group shot off an e-mail this morning urging parents to shield young, impressionable eyes from this rag and complain to the companies that bought ad pages in it. “There is nothing acceptable about pornography, and that is exactly what the SI swimsuit issue is,” the message says. It goes on: “Many of the corporations stoop to the same level as Sports Illustrated by using very sexual, erotic imagery and innuendo in their ads.” The group singles out four by name: McDonald’s, Wendy’s, General Motors and Dodge. We couldn’t imagine the McDonald’s and Wendy’s ads being that racy, so we grabbed our copy to check. The Wendy’s ad has zero sexual content. (It’s a guy eating a “personalized” hamburger.) And the McDonald’s ad (the inside back cover) is tame. It shows the new Spicy Premium Chicken sandwich and the line, “I’m spicy, hot & bold. Hey, maybe I should be on the cover.” Hardly something to get upset about. The ADA should have complained instead about Gillette, which promotes its double-sided Fusion razor with boob-and-butt shots of a woman in a bikini. “If you like the front,” says the copy, “you’ll love the back.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on February 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (5)

This is your brain on Super Bowl ads

Everyone knows that Super Bowl ad polls are far from scientific—but some professors at UCLA are attempting to change all that. Officials at the University's Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center hooked up five volunteers to a super hi-tech MRI during the game this year "to observe the neural impact of Super Bowl ads." (Yes, we’re a few weeks behind on this, but we’re all about completeness.) To summarize, people lie about what they like. Disney's commercial scored high in the subjects' "reward and empathy networks" while the GoDaddy spot elicited not much of a response at all, despite the prominent display of mammary glands. And then there's the FedEx "Caveman" spot, which looked like a crowd favorite in nearly every post-game ad wrap-up. That caused "a strong response in the amygdala." For those of our readers who are not brain surgeons, that's the part of the brain where our fear mechanism is located. That demonstrates, we guess, either an intense fear of getting canned, or an intense fear of death-by-dinosaur.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on February 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

What’s your state’s official dirt?

Last year Georgia rattled its citizens by introducing a second tagline, “Put your dreams in motion,” to complement its hugely popular and recognizable line, “Georgia on my mind.” Some wondered if state officials were losing their minds. This may not help: A bill introduced into the Georgia General Assembly proposes that Georgia name red clay as the official state dirt. The weird thing is, more than 15 other states have beaten Georgia to the punch. California’s official state dirt is San Joaquin soil; in Maryland, it’s Paxton soil; in Wisconsin, it’s something called Antigo silt loam. Which state will be the first to claim that their dirt is better than your dirt?

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on February 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3)

For Yahoo!, any happy person will do

Yahoo! is using a chunk of the Yahoo! Mail homepage to delineate key benefits of the e-mail program. But the stock photographs seem a little off. Perhaps they typed “happy” into Getty, downloaded the whole batch of images, set it on random and went home. The guy shown here, for instance, certainly puts the old in old flame. Another page shows a woman playing ecstatically with a billowing sheet in the wind and copy about organizing one’s bowling team. Let’s hope they’re simply preoccupied by fine-tuning the much-anticipated, supposedly transendental version of Yahoo! Mail.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on February 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

AdFreak cracks KFC's secret code

It looks like KFC is getting some buzz out of a commercial it's breaking tonight that encourages viewers to play the ad again in slo-mo to find a secret code that will allow them to—wow!—get a $1 coupon on a new sandwich. We're told that a story about the ad just appeared on CNBC, positioning it as a work-around aimed at getting DVR nation to pay some attention to an ad for once. (According to this story at Adweek.com, for some reason ABC is alone in not airing the spot with the stealth information included.) The commercial is also airing at the KFC site, so you could view it here, but it's really not much of a commercial. And besides, we figured it out already; the secret code is "Buffalo." If you want the coupon, go to the same link and type the word in. And don't forget to tell 'em AdFreak sent ya.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on February 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (12)
Filed under KFC

One reason to feel good about Citibank

Usually, the only reason to open mailers from credit card companies is to tear apart the applications for new cards at a 0% introductory rate so that someone intent on stealing your identity doesn't fill them out. So there we were, preparing to rip paper the other day after opening an envelope from Citibank, when out spilled this: "magnetic word art" using many of the same words, colors and typeface used in the "Live Richly" campaign. (A bad closeup is pictured here.) Best of all, there was no offer attached.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on February 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Denying alcohol advertisers have a problem doesn't make it go away

People who advertise alcohol for a living insist that their messages don't foster underage drinking(password required, sorry).  But at least two studies have detailed exactly how the playful promotion of adult beverages appeals to kids.  A report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest showed that the heavy beer advertising behind sporting events ($540 million for 90,000 ads in 2003) reached a large audience of children (93 percent aged 8-17 watched sports events). The advertising “creates positive associations between drinking and the traits associated with athletes and teams: strength, loyalty, endurance, success, health, vitality, fun, fitness and speed,” researchers say. “Promotion of youth-oriented events such as snowboarding, extreme sports and biking create an aura of coolness around a product – and grab the attention of a new generation of future drinkers.”  And a recent study by Washington State University noted the similarity between advertising for booze and products geared toward children. One example the researchers cited were Captain Morgan ads that used a “childish” activity – drawing mustaches on people.  A Jack Daniels ad featured a puppy. “We discovered that one of every six magazine ads for alcohol and one of every 14 TV ads appeared to target teenagers,” said Erica Austin professor at WSU’s Edward R. Murrow School of Communication.  Hmm.  Maybe we should rethink that Budweiser Super Bowl commercial in which a Clydesdale colt dreams of joining the team.  Nah!

—Posted by Richard Williamson

Published on February 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Let's hope this Luhrmann epic costs less than $20 mil. a minute

Aussie Academy Award winners Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe are set to star in an epic movie set in their native land’s outback and directed by Moulin Rouge auteur Baz Luhrmann. It will be set in the 1930s and lead up to the bombing of Darwin by the Japanese, according to this BBC story. We can only hope that Kidman and Luhrmann will do better than their last epic effort, the $60 million, 3-minute long Chanel perfume "film" that Adweek named one of the worst ads of 2004.

—Posted by Deanna Zammit

Published on February 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

iTunes hits a billion and we don't care

So the one billionth iTunes song has now been downloaded and some people got really into the whole promotion for reasons that still mystify us. Let's move on.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on February 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3)

One place you won't find the King

Sure, the King can be seen courtside at Lakers games, or canoodling with Brooke Burke on the beach in Malibu, but one place you don't usually find him is in Burger King restaurants. It's an odd disconnect, but his absence was confirmed once again during a recent trip to New England, when the family stopped at two BKs—the only evidence of the King at all was those cardboard crowns. Not even an official portrait on the wall. Here's my theory on why this is so: first, for many children—including mine—BK is the fast-feeder of choice because of the widespread perception it has better toys than McDonald's. (Too much pepper in the batter for the Chicken Tenders, but who's to quibble when a plastic Furby awaits?) Second, it's been well-documented that the King even frightens adults. Thus, you can only imagine what sort of terror he'd unleash if allowed to actually appear in the stores, as was so beautifully put by someone commenting on Soxaholix: "The King gives me the heebie jeebies, and I refuse to eat at Burger King while he is the focus of their advertising. I gotta believe that small children everywhere are having nightmares about that thing interjecting into their lives at inappropriate times. 15 years from now when BK goes Chapter 11, they'll trace it to a generation of teenagers that won't go near a BK due to childhood fears of The King ... Ronald McDonald he ain't."

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on February 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Filed under Burger King

Bloody hell, it’s those Australians again

Back in the 1980s, Crocodile Dundee got tourists to Australia by putting an extra shrimp, one at a time, on the barbie for them. The country’s new tourism campaign, which launches today, has a similar flavor, but without the Croc around to give it that extra kick, it resorts to some mild cursing in the tagline: A new Web site, WheretheBloodyHellAreYou.com, shows a new commercial in which Aussies frolic and say things like, “We’ve poured you a beer. We’ve had the camels shampooed. We’ve saved you a spot on the beach. And we’ve got the sharks out of the pool. ... So where the bloody hell are you?” Predictably, some fools are bothered by the “bloody hell” line, prompting Prime Minister John Howard to defend it. “It’s a colloquialism,” he says. “It’s not a word that is seen quite in the same category as other words that nobody ought to use in public or on the media or in advertisements.” Like, say, “wife-beater.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on February 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Advertising’s biggest pigs get some help

Advertising Women of New York have outdone themselves with the call for entries for this year’s Good, Bad & Ugly Awards. They’ve set up a hilarious Web site, Pigs Anonymous, on which well-known male creative directors, wearing pig noses, admit to certain shortcomings in their treatment of women. In the “Meet the Pigs” video, it’s clear they have some work to do. (We never thought we’d hear Nick Cohen say anything close to the following sentence: “There’s boobs from all over the world, and there’s penises from all over the world, and everyone gets to kind of intermingle, and there’s nothing wrong with any of this.” But he does.) The guys work on their problems in a second video, called “12 Step Program.” There’s plenty more to explore on the site, too. Especially in light of the Neil French affair, this site is a complete triumph.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on February 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Don’t bite Trump. Trump bites back.

Donald Trump is a man who really knows how to rub salt on an open wound. As the New York Post reported yesterday, The Donald took great exception to some comments Martha Stewart made recently about The Apprentice. She claims to have been under the impression that when her version of the show debuted, her first task would be to fire Trump and take sole possession of the franchise. The obvious question is: Martha, what fantasy-inducing drug have you been taking to a make you believe such a thing? Donald’s response was much nastier. Let’s face it, he can be a mean guy when he wants to be. He doesn’t write thank-you letters to people he fires. But he did write a letter to Martha, published by the Post, in which he says Martha made up the bit about her thinking she’d get to fire him. “Essentially you made this firing up just as you made up your sell order of ImClone,” he writes. He ends the letter with a threat: “Be careful,” he warns Stewart, or he just might launch a daytime program and really show her who’s boss. Or maybe he’d do one in late night, called The Bigger Idea with Donald Trump.

—Posted by Steve McClellan

Photo: NewsCom

Published on February 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

My fish is bigger than your fish

Just to clarify, this is an ad for fishing bait, not condoms. Mark Dolliver reviews the ad in Portfolio over at Adweek.com.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on February 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (10)

It’s a sleeveless T-shirt, not a ‘wife-beater’

Perhaps I am callous and unfeeling and reprehensible, but I have a hard time getting upset about the term “wife-beater” when it refers to sleeveless undershirts. Some people have a much easier time. It’s an issue right now in Boston, where a flier advertising a sale on “wife-beaters” has provoked some outrage. (In case you’re unclear on what a wife-beater looks like, Wikipedia may jog your memory: “Countless drunk and disorderly domestic-abuse suspects who were arrested on the TV show Cops wear such shirts.”) Advocates for domestic-violence victims are condemning the flier, and yes, I suppose the word could be left out of advertisements. Anway, the guy who approved the flier sounds remorseful and unusually candid about his stupidity: “It’s a slang expression, but we should have known better not to use it. I am supposed to read every word. Sometimes it’s busy or I am lazy. We are working on a retraction.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on February 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (33)

Can you handle the Arrogant Bastard?

It’s obvious, but still I chuckle at the packaging blurb for Arrogant Bastard Ale: “This is an aggressive beer. You probably won’t like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory—maybe something with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign aimed at convincing you it’s made in a little brewery, or one that implies that their tasteless fizzy yellow beer will give you more sex appeal. Perhaps you think that multimillion-dollar ad campaigns make a beer taste better. Perhaps you’re mouthing your words as you read this.” The Web site is a bit of a snooze, although it does include a funny piece of animation, a photo of a Marine holding up a bottle of Arrogant Bastard apparently while flying an AV-8B Harrier aircraft (is that a good idea?) and this FAQ clarifier: “Q. Is ‘Bastard’ a bad word? A. No, numbskull. There are many Bastards in this world, both literal and figurative. There is no shame in being a Bastard. To learn more about Literal Bastards, click here.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on February 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ice Breakers: to share or not to share

Packaging is sometimes the unsung hero of great brands or products. There’s the practicality of the Coke fridge pack, which has been credited with bumping sales of the brown stuff. Then there’s the dazzle factor. We personally rue the arrival a few years ago of the mostly silver Heineken “keg” can, which displaced the green can, one of the most beautiful package designs in brand-dom. And now comes the slyly cute, little round container housing a new Hershey’s product: Ice Breakers Sours. AdFreak was the lucky recipient of this schwag through a Hershey’s PR effort. In fact, the product is so new, we can’t find it on the company Web site. These little suckers pack a delicious punch. But back to the point. The round disk has two openings. One is labeled “to share” and opens wide enough for someone to pluck out a strawberry, berry splash or raspberry lemonade flavor of the white-speckled candies. The other is labeled “not to share,” and not a single AdFreaker could get so much as a finger into that one. Unfortunately, we didn’t notice both openings when trying to share these delectables and only used the “not to share” option. This meant shaking the container into an open hand, inadvertently dispensing two Ice Breakers Sours instead of one. This chagrined our greedy self. Then we noticed the “to share” slot. And basked in its cutesy cleverness.

—Posted by Kathleen Sampey

Published on February 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (6)

Brian Dewan, a true American original

Since we’re on the subject of politics: There’s a great set of old videos posted on Daily Gusto that show Brian Dewan in a red blazer, backed by trippy watercolor images, singing old political songs. The videos originally aired on Manhattan public access during the election season in 2004, and they’re priceless. If you’re not acquainted with Dewan’s work, you’re missing a strange and wonderful talent. A musician, visual artist, craftsman and filmstrip producer, Dewan performs his show “Dewanatron” frequently in New York, at which he plays a set of rickety homemade instruments. (“They make all previous and future instruments obsolete,” Dewan promises on his Web site.) For years, Dewan lived in Brooklyn with one of the Johns from They Might Be Giants; he opened many of their concerts early on and designed the album cover for Lincoln in 1988. (He also designed a David Byrne album cover.) His résumé includes two stellar albums of his own, Brian Dewan Tells the Story and The Operating Theater, on which he mostly plays an electric zither and an autoharp, both of which he built himself. You can buy those albums here. If you’re in the market for something truly unique, you won’t be sorry you did.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on February 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ski-resort marketers barely scrape the surface

While Boing Boing is busy dreaming up corporate sponsors for Tube stops, let’s ponder another such question: what marketers might do if given free rein over a ski resort. To a certain extent, unfortunately, it’s already happened; during our first trip ever to Stratton in Vermont this weekend, we came across a lift—initially broken—called American Express, sponsored by the credit-card company. And marketers such as SoBe and Mountain Dew have a thing for the terrain parks at Okemo. But why stop there? Surely Gillette could sponsor a quad lift and rename it the Quattro, or Red Bull could affix its name to a double black diamond. Snow-making sponsored by Sno-Cones? The possibilities are endless.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on February 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)