Bad PR

Popchips, makers of the quite delicious popped (not fried) snacks, made a very distasteful ad starring Ashton Kutcher that the company founder is now apologizing for after a very swift and negative Internet reaction.

The ad, which is strangely set in some sort of dating service situation, opens with Kutcher, the brand’s “president of pop culture,” in brownface and a dhoti doing a very bad Indian accent. Immediately, people took to the Web to tell Popchips that the ad is racist.

Keith Belling, the CEO and founder of Popchips, has now issued an apology, saying the ad was supposed to be a “light-hearted parody” and the company “did not intend to offend anyone.” (No word from Kutcher at this point.) Reports say the ad has also been pulled from all of Popchips’ online pages, but you can still catch a glimpse of the character in this ad, which is also still on its Facebook page. The campaign cost the company $1.5 million and Alison Brod Public Relations is handling the PR duties, according to The New York Times.

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TMZ got a hold of the casting call document carmaker Acura sent out when it was filling the roles for its Jerry Seinfeld/Jay Leno Super Bowl commercial. How? An actor who didn’t get the role and is “pissed” sent it to them. Haha! Uh-oh.

According to the document (available on the TMZ site), Acura wanted the role of “African American Car Dealer” to be played by someone “nice looking, friendly” and “not too dark.” Double-take…. yes, that’s what it says. The ad is after the jump.

According to TMZ, someone involved with the casting says the skin color mandate was added because of something to do with “lighting and special effects.” But as Jalopnik pointed out, even if something about the car in the shot is “digitally enhanced,” it’s “still odd that they can make a car appear out of nowhere but can’t light a black guy with dark skin.”

Acura hasn’t responded to requests for comment but it can’t stay quiet on this forever, so we’ll see what the explanation is for this one.

*Update: Acura has issued an apology (of course) to anyone offended by the document. The company tells TMZ that it ultimately chose the “most talented actor” and it is taking steps to make sure that this sort of “language” isn’t used again.

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture has given the OK for some companies to begin listing “pink slime”/”lean finely textured beef”/”ammonia-treated beef” on packaging labels. A spokesperson for the USDA, Dirk Fillpot, wouldn’t name the companies that would be listing the filler. But Fillpot told MSNBC that some companies had voluntarily approached the Department asking to list LFTB on their labels. He wouldn’t say if the USDA was discussing whether to make it a requirement.

Cargill admitted that it was one of the companies that made the request, but says no final decision has been made. Surely, they’re weighing the pros and cons. Pro: the company will score points for taking it upon themselves to be honest with customers. Con: the company sells pink slime for dinner.

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We talked about the problems with Burger King’s marketing strategy yesterday, and how those problems are impacting the third-place burger chain. But, it’s not just BK that’s having trouble. Mary J. Blige, the award-winning singer who, for some unfathomable reason thought it would be a good idea to sing about chicken wraps in one of the company’s latest ads, has also hit a sour note.

After appearing online for just a few days, the MJB ad has been pulled, though it’s now available on many sites (including this one, after the jump). BK says it’s so it can resolve some licensing issues but, of course, many suspect it has more to do with the backlash. Many fans have taken to social media to express their disbelief that someone of Blige’s stature would sing so seriously about a BK snack wrap.

The biggest criticism has come from Madame Noire, which posted this open letter, writing in part: “…[N]othing could have prepared me for the utter buffoonery I saw in that commercial. Why Mary, why?”

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Yesterday, Mitt Romney’s adviser Eric Gehrnstrom stunned the media corps with a bizarre statement showing the presumptive GOP nominee’s camp doesn’t understand the modern nature of political campaigning. Telling CNN: “You hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.”

Rick “I’m not going away” Santorum was quick to respond, using the classic toy as a prop during a rally in Louisiana.  Our favorite response so far comes from Andy Borowitz on Twitter: “We’re not like Etch-a-Sketch. We’re more like Hungry Hungry Hippos – we can’t stop opening our mouths.”

Another winner in this flap is the toymaker itself.

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One of the movies opening this weekend is Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, the animated tale of a 12-year-old boy who tries to find a Truffula tree to win a girl’s heart. The movie is meant to have eco-overtones, showing the importance of conserving rather than squandering nature. The movie also has the overtones of the more than 70 product placements that have been blended into the cartoon action.

If that isn’t enough (and yes, it is) one of the products placed is the Mazda CX-5, an SUV. Great green eggs and ham! That’s a bad product tie-in.

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The Food and Drug Administration is looking into a notice it received from Coca-Cola about fungicide contamination in a major orange juice brand. Coke denied at first that it made the report, but later fessed up, MSN reports. The Wall Street Journal says the fungicide has been found in Coke products and those of its competitors.

The two companies have two-thirds of the orange juice market share in the U.S. Pepsi’s brands are Tropicana and Dole; Coke’s are Minute Maid and Simply Orange. The fungicide, Carbendazim, is not approved in the U.S., but it is in Brazil, which is a source of orange imports for the U.S. On this issue, a Pepsi spokesperson declined comment to The WSJ. We’re already seeing headlines like this.

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Things have entered the realm of the preposterous for the GOP candidates doing battle in New Hampshire, with Mitt Romney’s opponents going to possibly self-destructive lengths to knock him from the frontrunner position.

As we mentioned in today’s Morning Media Menu, Rick Perry’s team made a downloadable ringtone available that repeated the Mitt Romney line “I like being able to fire people.” (The line stems from a response Romney gave during a campaign event.) Tons of outlets reported on the ringtone’s availability, but if you click on any of the links now, an Error 404 message pops up. Maybe even they think they went too far?

Newt Gingrich, picking up on his weekend debate zinger, has launched a website, stopromneyspiousbaloney.com. I like using the word “baloney” as much as the next guy (and “malarky,” which the AP no longer recognizes) but it’s a one-time-use-only word. And this whole move is just infantile.

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A Kansas high school student, Emma Sullivan, posted a tweet last week during a field trip to the state capitol — “Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.” What followed is an example of how little some people know about how this whole social media thing works.

Seeing the tweet, Governor Sam Brownback’s comms director, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, reported Sullivan to her principal, who then issued a decree saying that Sullivan should send an apology to the Governor.

“My principal told me he needed to do damage control and was really upset,” Sullivan told CNN.

Actually, the tweet probably would’ve gone unnoticed by everyone except for Brownback’s staff had they accepted that not everyone in the state would be supportive of the Governor. According to the AP, Sullivan only had 65 followers before the tweet. Now she has more than 9,200.

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PRNewser took a break over the long weekend with all of you and while we were in a food coma, a few interesting things were happening out in the world. So let’s do a quick recap shall we?

-Beyoncé is looking for a firm to revamp BeyonceOnline.com, Ad Age reported. The article says she’s unhappy that the current site doesn’t show the depth and breadth of all that is Beyoncé, and she’s getting involved with the search, seeking a new site in two days. Thoughts on this assignment?

-Walmart is still trying to get away from the 2008 Black Friday tragedy that led to the trampling death of a store worker by talking up its crowd control measures. Nevertheless, store openings Thursday evening/Friday morning got crazy with one woman taking a lesson from the pepper spray cop and zapping people to get at her discount goodies. More people across the country were shot, robbed, and arrested.

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