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 I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I remember watching O.J. Simpson in Hertz (NYSE:HTZ) ads dash through the airport on my television screen as a spunky old woman yelled "go, O.J., go." It seems like these spots were always featured during breaks of favorite ABC TV shows "Charlie's Angels", "The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island." I even imitated O.J. when I went to the airport, much to the horror of my parents. I thought that, next to TV private eye Jim Rockford, Simpson was the coolest guy in the world.
Of course, no one realized at the time that Simpson's nice-guy image was an act. When he led police on his infamous low-speed chase through the freeways of Southern California, people saw O.J. running again -- this time from the law, under suspicion for the murder of his wife and waiter Ron Goldman. Again, people thought about Hertz. When he was acquitted, people thought about Hertz. For people my age (40), O.J. and Hertz will be forever linked. That's the power of branding.
About the only thing O.J, is endorsing these days is plastic football helmets and old pictures of himself, which is the root of his current legal troubles in Las Vegas. People are less interested in him in that world. At least one sports memorabilia dealer has his O.J. Simpson-autographed merchandise on sale.
To be fair, Hertz severed its ties to Simpson when allegations of domestic abuse first surfaced in 1992. Since then, advertisers do a much more thorough background check on their celebrities before hiring them to tell us how we should spend our discretionary income. We are a nation of sheep. The problem is that we as Americans continue to look to our celebrities before making important decisions, which is a pity.
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.
The cliché of the pencil-thin model is made corporeal in the body of supermodel Kate Moss, the waif that launched a thousand brands. Among those brands tying their fortune to her size 0 sails were H&M (STO:HMB), Burberry (LON:BRBY) and Chanel.
Leading the retreat were the brands to whom she had lent her good name, the same H&M, Burberry and Chanel. Each invoked the morals clause to terminate her contract, making that a multi-million dollar line of coke.
So that was the end of Moss, right? Think again. In the fashion world, morals transgressions are so, like, yesterday. Within a year, Moss had signed new contracts with Calvin Klein and other top fashions brands. Brendan Behan, who said there is no such thing as bad publicity (except your own obituary) knew what he was talking about, at least in the fashion world.
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.
Before Michael Vick, quarterbacks were (mostly) tall, slow white men who passed the football, handed it off or got creamed by pass rushers. Vick changed the game by combining the strength, speed and agility of a running back with the arm and savvy of a quarterback. With it, he turned the traditional also-ran Atlanta Falcons into a contender. How could any company in the sporting goods field not sign such a sure-fire hall-of-famer as a spokesperson?
And sign him they did. Nike (NYSE:NKE) created a "Michael Vick Experience" ad campaign. He appeared on the cover of the 2004 version of Electronic Arts' (NASDAQ:ERTS) Madden football. The sponsor money rolled in, and when the Falcons signed Vick to a 10-year, $130 million contract, he had reached the pinnacle of sports success.
Then came the expose. News reports tying Vick to a dog fighting ring, then naming him as the pivotal figure in a horrendous gang who raised killer dogs in a kennel on Vick's property and buried the losers nearby. By the time Vick was taken into custody, his brand was so fouled that companies couldn't back away from him fast enough. The only sales of equipment with his name on it was to dog owners who used them as chew toys.
In a fiasco, everyone involved suffers. I just wish the everybody here hadn't included innocent dogs.
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.
Ahh, Madonna. I was a teen in the late 80s and so she had me right where she wanted me: hanging on her every lyric, willing to be titillated, shocked, or otherwise addicted to her poppy music.
She had PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) right where she wanted it, too, as a spokesperson for the would-be-edgy soda company in 1989. Pepsi and Madonna produced a very long and affecting commercial using her "Like a Prayer" song, in which Madonna watches the eight-year-old version of herself in a video dreaming of being a pop star one day.
The commercial was extremely well-done and well-received (it still gives me goosebumps today, despite those awful late-80s hairdos; that is, until the real video for "Like a Prayer" came out. It took "suggestive" to an entirely new level, what with the obvious flirtation between Madonna and a statue-cum-priest, the stigmata on her hands, and the burning crosses and racial tensions.
Pepsi pulled the ads and canceled all its appearances with the singer immediately, though I wonder if the company couldn't run the ads again now? If you can get past the salacious nature of the rumored affair with A-Rod, Madonna is not nearly so controversial today, and now the commercial seems sweet.
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.
Okay, to begin with, I should be completely honest: I'm a definite Kirstie Alley fan. I've watched her since the beginning, since she walked into Shelly Long's shoes on Cheers and took the show to a whole other level. I watched as she began to mature gracefully in Summer School and the Look Who's Talking movies, and even stayed with Veronica's Closet for way longer than I should have. Over the years, I watched her bloom, blossom, expand her horizons, umm...
Okay, yes, I also watched her gain a lot of weight. Somewhere between the overripe evil of Gladys Leeman in Drop Dead Gorgeous and the impressive avoirdupois of Fat Actress, Kirstie Alley definitely put on some serious pounds. When they started shooting her in low light with dark clothes, I had my suspicions; when Fat Actress debuted, there was no longer any doubt.
Still, I was rooting for Kirstie, and I was happy when she got a gig working for Jenny Craig (a division of Nestle, VTX:NESN). While I'm not sure that weight loss is for everyone, I have no doubt that, for Kirstie Alley, it meant the difference between being gainfully employed and using her royalties from syndicated TV shows to buy herself an island and a bunch of muumuus. I hoped that the marriage between Kirstie and Jennie would thrive and be, if not fruitful, at least healthy.
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.
Basketball star Kobe Bryant may be this generation's Michael Jordon, a combination of lightning-quick moves, shooting touch and court savvy unmatched by any backcourt player in the world. As leader of the Los Angeles Lakers, he has become a fixture on the scoring leader stats sheet and the All-star roster.
Raised in Italy while his American father Joe "Jellybean" Bryant played basketball there, Bryant was a polished and appealing personality when he entered the NBA straight out of high school. His popularity quickly translated into lucrative endorsement contracts with Nike (NYSE:NKE), Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) and McDonald's (NYSE:MCD).
Therefore, the sports world was stunned when a Colorado hotel maid accused the married Bryant of sexually assaulting her. The resulting tawdry court case made Bryant the laughingstock of the league's fandom. Although the case was eventually settled out of court with Bryant's public apology, the damage had been done. McDonald's declined to renew its agreement with Bryant, having had one unhappy meal too many.
Since then, Bryant has mended his marriage, grown in his career (MVP in 2008), and regained endorsement contracts. I doubt, though, that you'll ever seen Kobe and Ronald McDonald share the court again.
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.
In the buildup to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was the prohibitive favorite to win gold in the 100-meter sprint, having set a world record the year before at the World Championships. Many companies vied to tie their name to his speedy frame, and his coach estimated that Johnson was bringing in a cool $480,000 a month in endorsement money from companies such as the Italian family-owned sports company Diadora.
Once the Olympics began that September, the sponsors must have been high-fiving one another as Johnson, on the biggest stage in sports, broke his own 100-meter record by running a 9.79, which won him the gold medal.
He should have kept running, right out of the stadium and to a safe hiding place. Test of his urine found evidence that Johnson had been using steroids. He was stripped of his medal, his time was disallowed, and after further investigation, his 1987 world record was also invalidated. Diadora pulled its $2 million contract, and other sponsors followed suit. Johnson ended up living in his mother's basement, and Diadora probably made a bonfire of its Ben Johnson campaign.
The aftermath of this scandal is felt even today, as baseball and cycling struggle to overcome the same pollution of competition and incredulity of their fans. There's not a company in the world that yearns to cultivate the brand 'cheater'.
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.
In a confrontation between bombast and street cred, Fox mouth Bill O'Reilly managed to rip the Pepsi (NYSE:PEP) bottle from rapper Ludacris's live, warm fingers. In August of 2002, O'Reilly, upset with the musician's street language and what he perceived as glorification of crime and misogyny, called for a boycott of Pepsi. At the time, Ludacris was a featured representative of Pepsi, no doubt part of the companies attempt to reach out to the 18-34 demographic.
After the company dumped Ludacris in response to the boycott, Pepsi immediately stepped back into a pile of controversy by signing the rock and brain-damage icon Ozzy Osbourne, he of bat-head biting-off fame. (Nothing goes better with bat than an ice-cold Pepsi.)
O'Reilly's diatribe helped call attention to the brutality of Lucacris's lyrics, not atypical for the genre but fear-inspiring to the Fox nation. For example:
"Hollow laid hollow sprayed I'm the hollow man I get to my hollow point wit my hollow plan Hollow bullets I pull it I'm about to live in vain And then I drill em refill em make sure they feel the pain"
(BTW- Is this a shout-out to T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men?)
While the controversy cost Ludacris his Pepsi deal, O'Reilly was to swallow his tongue for a second time two years later when the rapper was signed by Anheuser-Busch (NYSE:BUD).
I don't see Bill O'Reilly pulling in big endorsement contracts these days. So who's your daddy now, Bill?
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.
In the mid-eighties, a couple of years before I began to drink legally, wine coolers became the alcoholic beverage of choice. Sweet and mildly alcoholic, they came in a variety of fruit flavors and neatly halved the distance between mixed drinks and a Shirley Temple. The combination of cheap wine, carbonated water, fruit juice, and sugar actually packed a pretty decent kick, particularly given that the sweetness almost completely obscured the taste of the alcohol.
One of the toughest problems with wine coolers was selling them to an adult audience. While precocious youngsters were quick to appreciate the Lolita-esque appeal of a super-sweet alcoholic version of Kool-Aid, this image was far from attractive to most of the people who actually bought alcohol. To combat the soda pop overtones of the product, Ernest and Julio Gallo used a version of conservative, home-town sincerity to push their "Bartles and Jaymes" brand. Beginning in 1984, they ran a series of ads featuring two men in hats and suspenders -- "Frank Bartles" and "Ed Jaymes" -- talking in halting sentences about their fine products. The commercials took off and Bartles and Jaymes became an industry leader.
Seagram's (Diageo plc, NYSE:DEO), desperate to up the sales of its flagging brand, hired Bruce Willis in 1986. Popular as "David Addison" on Moonlighting, Willis brought a fun, wisecracking sensibility to the ads, which borrowed heavily from the Bartles and Jaymes brand, often featuring a group of friends sitting around a porch, jamming about the glories of Seagram's Golden Wine coolers. The commercials were exceedingly popular, spawning Willis' short-lived singing career and vaulting Segrams from fifth-ranked to top-ranked brand within two years.
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 Ben Curtis first hit the TV advertisement airwaves, I couldn't decide whether I was enchanted or annoyed. Personal computers were all the rage and Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) was the sweetest apple on the PC tree. When the "Dell Dude" enthusiastically told his little friend, "Dude, you're getting a Dell!" -- weren't we all a little excited?
And, let's be honest, wasn't he -- and Dell -- trading on the unspoken currency of the pot-smoking twang in his voice? It was hilarious, this college kid computer cheerleader. Unfortunately, hilarity equaled truth. In 2003 (right around the time he was phased out by the four cute Dell interns -- which is a whole different story) Curtis was busted for buying a very small amount of pot. "For personal use."
It was hardly the criminal arrest of the century (probably not even of that night in New York), it marked the end of Curtis' career with Dell. It didn't signal the end of his notoriety, however; he was given some coverage late last year for his bartending gig at Tortilla Flats, a popular financial district eatery in New York. The story goes that he makes great tips from fans of his former alter ego, and he's often asked to say his money line. He even dressed up as the Dell Dude for Halloween.
Who wants to bet we'll see him in an indie flick before too long?
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.
Hip-hop/R&B artist Akon is the only person to have twice held both the first and second spots on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously. Winner of a Grammy for his hit "Smack That", he has expanded his repertoire to include producing music and founding his own music production and distribution companies. Such a popular entertainer and entrepreneur would obviously be attractive to a company such as Verizon (NSYE:VZ), looking to hook into the cell-addicted young American.
Akon brought strong ties to the world market, too. Born in Senegal, and raised in New Jersey, a Muslim rumored to have wed multiple women, his exotic background added to his appeal.
Unfortunately, for Verizon, his background failed to properly prepare him to control his on-stage antics or properly estimate the age of his audience. In April of 2007, during a set in Trinidad and Tobago, Akon invited a young lady onto the stage to join him in a simulated sex routine. Unfortunately, the lady proved to be the 15-year-old daughter of a minister. Even more unfortunately, for Akon and Verizon, Akon's film crew recorded the incident and uploaded it to the web, where it drew great public censure. Shortly thereafter, Verizon pulled its sponsorship of Akon's Sweet Escape tour and quit offering his music as ring tones.
Akon's song "Sorry, Blame it On Me," is an apology to the young lady at the center of the scandal. Verizon is still waiting for its song of apology.
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.
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.
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.
I have to wonder what Slim-Fast (Unilever ADR, NYSE:UL) was thinking when they hired Whoopi Goldberg. Many of their earlier spokespersons, including Ann Jillian and Kathy Lee Gifford, exuded a sort of "if you don't love me, I'll die," desperation. On the other hand, Whoopi's self-confidence and pride are as much a part of her persona as her granny glasses and trademark braided hair. Although she has never shied away from the spotlight, a great deal of Whoopi's strength lies in her low-key energy and undeniable power. In retrospect, this might have made her a less than ideal choice to shill for the brand, which thrives on insecurity.
Regardless, in late 2003, Slim-Fast talked Whoopi into hawking their shakes; presumably, there was a very large check involved. Things progressed relatively well until July 2004, when she decided to appear at a gala fundraiser for Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry. Carrying a bottle of wine onstage, Goldberg pretended to read from the label: "When Bush comes to shove, don't whine. Vote Kerry." She proceeded to launch into a series of bush-themed double entendres.
Almost immediately, Bush supporters began calling and writing Slim-Fast, threatening to boycott the company's products if it continued to employ Goldberg. Slim-Fast quickly caved, stating that it was disappointed in Whoopi and would no longer air her commercials. She responded that, "While I can appreciate what the Slim-Fast people need to do in order to protect their business, I must also do what I need to do as an artist, as a writer, and as an American -- not to mention as a comic [...] I only wish that the Republican re-election committee would spend as much time working on the economy as they seem to be spending trying to harm my pocketbook."
Goldberg proceeded to reprise the routine at other venues; she later found a place on The View. In the meantime, Slim-Fast went on to hire Rachel Hunter, whose conventional good looks and palpable insecurity are far more fitting for their marketing demographic. Recently, however, the company has demonstrated an amazing inability to learn from the mistakes of the past. In January 2008, they approached rapper Eminem with an endorsement offer; one can't help but wonder if his misogynistic, violent lyrics might not alienate Slim Fast's target market!
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.
A lot of people, including me, thought that actor James Garner gave up the ghost some time ago. Doing the "Rockford Files" TV series must have taken a lot out of him. Then there were all those times he was shot playing Western gambler "Maverick." He was so good at it, he even got a role in the movie version.
Garner's one Oscar nomination was for "Murphy's Romance," in which he played an old man chasing a younger woman, a role for which he seemed particularly well suited.
In April 1988, Garner underwent quadruple by-pass surgery.That worked out OK for him, but he happened to be at that time a spokesman for The Beef Industry Council of the Meat Board and the Cattlemen's Beef Board. Fatty meat was being blamed for a great deal of the cholesterol that was clogging arteries and leading to heart attacks. Garner was not considered much of an effective front man for red meat once the news about his health got out.
Ironic as it may seem, lean meat is now recommended as the protein portion of many diets. Maybe the beef people could bring him back to talk about that.
When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I remember watching O.J. Simpson in Hertz (NYSE:HTZ) ads dash through the airport on my television screen as a spunky old woman yelled "go, O.J., go." It seems like these spots were always featured during breaks of favorite ABC TV shows "Charlie's Angels", "The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island." I even imitated O.J. when I went to the airport, much to the horror of my parents. I thought that, next to TV private eye Jim Rockford, Simpson was the coolest guy in the world.
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 t
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 
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 
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 
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 
In the buildup to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Canadian sprinter 
In a confrontation between bombast and street cred, Fox mouth
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 
When Ben Curtis first hit the TV advertisement airwaves, I couldn't decide whether I was enchanted or annoyed. Personal computers were all the rage and 
Hip-hop/R&B artist 
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 
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 
I have to wonder what Slim-Fast (
A lot of people, including me, thought that actor James Garner gave up the ghost some time ago. Doing the "Rockford Files" TV series must have taken a lot out of him. Then there were all those times he was shot playing Western gambler "Maverick." He was so good at it, he even got a role in the movie version.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop: The looming credit crisis
Closing Bell: Dow down 7.7%; GE, YHOO, MS fall, PGI, MNT soar
Bet on T&A with J&J (JNJ)
