Lohan and E*Trade settle milkaholic lawsuit

Lindsay Lohan's idiotic lawsuit against E*Trade doesn't look quite as idiotic this morning, as the actress reportedly walked away with some cash when E*Trade decided to settle rather than have the case drag on. At issue was Lohan's claim that the "milkaholic" named Lindsay in E*Trade's Super Bowl spot from Grey clearly referred to her—just by the first-name reference. Aside from alienating Lindsays the world over, it remains unclear why Lohan would want to claim that an annoying, relationship-wrecking floozy would have been clearly inspired by her. But she is notoriously in need of money these days, so apparently anything goes. If E*Trade airs another Super Bowl spot this winter, it should really get its money's worth and name a character Madonna.

Filed under Controversy, E*Trade, Grey, Nudd
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Fox supposedly doing E*Trade babies movie

Twentieth Century Fox is reportedly working on a movie about the E*Trade babies from Grey's ad campaign. It goes without saying that this movie will suck, although it might do quite well at the box office, in the vein of the Look Who's Talking films. The plot will supposedly involve a group of talking babies who make their way across a playground. Lindsay Lohan is not attached to the project. Perhaps Baby Bob could make a cameo as a surly 10-year-old raging milkaholic who imparts some hard-won wisdom about the perils of overestimating one's charms.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under E*Trade, Fox, Grey, Movies, Nudd
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E*Trade baby responds to the Lohan lawsuit

Jay Leno chatted with the E*Trade baby about the Lindsay Lohan lawsuit during his Tonight Show monologue last night. Mildly amusing, though you have to sit through a pre-roll ad and about a minute of non-E*Trade Leno jokes before it begins.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under E*Trade, NBC, Nudd, Parody
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Lindsay Lohan sues E*Trade over milkaholic

This is awesome. The New York Post reports that Lindsay Lohan is suing E*Trade for $100 million, claiming that the boyfriend-stealing "milkaholic" named Lindsay in the company's Super Bowl commercial above from Grey Advertising was clearly modeled after her. "Many celebrities are known by one name only, and E*Trade is using that knowledge to profit," Lohan's lawyer says. "They're using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn't they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody's talking about it and saying it's Lindsay Lohan." It's anyone's guess why Lohan would claim that a two-bit skank was clearly inspired by her. Still, if she has stepped down to milkaholism from all that booze and blow, she might actually live to see 25. A rep at Grey tells the Post that the name Lindsay is "just used a popular baby name that happened to be the name of someone on the account team."

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Controversy, E*Trade, Grey, Nudd
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Let the E*Trade talking babies speak for you

The E*Trade talking-baby spots have a constituency, considering they're back for a third year (in ads from Grey) in this Sunday's Super Bowl. To pump up interest ahead of the game, E*Trade is checking off the viral box by mimicking CareerBuilder's popular Monk-e-mail effort from 2006. With BabyMail, you can have one of the E*Trade babies speak your message in an e-mail to friends. There's also, of course, the option to upload your own baby's photo. This is a close cousin of the Elf Yourself phenomenon that's been recycled to death. The genre never gets old for advertisers because it actually works. For whatever reason, people like to upload their faces onto things and make animations say stuff. Oddcast, which worked with CareerBuilder on Monk-e-mail, built the tech for BabyMail.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Filed under E*Trade, Morrissey, Oddcast, Super Bowl
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Are the Super Bowl brands still on Twitter?

Last month, we wondered how long all those Super Bowl ad characters would last on Twitter. The answer was a bit surprising, if only because the personality with the highest potential—the mulleted and inventive PepSuber—was one of the first to drop off. The Pepsi-SNL crossover character quickly racked up over 1,000 followers but abruptly stopped posting on Feb. 24. H&R Block's Tax Guy Murray, the man threatened with death for boning up the Grim Reaper's taxes, deserves credit for playing out his ad's story line. On the day of his supposed passing, March 11, Murray posted a flurry of updates about when Death came calling. (Don't worry, Murray escaped unharmed.) The spammy but prolific E*Trade Baby has kept up his shtick pretty consistently. But strangely, it's SoBe Lifewater that takes top honors with its Sobeworld account, which has the most followers (1,196) and has been impressively interactive with other users. Sadly, this probably means we're in for another 10 years of dancing lizards.

—Posted by David Griner

Filed under E*Trade, Griner, H&R Block, Pepsi, SoBe, Super Bowl, Twitter
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Will the Super Bowl brands stay on Twitter?

Laptop keyboards nationwide are stained with wing sauce and nacho cheese following the intensive Twittering of Sunday's Super Bowl. But it wasn't just football and advertising fans doing the talking. Brands themselves used the popular social site to get characters from their commercials chatting with viewers in real time. Results were mixed at best. I actually found that PepSuber's Twitter banter somewhat redeemed Pepsi's strange Saturday Night Live crossover ad, especially when he corrected my misspelling in a post by offering to make the missing letter out of a paperclip. H&R Block, a veteran brand on Twitter, gets a passing score for its TaxGuyMurray account, which chronicles Murray's brush with death in the ad itself. Then there's the E*Trade Baby, who basically just spammed everyone. But here's my real question: What's going to happen to these accounts? The three I just mentioned were still active on Monday, but how long will their corporate overlords keep it up? Will these little-loved characters be quietly abandoned one day when they've lost all their cultural novelty? Not that I doubt the lasting power of PepSuber, but come on, he didn't even survive his own Super Bowl commercial.

—Posted by David Griner

Filed under E*Trade, Griner, H&R Block, Pepsi, Super Bowl, Twitter
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E*Trade's talking baby is ready to rise again

Waaaa! That's not the sound of E*Trade's talking baby crying from hunger or diaper rash. (It's a talking baby, after all, so it could simply say, "Jeez, am I hungry!" or "Ow, this diaper rash is a pain in the ass!") That's me crying, because the insufferable brat is back in another Super Bowl spot by Grey. I know these ads are popular, but I can feel my brain cells dying each time that stock-savvy cherub pops onto the screen. This year, the crib-based assault is spilling over like a bottle of formula into Facebook, Twitter and online videos. Waaaa! That's the sound of everyone who's tired of this cutesy, lowest-common-denominator approach and longs for something better—like another spot from GoDaddy, which is high-concept by comparison. It's also, alas, the wail of countless investors, from E*Trade and elsewhere, who are seeking a few hours of escape by watching the Big Game only to be faced once more by that precocious preschooler looking to pick our pockets as the market continues to slide. Waaaaa!

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under E*Trade, Finance, Gianatasio, Grey, Super Bowl
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