Here's a great way to maintain staying power in a market: make the product illegal, and ensure enforcement is next to impossible.
Word has it that an Oakland-based business called Tainted, which pushes weed-laced candies and other food products to "cannabis clubs," got raided last week.
Business was apparently thriving: the company has ordered almost four tons of chocolate in two years to support a sweet tooth for Mr. Greenbud and Buddafinga bars.
A store manager and two couriers have been arrested, but the firm's owner Michael Martin is still at large. He faces charges of federal conspiracy.
There's something wrong with this picture. Can you imagine a bunch of pot-laced kids trying to overthrow The Man? They can't even get up off their couches. Legalizing cannabis might be the best thing that ever happens to our government.
- Even fashion models can sound intelligent. Especially when they steal their lines from an MIT professor.
- Paddington Bear creator Michael Bond and fans are angered because Karen Jankel, Bond's daughter gave the go ahead for the character to be used in a Marmite ad when it's well known Paddington likes marmalade.
- As more and more nudity becomes readily and freely available online, Playboy has decided to cut back paid circulation 13 percent to 2.6 million as well as offer more free content online.
AdFreak calls our attention to this freakishly weird video for England's Plug TV which features a Jesus fatty taking a trip down from the heavens to visit the dirty, raw wold of human beings. It doesn't take long before he's drinking and magically turning flat chested librarian types into large-breasted, bikini-clad hotties whom he takes with him for a ride in his mega-stretch limo. That is until Dad gets angry.
Predictably, the Catholic church is a bit miffed.
Once again, advertising has caused an uproar over nothing. CNN's Mike Galanos covers the new (and really great if we do say so ourselves) Clearasil campaign and is upset over the ads which show a guy trying to pick up his friend's mom and a daughter who says "You should see me now" while her mother shows naked baby pictures of her to her boyfriend. While Galanos prudely prattles on, Melissa Henson from the Parents Television Council talks about how marketers use too much sex to sell and Debbie Wolf from the People Against Censorship says the moral minority shouldn't control what gets seen on TV and everyone should just lighten up and laugh.
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Shortly after snarling at L'Oreal for its Telescopic Mascara product, which vowed to make lashes "up to 60 percent longer" (a promise aided and abetted by Penelope Cruz), the UK's Advertising Standards Authority has unearthed another deviant: Avon.
Avon claims its mascara makes lashes 65 percent longer. Despite a lie that's five percent more misleading, however, the company isn't using a celebrity model to push its snake oil, so hopefully the body public won't be too susceptible.
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Maybe if McDonald's and Burger King offered a free Lap-Band with every Happy Meal or Whopper, the legislature and the ad industry wouldn't have to go head to head on this whole obesity thing. After all, if the food can't get in, the kid can't get fat.
- If you care, Facebook's heretofore "non-existent" ad rates have been leaked.
- Pepsi's Alan Pottash, the man behind many successful campiagns such as Pepsi Generation, Pepsi Challenge and all those celbu-commercials, died July 27 in LA at the age of 79.
- Toto's Times Square bare asses have been covered - quite creatively - following complaints from Reverend Neil Rhodes of the Times Square Church.
- This is what happens when an ad agency with just ten people and three accounts has too much time on their hands.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has just burrowed into L'Oreal's ass for the use of false eyelashes in an ad for its Telescopic Mascara, a product that promises to make your lashes "up to 60 percent longer."
The ad features Penelope Cruz, who sported the illicit hairs. According to the ASA, the ad should have made it clear that the actress was wearing falsies. L'Oreal claims this is "common industry practice" - just as, we imagine, all of these conventions are.
Since when are we playing Nazi to the (unrealistic?) appearance of stars in ads? If we're going to unleash the dogs, maybe we should first address the copy writers that come up with lines like, "Imagine, lashes that could reach for the stars."
The OLPC, an organization devoted to bringing open source laptops to children in Third World countries for less than $200 a pop, have discovered an awkward residual outcome in their well-meaning scheme.
The News Agency of Nigeria has reported some kids at an Abuja primary school "have gone awry as the pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit sexual materials."
Oops. The OLPC has since reported they'll be including porn filters in the newer models of the otherwise-durable computers.
Proving there's no such thing as meaningful self-regulation in any for-profit industry, food manufacturers, following their recently introduced guidelines for advertising food with too much sugar to kids, have simply played games serving sizes to limit per-serving sugar content to the agreed upon 12 grams thereby loopoling their way past the very junk food guidelines they created for themselves.
As an example, the U.S. Food Policy blog took a look at the nutrition labels for Cocoa Puffs and Trix and determined Cocoa Puffs, the cereal with more sugar than Trix based on the government's standard 30g serving size, will be able to advertise while Trix will not. This is possible courtesy of the foolish fuckery food manufacturers deploy when it comes to serving size. At a serving size of 27g and 12g of sugar, Cocoa Puffs meets guidelines while Trix, with a 32g serving size and 13g of sugar does not.
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