This post is part of a series on celebrity spokespeople who ended up doing serious harm to the brands they were hired to promote, or vice versa. See how we rank the 20 top spokesperson fiascos.

Companies wishing to appeal to sensory-overloaded customers sometimes have to swallow hard and sign edgy spokespersons (I'm looking at you, Pepsi). But what could go wrong for UNICEF Belgium, the local arm of the United Nations Children's Fund, in adopting the beloved Smurfs as its spokescreatures?

Plenty, it turns out, when the Fund decided to use the Smurfs to shake people out of their complacency about the plight of the soldier children of Africa. To this end, they created an ad that ran (briefly) on Belgian television, showing the air-bombing and destruction of a smurf village, including the collateral blue damage. The tiny azure baby wailing amidst bomb craters and smurf corpses was an especially compelling touch.

Apparently, when the ad ran on Belgian television during the evening news, it left the audience in smurfy shock. According to a UNICEF Belgium spokesman, controversy was its goal, but the chief reaction to the snufftoon seems to have come from an amazingly large populace of smurf-haters, who have plastered the video across the Internet. The moral? When you adopt a warm fuzzy spokesthingy, injure it at your own peril.

Read the entire series

Spokesperson fiasco #18: UNICEF Belgium and the Smurfs originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and check out other Battle of the Brands posts.

In the world of diapers, try as other brands might to gain a foothold, it is really a Pampers vs. Huggies world.

Pampers, made by Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) has been the market share winner for decades and is P&G's top global brand. But Huggies, made by Kimberly-Clark (NYSE: KMB) has made significant inroads thanks to frequent discounts.

Consumer Reports estimates parents will spend between $1,500 and $2,000 on disposable diapers before their child is potty trained. With that kind of investment, many parents have strong views about which brand is best. Leakage control and rash prevention are the main criteria. Consumer reports rates Pampers (both its Cruisers and Baby Dry brands) higher than Huggies, mainly due to Pampers' superior leakage prevention.

Baby blogs also seem to favor Pampers over Huggies. And in my experience, I do think of Pampers as the "premium" and was surprised that when I actually checked price tags in my local drug store this week, found that they were priced exactly the same.

For my diaper dollar, I don't see much of a difference between the two. I'm all for changing the baby more often and buying a cheaper diaper. If you really put the diapers to the test with, say an eight-hour day at the playground without a change, you might find a difference. But my priority is to spend as little time and money diaper shopping as possible. Costco stocks Huggies in bulk, so that's what we have now.

Continue reading Battle of the Brands: Pampers vs. Huggies

Battle of the Brands: Pampers vs. Huggies originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 08 May 2008 14:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.