Bad PR

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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Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

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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Rather than make its clothing more interesting, Italian fashion house United Colors of Benetton has garnered attention once again by creating controversy with its advertising.

Instead of death row inmates or abortion tools as in previous shock-stunts, the UNHate campaign released this week showcases images of world leaders kissing on the mouth – President Barack Obama and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, for one.

The most shocking of the images, a photo of the Pope kissing an imam, was pulled in response to outrage. It was nowhere to be found on the Benetton website by Thursday evening, but the company had not released a statement about its removal.

The Vatican is expected to sue.

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People love Jay-Z and his Rocawear clothing brand. But people did not like the fact that they decided to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street movement to turn a quick buck on sales of a t-shirt. After appearing for sale on the Rocawear site, the offending garment has been removed.

The t-shirt, first seen on Hova in a photo with Russell Simmons, caused problems when the company revealed that none of the proceeds from the sales of the shirt would go to fund the movement. In a statement, Rocawear said, “Occupy All Streets’ is our way of reminding people that there is change to be made everywhere, not just on Wall Street. At this time we have not made an official commitment to monetarily support the movement.” Well now. At least they weren’t trying to spin it some way or another.

Both Animal NY and the Wall Street Journal Speakeasy blog say they’ve tried to contact Rocawear for a follow-up post-removal statement but haven’t gotten one.

Last week, the Obama administration nearly caused the destruction of all that is sacred in America when a 15-cent fee was levied on fresh Christmas trees. Lump of coal for the government.

The tax was levied (and was quickly tossed) after the effective lobbying of the National Christmas Tree Association, which wanted to use the extra money for a marketing campaign. The goal of the campaign: to reverse the slipping sales of real Christmas trees.

Though Obama felt the heat, The Atlantic puts the marketing fail directly at the feet of the Christmas tree group. The story also makes the case for artificial trees, one that consumers have obviously made with their wallets: money savings over the lifetime of the tree (which is forever) and less mess.

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Entertainment Weekly reports that 42West has dumped one of its celebrity clients, Hilary Swank, over a crisis response disagreement.

Hilary Swank has been catching major heat over her October 5 appearance at a party for Chechen president and alleged baddie Ramzan Kadyrov. He’s accused by human rights watchers of torture, kidnapping, and other atrocities. During her appearance, Swank said Kadyrov’s government has a ”passion to make peace and to make something beautiful.”

Heidi Klum’s hubby Seal and Jean-Claude Van Damme also went to the party.

It’s been reported that Hilary Swank did some dumping of her own, getting rid of the staff that booked the gig.

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TV One, a television network that focuses on programming for and about African-Americans, has broadcast an apology for an episode of one of its programs, Love That Girl, that crossed the line into what one website calls “size-ism.”

The show featured a scene where the head of its star, Tatyana Ali (from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air) was placed on the body of comedian Erica Watson. Plus Model Magazine called out the episode, saying it was “not unacceptable.” Separately, the blog Frisky actually recognized Watson’s clothing in the picture that was used in the episode, which made fun of the image. Viewers, friends, and fans also expressed their anger over the episode.

In an email to Frisky, Watson wrote, “Why is my body a joke from the waist down?  It’s very hurtful.” Ugh. Colossal fail.

But TV One was quick to apologize and state plainly that it was “unaware” that the production company for the show had used “an unauthorized image of Erica Watson.” The apology is on TV One’s Facebook page, homepage, and Twitter feed. The offending image has been taken down as well. Companies have to apologize sometimes and that’s how you do it folks.

The latest in the never-ending back-and-forth between Jack O’Dwyer and the PRSA: O’Dwyer, who, if we’re not mistaken, had been talking about being barred from this week’s PRSA conference for weeks, showed up at the conference in Florida and was barred. He was sure to let everyone know. The PRSA gave him lunch anyway.

Interestingly, the National Press Club has issued a statement saying it was “disappointed” to learn that O’Dwyer had been banned. With knowledge of the longstanding “disagreements,” the organization tried to negotiate with the PRSA, but the PRSA wouldn’t budge on its position to keep O’Dwyer out.

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