Advertising Is Good For You

Northwest Airlines branding takes another hit

Those two Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot by 150 miles the airport where they were supposed to land -- originally it was thought they missed their intended stop because they'd fallen asleep -- have made it into the Urban Dictionary.

Yesterday's Word of the Day was Northwest Nap, defined as:

A very deep sleep where you are unable to hear telephones, text messages, and even the Air Force.

Used in a sentence:

Dude, I was so tired yesterday afternoon, I took a Northwest Nap. My girl called me 15 times and I didn't hear a thing.

If you'd like to receive a daily email with the Word of the Day from Urban Dictionary, go to the website.

 

Glenn Beck and a few advertisers demonstrate how democracy works

Glenn Beck, appearing on the July 28 episode of "Fox and Friends," exercised his right to free speech by calling President Obama a "racist" who has a "deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture."

As a direct result, Proctor & Gamble, Lawyers.com and Progressive Insurance have now exercised their right of association by pulling their advertising from Beck's TV show.

God bless America.

Source: Huffington Post

Potential flaw in Jaked brand isn't all that was exposed

Jaked, a brand of swimwear favored by competitive swimmers for its supposed ability to help them post better times, suffered an unfortunate malfunction at the Mediterranean Games yesterday.

Italian swimmer Flavia Zoccari had to sit out a championship race because her Jaked suit ripped open in along the back seam.

Oops.

Racers may think twice before donning the suit for future races. Missing a race one has trained for for years just because a swimsuit tore open has got to be a crushing disappointment.

Source: Daily Mail

You rotten kids, get away from that nice candy brand!

Poor Smarties. Yummy. Tart. Sweet. Perfectly packaged for Halloween. And now being inhaled by dumbass kids. Perhaps "fake smoked" would be more accurate.

There's no shortage of parents, pediatricians and educators worrying about the effects inhaling Smarties will have on children. So you'll excuse me for worrying about the effect all this misuse and undeserved negative attention will have on a nice candy brand that's been around since the 1930s.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Whoever is responsible for marketing Cheetos is probably falling off a chair laughing

Typically, marketing managers freak when they hear that their product was used as a weapon during a domestic assault. I think we can forgive the folks at Cheetos for not being alarmed by this story. In fact, considering the popularity of snack foods among young people, a story like this might actually drive a spike in sales.

Sources: Ananova,Bits & Pieces

Seeing company executives suffering is strangely gratifying

To counter recent claims that tasers may cause serious damage to those subdued by the electroshock guns, Taser International company executives volunteered to be tasered on film. Very compelling stuff. Click here to see the taser execs getting zapped.

I can't help but wonder why the footage of Kathy Hanrahan, the only female executive to be tasered on video, is so brief. Did Taser International think it would be improper to show a woman writhing on the floor in pain? Or did she lose control in some embarrassing way that resulted in her screen time being cut short?

Sugar Industries Ads Take On the Food Police

I'm old enough to remember when Kellogg's Corn Pops were called Sugar Pops. Can you imagine? Today, people talk about sugar as though it were arsenic.

This campaign is on behalf of Sugar Industries. The text is the same on all the ads. It reads:

Who wants to live in a world were sugar is forbidden?
Sugar is a source of pleasure essential to your wellbeing.
It also contributes to your daily glucide requirement.

The campaign makes one symphathetic to sugar. And it makes sugar detractors seem like a Big Brother-ish menace.

Good! Because I'm not surrendering my Cadbury without a fight.

Source: Coolzor

Are you ignoring 5% of your customer base?

The phone company almost turned off my service.

I'd signed up for paperless billing -- instead of a bill, one gets an email and the option to pay the bill online -- but I had no way of knowing that the phone company's technology isn't compatible with my Mac.

Not only does the telecommunications giant's technology not know what to do with a Mac, it isn't programmed to tell me that the transaction it just thanked me for completing isn't valid.

Today, more than 5% of computer users are using Macs.

5% doesn't seem like much -- unless you look at it as 5% of your customers.

If your technology discriminates against Mac users, it's time you did something about it before you permanently tick off and lose that 5% of your customer base.

Starbucks' Concern for the Environment is Called into Question by its Treatment of a Bike-Riding Store Manager

Here's a story that hasn't yet reached viral proportions although it has all the makings of a public relations mess.

BikePortland reports that a former Starbucks store manager was hassled by his district manager for riding his bicycle to a meeting. The district manager considered it "inappropriate" and "unprofessional" for a store manager to arrive at a meeting via bicycle. Four days later, said manager was transferred to another store 16 miles away.

A hard-working, civic-minded guy got screwed by a petty boss...This is the kind of story that makes people angry enough to pass it along to their friends; which would not be a pleasant outcome for Starbucks, a company that claims to be concerned with the environment.

In case you're wondering what happened to the store manager, he filed a complaint with Starbucks, nothing came of it, so he got a new job with another company.

Source: Starbucks Gossip

Political Advertising That's Sleazier Than Usual: The Phone Sex Spot

Democrat Michael Arcuri is District Attorney for New York's Oneida County and he's running for Congress.

A couple of years ago, an associate of his mistakenly dialed an 800-number sex line from Arcuri's hotel room. Phone records support the claim that it was a mistake: the sex line shares the same last four digits as the state Department of Criminal Justice Services, which was dialed correctly a minute after the first call was made.

Friday, the National Republican Congressional Committee began running a misleading ad. According to the Los Angeles Times:

The ad, which began airing Friday, shows Michael Arcuri leering at the silhouette of a dancing woman who says, "Hi, sexy. You've reached the live, one-on-one fantasy line."

Even Arcuri's GOP opponent Sen. Ray Meier describes the ad as "way over the line."

Needless to say, Sen. Meier was not consulted about the ad.

Arcuri is threatening to sue for libel, while the National Republican Committee stands by the ad.

You don't need me to tell you how sleazy and unethical advertising like this is.

 

Left: Michael Arcuri. Right: Ray Meier

Addendum

Michael Arcuri won the congressional race.

Please remember that the next time a politician or his/her political machine try to justify sleazy advertising tactics by saying the American people respond to that sort of thing.

You can only imagine my glee when I learned there was a video of Disneyland Paris Disney characters having simulated sex while in costume.

Oh, c'mon, admit it, you think it's funny as hell, too.

Disney, of course, was outraged. And they've made a big honkin' deal about the whole thing, garnering lots of press on both sides of the Atlantic with their indignation and pledge to find those responsible.

With promises of seeing Pluto spanking Chip and Dale before joining Minnie Mouse and the Snowman for a simulated menage-a-trois, I googled my way to the video, tantalizingly titled, "L'orgie de Mickey."

Alas, the promised plushy porn was a let down. I imagine if one is fluent in French, the video may offer a few titillating tidbits, but for the rest of us it's simply a snooze. (Mais certainment, I will let you judge for yourself; the link is at the end of this post.)

I think Disney was stupid to call attention to this video. A couple of days on the Internet and it would have been forgotten. Instead, it's being written about in The New York Times, Yahoo News, and Lord knows where else, besmirching the brand and subjecting it to ridicule.

Okay, you've read this far so I owe you. Click here to see "L'orgie de Mickey" for yourself.

InSinkErator is suing NBC for "irreparably tarnishing" its product.

Let's say you have to buy a new garbage disposal. Can you imagine yourself thinking:

Any brand but InSinkErator. I think they're dangerous because I watched a young woman on a TV show show off her superhero powers by putting her hand down a drain and turning on the InSinkErator garbage disposal so it chopped her fingers off. Her fingers grew back. I don't think my fingers would grow back if I used an InSinkErator to chop them off. I'm staying away from that brand.

And yet the company that manufactures the InSinkErator presumes we're all just that dumb.

Emerson Electric has filed suit against NBC because a character on the show Heroes demonstrated her supernatural powers by purposefully mangling her fingers in a garbage disposal that just happened to bear the InSinkErator name. Emerson thinks the scene "casts the disposer in an unsavory light, irreparably tarnishing the product."

If Emerson Electric had been my client, I would have suggested they ask NBC for permission to use the scene promotional purposes, with a  concept something like, "Strong enough to stand up to a superhero. Imagine what it does to potato peels." I bet NBC would have let them, too.  

Source: Media Post's Around the Net

Product Packaging: household cleaner mistaken for sports drink

Fabuloso is an all-purpose cleaning product from Colgate Palmolive.  Does it look like a sports drink? Judge for yourself.

A group of medical researchers plan to release a study Monday critical of Colgate Palmolive's "poor choice of packaging" and recommending that it be changed. Because at least 94 people thought Fabuloso looked enough like a sports drink to drink it -- and not all of them were children.

Fortunately, the health risk from drinking Fabuloso is low.

Should Colgate Palmolive have seen this coming?

Personally, I don't think there's anything a company can do to protect itself from adults dumb enough to drink from a bottle whose label features a mop and bucket.

As for protecting kids, Colgate Palmolive has now added a child-safety cap to the bottle.

Issues of child-proof cabinets and parental supervision aside, I'm kind of surprised Fabuloso didn't always come with a child safety cap since every cleaner under my kitchen sink has one of those annoying caps.

Source