If you want to buy environmentally friendly products when you’re out shopping, you’ll find plenty of options these days. The trouble is that “green,” like “organic,” is considered a very loose concept by lots of manufacturers. The Chicago Tribune put together a list of ways you can spot the fakes on your next shopping trip. Here’s an easy rule of thumb: the words eco, earth, green, friendly, gentle and kind are all frequently used to give the impression of being environmentally friendly, but they’re essentially meaningless marketing words. [More]
Newegg: Buy Your Mom A Hitachi Magic Wand For Mother's Day
By April 29, 2010
Newegg suggests you buy, among other things,a Hitachi Magic Wand for your Mom for Mother’s Day. Um. [More]
Franken and Schumer To CEO: We Hate Facebook's Privacy Changes
By April 27, 2010
Recent and proposed changes to Facebook’s information sharing policies have Senators Franken (D-MN) and Schumer (D-NY) a little irritated. They’ve penned a letter, along with Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Mark Begich (D-AK), asking Facebook to reconsider their new opt-out procedure, and to take further steps to keep user’s personal details, such as their interests and friend lists, private unless they chose to share them. [More]
55th Floridian Dies After Being Tased, Should They Be Banned? Tasers, That Is.
By April 27, 2010
Derrick Humbert, 38, became the 55th Floridian to die from a Taser. He was riding his bicycle and officers asked him to stop. Instead, he rode around the corner and fled through a yard. The officers in pursuit tased him as he tried to scramble over a fence, shooting 50,000 volts of electricity into his body. 28 minutes later, he was in a coma in the ambulance, and was pronounced dead at the hospital. [More]
Facebook Kills More Of Your Privacy For Cash
By April 20, 2010
Yesterday, Facebook announced an awesome new feature that lets anyone see your current city, hometown, education, work, likes, and interests, even if you’ve set your profile to private. Will this benefit individual users and their friends? Not unless the only thing you remember about your dear friend is that they enjoy leather-play and you’re willing to scroll through reams of headshots to find them. No, this new privacy erosion is for the real clients of Facebook: advertisers, and the data-mining minions that toil on their behalf. However, there are two ways to be totally private. [More]
The KFC Double Down: What A Restaurant Does When It Gets Desperate
By April 19, 2010
It seems like the best promotional campaigns for KFC in the past few years have been on South Park, and that’s despite the fact that Cartman is the chain’s most vocal supporter. An AdAge article today points out that Chick-Fil-A has been eating KFC’s lunch for a while now, and so far every stunt KFC has pulled–name changes, PR-engineered recipe events, botched giveaways, getting Oprah’s blessing–hasn’t stopped the restaurant from losing customers.That’s right: your lack of interest in KFC is what created this bundle of cheesy fried-fried in the first place. [More]
Loud Restaurants Make You Eat And Drink More
By April 19, 2010
It turns out that, at least for smart restaurateurs, making the dining experience ridiculously noisy is good for business: people buy more drinks per hour, and they finish eating and leave sooner. [More]
McDonald's 10 Piece Nugget Box Shows 11 Nuggets
By April 14, 2010
The picture on McDonald’s 10-piece chicken nugget box shows 11 nuggets. Obviously this is a careful piece of psychological chicanery so that consumers feel a subconscious longing for that “missing nugget,” sowing the seeds of future return trips to the Golden Arches. UPDATE: The mystery has been solved… one of the nuggets is cut in half, obviously to reveal its tender separated and recoagulated chicken meat goodness. [via Reddit] (Thanks to Bargaineering!) [More]
Man Gets Lockjaw Attempting To Eat Giant Sandwich
By April 9, 2010
We expected this to be a lawsuit story, but its more like a marketing story. The Dallas, TX based sandwich chain “Which Wich” is naming a sandwich after Mr. Chad Ettmueller, a customer who experienced lockjaw after trying to take a bite of a really big sandwich called a “Wicked.” [More]
Drug Company Gets Approval To Sell Crestor To Healthy People
By March 31, 2010
Don’t have high cholesterol? Think you don’t need Crestor, a cholesterol-lowering statin? You may be in for a rude awakening. Astra Zeneca, the maker of Crestor, has received approval to market the drug to healthy people as a preventative measure. And before you ask, yes Crestor does have side-effects. [More]
AirTran Makes Fun Of Southwest Seating In Commercial
By March 31, 2010
If you’ve ever been part of the mad dash for seats on a Southwest Airlines flight, you might find this video from AirTran funny. In it, mooing passengers race down the jetway while a Southwest employee makes ridiculous jokes. Meanwhile, AirTran serves its assigned-seat passengers Kool-Aid. Wait, now I’m confused about who’s being mocked here. [More]
The Census Is Getting Weird With Its Marketing
By March 30, 2010
“Nobody expects the U.S. Census! Our chief weapon is surprise!” A Seattle blogger posted a photograph of a fortune she received in her fortune cookie recently, and it looks like the Census is using surprise fear and surprise surprise, fear, and a ruthless efficiency to remind people to send back their forms. Oh, and they’re ruining fortune cookies. I fully expect to be forced into a comfy chair soon, which all in all isn’t a bad way to be tortured, so meh. [More]
Tim And Eric's Crazy Price Fight! Blood!
By March 29, 2010
Tim’s got discount prices, Eric’s got premium prices. No, they’re not selling goods and services at discount and premium prices, they are selling actual prices. “Get $39.99, for forty dollars!” Adult Swim’s Tim and Eric parody discount super-stores and crappy local ads. NSFW for crude gestures, sexual remarks, and a horse beheading a man. [More]
Video: Kotex Apologizes For Years Of Euphemistic Ads
By March 24, 2010
In this new Kotex ad, the 90-year old tampon company sends up, well, Kotex. “How do I feel about my period? I love it…Usually, by the third day, I really just want to dance,” says the actress as trio of women frolic and twirl. “The ads on TV are really helpful because they use that blue liquid, and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s what’s supposed to happen.’” It’s to launch their new line of feminine hygenie products called “U,” which pander to women’s desire to feel like they’re not being pandered to. [More]
Toyota Probably Should Have Written This Spam's Subject Line More Carefully
By March 11, 2010
“Amazing Incentives For Select Toyotas That Will Not Last Long.”
Reader Maida did a spit-take when this email from a Toyota dealer offering 0% APR for 60 months landed in her inbox. Yeeks, talk about a syntactical pileup.
"Mad Men" Barbie Dolls Launch
By March 10, 2010
The cast of Mad Men just got Barbie Dollized. For only $74.95 a pop, you can have just as much fun toying with Don, Betty, Roger and Joan as they have toying with each other. Sorry, only G-rated accessories; they will not come with any cigarettes or martini glasses. However, fans will be glad to know that just like in the show, the characters will be trapped inside plastic coffins and their movements determined by powerful external forces. [More]
Lindsay Lohan Sues E*Trade Over Talking Baby Commercial
By March 9, 2010
Does the milkaholic baby named Lindsay in the latest E*TRADE commercial remind you of a certain celebrity? Lindsay Lohan says it’s supposed to be her and is a jab at her own milkaholism, and she’s suing the company for $100 million and seeking an injunction to get it off the air. I agree that the baby playing the milkaholic doesn’t give a very good performance, but I always assumed it was supposed to be Lindsey Buckingham. [More]
Will You Wear A $600 Disney Dress Based On One Of Its Movies? How About In 5 Years?
By March 8, 2010
The future of Disney merchandising will hit a lot more demographics than the mostly kid-oriented stuff of today, if Disney has any say over it. Disney has already angered theater chains by shortening the theatrical release window on its new movie-like product Alice in Wonderland, cutting into theaters’ profit models in order to bump up the DVD release date. But CNBC notes that it’s also launching the “most wide-ranging array of consumer products ever” for a Disney flick–and that includes thousand dollar necklaces, nail polish, and dresses that cost as much as $600. [More]
