"advertising" news and stories

Is the federal government about to put Tony the Tiger out of a job?

In the face of a national epidemic of childhood obesity, a collection of federal agencies has been working for two years now to come up with a set of voluntary guidelines that would restrict what foods can be marketed to kids. Food companies and marketing groups rejected a set of proposed guidelines last year, and the government has repeatedly postponed releasing new ones.

But as the Associated Press reports, the feds may finally pull the trigger as soon as today. Apparently, the AP reporter got a sneak peek at the new guidelines and writes that "companies would be urged to only market foods to children ages 2 through 17 if they are low in fats, sugars and sodium and contain specified healthy ingredients."

Remember those Rice Krispies cereal boxes from 2009 that claimed the "Snap, Crackle, Pop" breakfast would "support your child's immunity?" This was right around the time parents were vaccine-crazy over the bird flu? As you might have guessed, that claim wasn't true. Neither was the company's claim that their Frosted Mini Wheats were "clinically shown to improve children's attentiveness by nearly 20%." And for that, Kellogg's is paying.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) -- which regulates U.S. advertising -- announced a class-action settlement brought to the century-old, $13 billion company in the U.S. District Court of California, thanks to the laws of advertising that ban misleading and inaccurate marketing claims (or what we like to call the "That just ain't right!" ruling).

Joe the Plumber may not have been able to get John McCain to the White House, but can he sell can he sell a cup of coffee?

Ok, so we're not actually talking about Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, the real Joe the Plumber made famous by the 2008 presidential election. He doesn't appear in any of the ads that are part of the multimillion-dollar campaign just launched by Dunkin' Donuts. But plenty of his buddies seem to.

The Cola Wars petered out in the 1980s, but it looks like we're destined for a second decade of the Coffee Wars, with Starbucks, McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts all vying to provide bleary-eyed Americans with their morning jolt of caffeine. From what we can read between the lines of Dunkin's press release on their latest ad blitz, the company appears to be sending a blatant message to Starbucks in particular: "You can have your East and West Coast yuppies, with their New York Times tucked under their arm and absently humming along to Kings of Leon while they wait for their chai soy lattes. We'll take the average Joe."

To wit, no fewer than three hardhat-wearing construction workers appear in one of the new commercials, along with a traffic cop. A couple firemen from Georgia, who were two of the 1,000 Dunkin' Donuts fans who showed up for an open casting call in November, appear in another ad.

The good, hardworking, populist ethos is reinforced by the campaign's tagline, which reminds us that Dunkin' Donuts has always been the sort of place to drop your pretentious-sounding elocution: "What're you drinkin'? I'm drinkin' Dunkin'." Who needs "g's" at the ends of words anyways?

No doubt Starbucks elitists have another tagline for this sort of campaign in mind: average joe for average Joes.

Who the %*&#! is Clara Peller?

You like trivia? So does Fox's new game show Million Dollar Money Drop, whose first contestants had to answer a question about vintage ad slogans, one of which involved the now-famous query, "Where's the Beef?" (The grouchy old bag who asked the question was the late Ms. Peller, who, to the best of our knowledge, was a one-hit wonder.)

The show also called out "Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hands," the vaguely obscene slogan for M&Ms. But why stop there? Let's take a stroll down Madison Avenue, right where it merges with Memory Lane, and call up some of our favorite TV food commercials from the past:

Snap, Crackle and Pop for Rice Krispies (1939). Gee, Bobby, hope you'll stay over again now that your little friend can summon up his Breakfast Pals in a flash each morning. And can they also summon up a Play Station instead of bowl of cold cereal?

Chef Boy-ar-Dee (1954). "Hello, may I come in?" asks the chef with the world's thickest Italian accent. Actually, please go away. Even at 15 cents a serving, we can make better spaghetti from scratch.

Harriet Nelson for Aunt Jemima Pancakes (1958). When you've got "three man-sized pancake eaters" like Ozzie, David, and Ricky hanging around the house (what did Ozzie do for a living, anyway?), you need some help in the kitchen.

It may be one of the most trippy rap videos ever: no tricked-out Escalades, no writhing fly girls and nary a bottle of Cristal in sight. Instead it's just a bird and a couple of blokes rhyming about...organic dairy farming!?

Welcome to Yeo Valley (yes, it's actually pronounced "Yo!" Valley). This bucolic landscape in southwest England may seem more Lord Byron than Lil' Kim, but it seems the folks at Yeo Valley Organic didn't think sonnets were the best way to go about selling their organic diary products.

Watch the video after the jump.