In a pleasing display of what is right, a superior court judge in California has thrown out a PETA claim that an ad campaign for the California Milk Advisory Board called "Happy Cows" portrays cows as happy when they, according to PETA, lead miserable lives.
Cows are cows. They don't sit at tables to eat. They live in fields and barns. And not fields "devoid of vegitation" as PETA claims.
You can read all about the backgound here.
PETA needs to crawl back into the hole from which it came.
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It's always interesting to see how a company will react to spoofs done on their behalf. Some take it lightly and hope that it helps the company in some way and other go all out and try to stop the spoof.
Recently, there were two spoofs that illustrate this point. There was the Fake PUMA Ads and the WhatIsVictoriasSecret Bulimia Web Site. Both spoofs were quite graphic in how they portrayed the two company. Neither were what the companies would prefer to see as a spoof.
With the PUMA spoof, the company caught wind of the fake ads and reacted by trying to stop the spread of the spoof across the Internet. Right. That's like an ant trying to stop a bulldozer. There were threatening emails, denial press releases, and cease and desist letters. What did this accomplish? Not much for PUMA's cause. All it did was to force the spoof and the conversation about the spoof to race around the Internet even faster. It's everywhere. It's now a permanent fixture on thousands of websites.
On the other hand, Victoria's Secret reacted in a polar opposite. What did they do? Nothing. Nada. No press releases. No cease and desists. The result? It's a dead issue. Sure you can find it on a few web sites and mentioned in a few discussion groups but that's it.
Moral of the story? If you want something to go away quickly, ignore it. Don't fan the flames. Of course there is always the minute possibility that the whole PUMA thing was engineered. We may never know.
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TiVo reports the most re-watched segments of the Oscar ceremony where the Adrian Brody acceptance speech and Michael Moore's anti-war rant. Not surprisingly, the most paused segment was Julia Roberts walking onstage in that hip-swinging way she has. Just what were viewers doing while they paused the TiVo? [via Ad Age]
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Maybe it was the war, maybe it was Michael Moore. But this years Oscars had the lowest ratings to date at about 37 million.
More...
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Jim Nelson, the current executive editor of GQ, will be named editor in chief of the magazine this afternoon. Nelson takes the reins from long time former editor, Art Cooper, who retired February 25.
More...
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Does that sound like a Fark headline? Here's an ad. I guess you can call it an ad. It's for clothing (I think). And the video is great as long as you don't mind girls humping dead guys in a coffin. Don't worry, it's not X rated. Not even R.
Click the picture or here to watch it.
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"Saddam, Can you hear me now? Is your ass still in one piece?"
[via Vort3X]
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For so long Britney Spears has owned the Yahoo Buzz Index. Well, Saddam owns it now. I don't know about you, but who would you rather look at?
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View them all over at Adland. (Membership required.)
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In a poll conducted by Ad Age, 67% of marketers felt that the traditional habit of cancelling advertising during war time is outmoded. Granted, the question was biased and the survey was among those who make their living from advertising but hey, we can all be happy that at least we, those in the ad industry, want to see schedules run.
Now if only Ad Age had done a survey that actually mattered. Oh, like one that surveyed how consumers felt on the subject. Who cares what our industry thinks.
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