Battle of the Brands

Even a corporate PR person with bad eyesight could have seen this one coming a mile away: A billboard along Highway 101 in Encinitas that reads ‘HAPPY TO SIT ON YOUR FACE’ generating angry complaints and, this morning, apologetic removal.

It’s a tailor-made faux PR controversy. While the folks at Carlsbad-headquartered SPY Optic eyewear will never admit to this publicly, they are without a doubt privately celebrating as they bookmark, print (and frame?) coverage on NBC San Diego, KFI AM 640 and elsewhere.

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While this morning’s LA Times story about the arrival of ten-foot metallic David Beckham statues near a couple of LA H&M store locations has all the facts, the headline leaves a lot to be desired. It reads: “Statues of David Beckham in his underwear go on display.”

We understand this is a family newspaper, so we’re not looking for any salacious Bend It Like Beckham crotch references. (In fact, reporter Austin Knoblauch sources a variation of that territory in his final sentence.) But the LAT headline writer was definitely asleep at the wheel. Tribune sister publication Zap2it has an equally yawn-inducing headline.

Much better are the following headers from Adweek, Splash News and UK’s Evening Standard newspaper:

“David Beckham Looms Large as H&M Erects Silver Statues”

“The New Statue of David”

“Silverballs! Giant statues of David Beckham capture the public’s imagination”

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In the new book Advertisers At Work, marketing professor Tracy Tuten interviews 20 leading industry execs and entrepreneurs. Leading off this dynamic compilation is Chris Raih, co-founder and managing director of Venice-based creative agency Zambezi.

Raih reveals that from a very young age growing up in Minnesota, he harbored dreams of writing for Sports Illustrated. But things took a turn for the ad world when the print journalism major interned at local agency Fallon. Today, Raih counts the Los Angeles Lakers as a client, has opened a field office in Shanghai and oversees with co-founder Brian Ford some three dozen employees just steps from the beach.

The irony is that Raih gets to work at Zambezi with various sports superstars. In the summer of 2010 for example, the agency put together a vitaminwater campaign with Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Petersen. As he explains in the interview, the icing on the cake was a certain voluble actor:

“The concept was freaking zany – basically that this athlete retained an attack-dog lawyer to try to sue Fantasy Football guys who had Adrian on their team… We cast for the craziest actor we could find and trust me, we found him! We got Gary Busey to play the lawyer…”

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We all know Kobe Bryant is a household name not only just in Los Angeles but across the world.

But in case you need further proof, Bryant had the top-selling NBA Jersey internationally this past season, based on sales at Adidas locations outside the United States.

Exact sales figures were not released but Bryant is tops in China, Latin America, and Europe.

The one list Bryant didn’t top this season was the most popular jersey in the U.S. — that honor went to Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls.

In the current issue of OC Metro magazine, the editors reveal the results of a recent local consumer survey designed to identify the region’s ten most trusted brands for 2012. Alongside such heavyweights as the Anaheim Ducks and the Discovery Science Center, there is also – somewhat surprisingly – Wahoo’s Fish Taco.

Today, over lunchtime at the Disneyland Hotel, the success of these brands is being honored by means of the Third Annual Trust Summit. Events include a panel discussion moderated by Iconoculture vp Mandy Levenberg.

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Thanks to the bendy wonders of Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Foursquare and other social media, the world of product PR is more elastic than ever. The latest proof comes courtesy of Red Mango, the frozen yogurt and smoothies chain launched five years ago in LA.

Chief concept officer Dan Kim this week officially confirmed the launch of new yogurt flavor “Honey Badger,” named after the creature made famous last year on YouTube with narration by Randall. And to up the elastic ante, Red Mango alerted customers exclusively via social media.

“We wanted to show the true power and influence of our social media audience by speaking directly to them with our brand new flavor, and letting them decide where to take the message,” said Kim. “The reaction has been huge and, once again, it shows the reach that consumers have to share the love.”

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It’s just one more stroke of genius for the empire that Steve Jobs built. Despite having more cash on hand than any of its competitors, Apple never has to pay for Hollywood to place its products in film and TV shows.

Per an article in Bloomberg Businessweek by San Francisco-based Peter Burroughs and LA-located Andy Fixmer, this no-cost sideline is booming:

The company’s gadgets were discussed or shown 891 times on TV in 2011, up from 613 in 2009, according to researcher Nielsen (NLSN). In the same year, iDevices appeared in more than 40 percent of the movies that topped the weekly box office, according to Brandchannel, which tracks product appearances. That’s nearly twice the penetration of the next most common brands in Hollywood—Dell (DELL), Chevy (GM), and Ford (F).

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In honor of this weekend’s premiere of the fifth season of Mad Men, the folks at nostalgia magazine Reminisce have racked up a very tasty slide show.

Various now politically incorrect print ads from the 1960s have been dug up and married with some right-margin, Don Draper-worthy patter. There are sixteen slides in all, including a trio of anachronistic cigarette pitches.

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The name of LA’s latest health and wellness beverage, Mr. Pink Ginseng Drink, has a certain retro-ring. That’s because long before Boardwalk Empire, actor Steve Buscemi was of course Mr. Pink in Quentin Tarantino‘s feature debut Reservoir Dogs. “Why am I Mr. Pink? Why can’t we pick our own colors?” he complained in the film.

At the other end of the mental trigger scale for this new product is, less fortunately, porn website MrPink.com. But… in today’s mainstreamed society of titillation, it could be argued that any associative publicity is good associative publicity.

Further compounding the circa-1992 flavor is the last name of one of the drink company execs. Seriously, if you’re a hardcore QT fan, this may have to be your spring 2012 beverage of choice:

“We are happy to offer Mr. Pink to discerning Hollywood consumers,” says Marty Brown, COO of Mr. Pink Beverages. “Its ginseng-based formula is designed to support healthy, pure vitality and does more than simply energize – it promotes well-being.”

Previously on FishbowlLA:
Jason Reitman’s Reservoir Dogs Rocks the LACMA House

We never get tired of reading about Jonathan Goldsmith, the now 73-year-old actor who portrays the “Most Interesting Man in the World” in those Dos Equis beer ads.

The latest reporter to chime in with what is actually one of the best pieces yet is Ad Age‘s E.J. Schultz. The impact Goldsmith’s Fernando Lamas-inspired character has made on U.S. sales of the double-X brew is truly remarkable. One of the best things about this particular article are the details about the actor’s early days. After being thrown off a horse on the set of Gunsmoke, Goldsmith eventually found his stride in 1960s-70s TV shows, leading to an encounter with The Most Iconic Movie Star in the World:

He was maimed by the best, as in the 1976 movie The Shootist, with John Wayne firing at his head. Mr. Goldsmith was pelted repeatedly with so many blood capsules that the director spurred him on with, “Everybody who got shot in the head by Wayne made it big-time,” Mr. Goldsmith recalled. Laughing about it now, he added, “40 years later, here comes Dos Equis.”

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