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Pillsbury has told a New York food co-op to stop using the phrase “bake-off” because they own it. Pillsbury coined the phrase back in 1949 (according to this unverifiable web source), and then trademarked it in the early 1970s (according to another). Now you know. (Thanks to Sarah!)
Yesterday Hasbro launched a new ad campaign in certain newspapers to promote its comparatively stellar safety record with toys—it hasn’t had any big ticket items show up in the lead-tainted parade this year (or to the date-rape afterparty) and it wants consumers to know.
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Red Bull has pulled a nativity-themed ad from Italian television after a priest from Sicily denounced it as a “blasphemous act.” [Reuters]
What? Milfs for sale? If you go to their website, there it is spelled nice and big for you, M.I.L.F.(many islands low fares). Is this an attempt to be clever and comical, or are they that uninformed?
The email attracted a bit of media coverage, and now Spirit is claiming that they have no idea (wink, wink) what a MILF is, and that the executive that approved the promotion is British. (Apparently, British people don’t have movie theaters or internet connections, the poor things.) Asked whether or not the airline knew the acronym was offensive, Juan Arbelaez, the director of communications for the company’s Latin American market, told ABC News:
Last week, Facebook made a lot of noise about how it was making its new Beacon spyware—we mean advertising initiative—less sneaky. But guess what? Over the weekend, Computer Associates reported that even after you’ve declined to have Beacon advertise your habits back to your friends, and even if you’ve logged out of Facebook, it will still surreptitiously report your actions back to Facebook’s servers. And there’s no way you can turn it off.
So much for even the illusion of editorial independence in video game reviews. One of Gamespot’s editors and top reviewers was apparently fired this week after writing an unenthusiastic review for the game “Kane & Lynch,” which was being advertised heavily all over the Gamespot site, according to…
This ad for Verizon cellphones is placed right next to an AP story about a South Korean man who may or may not have been killed by a cellphone exploding in his shirt pocket. Someone should invent a fancy technology that excludes advertisers from appearing next to articles when the name of their core product appears in editorial proximity with “death” or “exploding.”
BusinessWeek says they have a source close to Facebook that says executives are discussing changes to the controversial marketing tool.
Adobe and Yahoo! are testing a new program that lets publishers place advertisements in PDF documents, reports Reuters. “The Adobe service allows publishers to generate revenue by including text-based ads linked to the content of an Adobe PDF (portable document format) page in a separate side panel.”
Now that the LaSalle Bank merger is complete, Bank of America is looking to win over the notoriously neophobic population of America’s 3rd largest city. To that end they’ve taken out a full page ad in Crain’s touting Bank of America’s “local commitment” and ability to provide “global capabilities” to businesses that want “every competitive advantage.”
Nick Padmore at A List Apart has produced an extraordinarily nerdy and detailed breakdown of the various qualities of 115 of the most successful “copy shots” in advertising history—you know, those short phrases like “Where’s the beef?” (1984) or “Don’t leave home without it” (1974) or “it takes a licking and keeps on ticking” (1956) that you’ll carry with you to your grave, unless you develop some sort of “good” Alzheimer’s that only wipes out the commercial jingles part of your brain. (Somebody assign a stem cell researcher to that!)
I’m listening to the radio and I hear an ad for “Check-n’-Go” check cashing services. At the very end of the ad, the announcer quickly mutters, “Remember to always use cash advances responsibly.” This is what we’ve come to, they’re borrowing language from liquor ads. Guess that’s the boilerplate you throw up when advertising an item that’s potentially addictive and hard to escape. What’s next? Remember, always gamble responsibly. Remember, always snort responsibly. Remember, always Katamari Damacy responsibly.
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Dick Wilson, the actor who played Mr. Whipple in over 500 Charmin commercials, has passed away at the age of 91. [CNN]
Strapped for cash and time, local news stations are turning to a quick fix to slap together news stories. They’re called VNRs or “video news releases.” Basically a PR firm puts together a package with background footage, interviews, and even helpful scripts. The package seeks to promote products, persons, or to massage public opinion on issues in ways favorable to corporations. All the local station has to do is have one of their reporters do a voice over and boom, you got yourself some news. The problem is that news is being shaped by a subjective entity with a commercial interest at stake, and there’s no disclosure to the viewers that they’re not watching independent reporting.
Thank the gods for Firefox+Adblock, because spending on web advertising in the U.S. hit a new high in the 3rd quarter of 2007, pushing the total for the first 9 months of this year to $15.2 billion, up more than 3 billion from the same period in 2006. Says an exec at Interactive Advertising Bureau, which helped prepare the report, “Marketers large and small have come to accept digital media as the fulcrum of any marketing strategy.”
In hearings today, the meat producers Hormel Foods Corp and Cargill Inc testified that the practice of treating meat with carbon monoxide to preserve its red color is safe and should be allowed. As a compromise, they suggested a label on all CO-treated meat and fish that reminded consumers to refer to the date on the package to determine its freshness. According to Reuters, “officials at the Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Agriculture Department said they stand by the safety of the carbon monoxide practice and would revisit the process if new data becomes available.”
Walmart’s new ad campaign says that the store saves the average American family $2,500 a year. What is doesn’t say is that you don’t actually have to shop at Walmart to take advantage of the savings.
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