Discussed in Shoptimism — how gay/ lesbian outcry got the spot banished from broadcast. Homophobic, or send-up of same?
Monthly Archive for January, 2010
Third World sweatshop scandal, what Third World sweatshop scandal? Nike joins in the fight against HIV//AIDs in Africa with his new commercial, featuring Didier Drogba, Andrei Arshavin, Clint Dempsey, Denilson, Marco Materazzi, Javier Mascherano, Fabio Cannavaro along with Maria Sharapova and Kobe Bryant. Well done!
This from a blog post by Grant McCracken: “As late as the mid-1970s, iceberg lettuce accounted for more than 95% of all of the lettuce grown in this country. Then along came the reborn Caesar salad. Invented in a Tijuana restaurant in the 1920s (which one is a subject of a bitter interfamilial dispute), for decades the Caesar kind of limped along in all of its garlicky glory as a California specialty. Then, all of a sudden, in the late 1970s it was “discovered” by the fast food industry, often topped with very untraditional grilled chicken, and there followed a couple of decades of extremely heady popularity. From almost nothing, by the mid ’90s, more than 16,000 acres of romaine was being grown. By 2000 that had increased to more than 60,000 acres and today it stands at more than 80,000.”
Quite aside from all of the tasteless, sophomoric Super Bowl ads that make it to broadcast, there are now spots created intentionally to be “banned” in the hope they might go viral via social media. Below, one reputed such currently “under review” by CBS. It’s lame, of course, but not nearly so tasteless as the notorious Snickers commercial a few years back, the one in which two car mechanics inadvertently kiss, then rip out their chest hair.
Fast food isn’t just bad for your health, it’s bad for your pocketbook. Example: “a $1 sausage biscuit from a drive-thru has 31% more calories and nearly 7 times more fat than TWO bowls of instant oatmeal with an average retail price of 31 cents per packet.” On the other hand, let’s get real: a $1 sausage biscuit from a drive-thru is a hell of a lot tastier than ONE, let alone two, bowls of instant oatmeal.
An amazing tidbit from today’s Amazon quarterly financial release: the company now sells “six Kindle e-books for every 10 physical books on its site in cases where it has editions in both formats, excluding free downloads.”
Red Bull, which goes to market via associating its brand with high-impact, devil-dare sports, is planning a advertising stunt to end all advertising stunts. What price cutting through media clutter?
Michael Wolff had this, among other things, to say about the second most important speech given yesterday: “Yesterday’s announcement of the infelicitously named iPad—curiously bound up with the president’s State of the Union address—had the feeling less of product announcement than of political rally. Apple has always identified itself with a certain quasi-political and religious fervor and linked itself to a dedicated base of supporters. It has also always commanded—and demanded—a level of loyalty well beyond that associated with most consumer products. But even for Apple, yesterday seemed extreme. Certainly many of the journalists at the event became in their affect and enthusiasm indistinguishable from Apple employees and business partners—many, indeed, were looking forward to being Apple’s business partners.”
Here’s change we can exult in: many of those crappy, creepy products “sold-only-on-TV” are now finding their way into stores and online sites. To wit, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal –
- The Snuggie: Some 18 million have been sold for people, and 2 million for dogs.
- The Slap Chop: ‘The Slap Chop Rap’ has logged more than 8.7 million views on YouTube.
- The Strap Perfect: In 55,000 stores nationwide.
Amidst the doom and gloom over the lingering economic mess, it’s at least nice to know that hand-painted ceramic pigs survived the recession.
