There was a great in the
NY Times Business section this Sunday, about a Nike campaign that ran afoul of punk-rock mainstays Minor Threat and Dischord Records.
Anyone of a certain age who put in time on the right side of the adolescent rage divide remembers the image on the cover of Minor Threat's : a man bent in half, head in arms, screenprinted in black on a pink-red backdrop. So its no surprise that when Nike used a similar image - this time, black-on-blue, with the words Minor Threat replaced with the slogan Major Threat - to advertise their sponsored skateboard tour, a bundle of fans wise to the uncanny similarities got a little angry.
Nike eventually pulled the ad (which they had run without consulting the band or frontman Ian MacKaye's Dischord Records) after numerous complaints, but Dischord is still weighing their legal options.
We got inundated with e-mails saying 'Sue Nike,' says Dischord employee Alec Bourgeois. We're flattered by the outrage. I don't think Nike understood that people Posted May 20th 2005 4:15PM by
Filed under: ,
has wasted no time in trying to pull subscribers their competition now that has announced a partnership with Wal-Mart.
The movie rental company is offering current Netflix/Wal-Mart customers 2 free months of service plus a movie of their choice to own plus a lock on their current fee for one year. Netflix subscribers simply have to cancel their service and forward a copy of the verification email to Blockbuster in order to get the deal. Is this a savvy move to pounce on a weak spot or, with all the incentives involved, does this reek of desperation?
So if everyone - literally - has spoofed your ad campaign or jacked it for their own benefit, is that the sign of a successful model? First, Got milk?
was turned into a Got anything by organizations high and low, left and right. Now, Apple's iPod shadow advertising has been used for everything from political groups making light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to proclaiming the work of Jesus Christ.
adland that Homer Simpson is even in on the act, where an episode of FOX's The Simpsons featured a sign with the trademark green background with a haloed individual (presumably Jesus) rocking out with his iPod device.
The ad even has iGod in the corner, as if you didn't know where they were going with it.
Posted May 10th 2005 5:05PM by
Filed under: ,
Remember that iPod ad, with the little kid singing along to Eminem's Lose Yourself ? Neither do I, but it's at the center of lawsuit that was settled today.
The commercial debuted in July 2003 and aired on MTV for about three months. It didn't make news until February 2004, when the Detroit-based rapper/actor filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against MTV and Apple. Eminem's complaint alleged that he had never endorsed any product on a national level, and in the suit he stated that any company desiring his endorsement would have to ante a significant amount of money, possibly in excess of $10 million.
Zero details on the settlement have been released, but Howard Hertz, a lawyer representing Eminem's Eight Mile Style Entertainment, told the AP that the various parties were able to reach an amicable resolution.
Advertising trends come and go just like television programming.
Sometimes, things get a bit overdone when they return and everyone jumps on the bandwagon. Will that happen with the use of game show-ish themes in these days? Surely you've caught one of the four or five spots currently running under the guise of faux game shows - are they cool or fool?
Based on what a GSN (used to be the Game Show Network) exec told the New York Times, game shows are so close to home for most people that everyone gets it immediately. That's probably valid for the 20 and up set, but what about the younger kids who maybe catch one or two game shows at all, as most of them have left early morning broadcast TV for either cable in reruns or the early evening in some areas? We might lose this comeback trend in a decade or so, and not just because all the game show hosts have gone.
Keywords: Game Show, Minor Threat, Tv Squad, Posted May, Dischord Records
News RSS