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.

When the Milk Processor Education Campaign hired the Olsen twins for its "Got Milk?" campaign, they though they were buying into the stars' wholesome image. But even from the start, the muttering began. Why was Ashley wearing a t-shirt with an image from the Velvet Underground album famous for celebrating drug use and sadomasochism? Aren't the Olsen Twins' short statures counter to the claims that milk builds strong bones? (The MPEC insisted that teens looked up to the Olsen twins, no matter how short they are.)

And then there was the controversy they really should have seen coming when they dressed up the ultra-mini Mary-Kate for the photo shoot. Two months after the magazine campaign hit the newsstands, Mary-Kate was checked into an eating disorder treatment facility. She not only didn't 'get milk?"; she didn't 'get' any kind of food.

Adding irony to the PR debacle was the statement made by the twins at the time of the campaign launch, that "we want to help make sure our fans are healthy like us." If "healthy" describes Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, and millions of their fans are planning to follow their dietary guidelines, well, the milk industry is in for some trouble.

Read the entire series

Spokesperson fiasco #16: The Olsen twins got milk? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

MSNBC reports on an earth-shattering scandal sure to make heads roll at Starbucks (NYSE: SBUX). Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have been ordering Grande nonfat lattes from their favorite New York City West Village Starbucks. However, a barista there has reportedly been serving the lattes with whole milk.

According to a source quoted by MSNBC, "the barista thought the Olsens were too thin, so whenever they ordered their usual drink, he would replace the skim milk with full-fat." The Olsen's representative commented: "This is ridiculous." But a so-called close friend blamed the Olsens for for their ignorance, noting: "It's also my worst nightmare -- that and getting a huge diet fountain soda that is mistakenly regular Coke -- but I can def(initely) taste the difference, so it's their own fault if they fell victim."

Did Howard Schultz, recently re-appointed Starbucks CEO make this latte swap? The Wall Street Journal [subscription required] reported that Schultz has been aggressively micro-managing Starbucks since he took over. The Journal notes that before Starbucks launched its new Pike Place Roast in April, Schultz selected which redesigned version of the old logo to use. As the promotional campaign neared completion, he decided it needed more warmth and called for revisions. He rewrote the press-release headline.

Neither MSNBC nor The Journal fingered Schultz as the barista who put the whole milk in the Olsen's lattes. So we await the nameless barista's fate.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Starbucks securities.

Starbucks scandal strikes Olsen sisters originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 21 May 2008 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Other news from the Milken Conference: AOL Chairman and Chief Exec Jonathan Miller let the cat out of the bag that AOL is considering an online model that makes content -- such as television reruns from Time Warner sister company Warner Bros. -- available for an extended period to let the audience accumulate.

While you may think of Warner Bros. as that benign force that brought us ER, Friends, and The O.C., don't forget that we also owe Warner Bros. for such made-for-TV movies as Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion!  and Terror in the Mall, as well as the sitcom Full House.

As for prospects of looking deep into my computer monitor and seeing Bob Saget reprise his Full House role as cherubic widower Danny Tanner -- something I thought I'd left, along with my "Members Only" jackets and Thriller cassette, safely in the 1980's -- well, Minesweeper is looking better and better...

AOL to show reruns? Mary-Kate and Ashley to be known as "the AOLsen Twins"? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.