Today in Didn’t That Joke Get Old at Least Ten Years Ago News: The latest ad campaign for Papa John’s features Dallas Cowboys General Manager Jerry Jones rapping about pizza, and it’s every bit as bad as you’d expect. Our question: How does this spot benefit either the Cowboys brand or the Papa John’s brand? It seems like a clear case of the audience “laughing at you, not with you.” We could be wrong, but we’d rather not consider that possibility.

If you’ve ever read the label on the package of any sort of processed food, you’ve undoubtedly encountered a whole host of unpronounceable, unrecognizable chemicals–so it’s really no surprise that discussions about organic practices, GMOs, and the current state of our food production/distribution system have been building steam over the past several years.

But in these increasingly health-and-environment-conscious times, consumers are growing more concerned not just with what they put in their bodies, but also what they put on their bodies. Chances are, the label on your shampoo bottle is just as unsettling as the label on your cereal box. With this in mind, several specialty lines of self-care products like Origins, Murad and others have taken full advantage of the trend toward natural ingredients, building their brands by boasting about the ingredients not included in their products.

Now, Johnson & Johnson, which makes a wide range of personal care products including everything from its famous baby shampoo to familiar drugstore brands like Neutrogena, Aveeno, and Clean & Clear, has announced that it will be phasing out harmful chemicals from its products by 2015, and from several of its baby products by 2013.

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Hey, how is Progressive Insurance dealing with their ongoing PR imbroglio? If you guessed “running around like a headless chicken”, then you just might be correct!

According to Business Insider, the company’s current state of (justifiable) panic may well lead them to send their favorite spokeswoman Flo on an extended vacation.

Well, somebody needs to do something—and fast. Progressive’s PR outlook hasn’t gotten any better since we first ran the story earlier this week. Matt Fisher, the comedian who first brought the controversy into the spotlight with his harrowing tale of legal battles in the wake of his sister’s tragic death, took to Tumblr yesterday to refute Progressive’s universally panned response to his initial post (not a great idea to enable comments on that company blog, by the way). Fisher insisted that Progressive’s in-house lawyer did in fact serve as counsel for the “underinsured” driver who caused the fatal accident–despite contrary claims from the company.

Wow. Tough to spin this one. Read more

Everyone’s favorite social network lost a little more of its innocence today. Facebook has announced that it will enter the world of online gambling with Bingo Friendzy, a new app designed by gaming bigwigs Gamesys that allows UK-based users aged 18 and older to compete for cash prizes online.

Given recent controversies over Internet gambling in the US (where it is currently illegal), Bingo could be a somewhat touchy subject for Facebook, a company whose public image has suffered in the wake of a disappointing stock performance and other assorted PR headaches. The company’s representatives assured the public that age-gating technology will prevent minors and other “vulnerable people” from playing the games or viewing related ads and also repeatedly stressed the fact that the app will only be available to users in the United Kingdom. Sounds like they’re anticipating a backlash.

AllFacebook covered the issue earlier today, noting that we shouldn’t expect similar offerings in the US anytime soon due to the federal government’s 2011 crackdown on popular poker sites. So will this new revenue source satisfy Facebook’s anxious investors, or will Gibraltar-based Gamesys go the way of Zynga? Only time will tell.

By the way, would you play bingo for cash on Facebook if you could?

Chesapeake Energy Corp., the nation’s second-largest natural gas company after Exxon Mobil, has been caught up in controversy after controversy since 2009. Now the company is under fire again, this time because of a series of email exchanges between Chesapeake executives (including CEO Aubrey McClendon) and officials at EnCana Corp., Canada’s largest natural gas company, that indicate they attempted to suppress the price of land leases in Michigan.

According to Pro Publica, the Justice Department is investigating whether any laws against price fixing have been violated. Should the Justice Department find cause to prosecute, this could prove much more serious than a PR issue. Under the Sherman Antitrust Act, price fixing is a felony and is punishable by fines of up to $100 million for companies, and $1 million for company officials.

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Research in Motion has got 99 problems and satisfying demand ain’t one. (Ha… groan.) Bloomberg reports that weak sales are leaving BlackBerrys and PlayBook tablets in warehouses to collect dust, the value of that inventory reaching $1 billion last quarter. Layoffs are in the offing. Losses are coming. They’ve hired JPMorgan and Royal Bank of Canada to reassess its strategy. Maybe they can do something about this.

Yesterday, trading on RIM stock was halted while CEO Thorsten Heins delivered some bad news. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that RIM is having a very hard time keeping up with Apple and the other competition.  The company is promising a new strategy, but an underlying issue the company has to overcome may be more insidious than the already huge business obstacles: “skepticism.”

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The Audi.360 has a dashboard, but it’s not a new car model. It’s their digital tool for managing their reputation, and it runs 24/7. Audi uses it to track not only their media coverage but also the reputations of their CEO, board members, and their main competitors, BMW and Mercedes Benz.

Judith Piesbergen, from Audi’s issues and reputation management team, detailed Audi’s process for monitoring its reputation worldwide while speaking at the Global Strategic Communication & Measurement Conference hosted by International Association of Business Communicators and Prime Research in New York on Thursday.

The company identified seven key factors that drive its reputation: including management, strategy, financial performance, products and services, social responsibility, appeal as an employer, and ecological responsibility. Audi also benchmarks these measures versus its two key competitors. With so many variables, Prime Research developed the 360 tool to manage the information flow, and it provides real-time information by country and time frame.

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Photo: Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times

McDonald’s is rolling out the McDonald’s Channel, a broadcast station, over the next few months across Central and Southern California, ultimately landing in 800 restaurants and reaching up to 20 million customers each month. Segments will include “The McDonald’s Achievers” profiling student athletes, and “Mighty Moms” focused on mothers with sports careers (?), as well as coverage of the company’s philanthropic efforts.

FishbowlNY has some show suggestions, including one we would actually watch, “Guess What? I’m Stupid” that chronicles the nutritional epiphanies of McDonald’s enthusiasts. Which brings us to a most amazing thing — that love/hate/toxic relationship that we have with McDonald’s. No matter how many different ways we’re warned, “If you eat this it will kill you,” people keep coming back for more. There was even a movie that showed that very thing happening to a human being. Yet the most packed dining area in every food court in every mall and every airport is beneath some golden arches.

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Well now. AIG subsidiary Chartis has launched a product this week called “ReputationGuard” that will offer services from Burson-Marsteller and Porter Novelli to account holders in case of a crisis situation. Policy prices vary, but a small company could shell out $10,000 in annual premiums.

Yes, we’re talking about the AIG that got all that bailout cash and became the object of intense scorn when the economy collapsed in ’08. AIG’s own crisis situation was so bad, this subsidiary changed its name from AIU Holdings to Chartis so it wouldn’t be associated with its parent company. And, according to a Harris Interactive study from earlier this year, its reputation is still pretty much in the toilet.

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The stuff American consumers love to hate are mostly things we use all the time.  BusinessInsider updated their Top 18 list today, and it’s what you’d expect with airlines and telecommunication companies dominating the list.  With Occupy Wall Street bringing even more attention to the companies that contributed to the economic meltdown, several banks made it too.

The list is based on survey data from the America Consumer Satisfaction Index. Due to a rating decline of 16 points this year, Pepco (Potomac Electric) took the booby prize.  It’s reported in the piece that Pepco customers experience 70 percent more outages that comparable big city utilities, and the lights stay out twice as long.  Take that Long Island Power Authority.

Having done some “social CRM” work myself, I can tell you it’s the nature of the beast with things you use every day, and suffer a customer service merry-go-round when they don’t work properly. The reason other airlines and banks haven’t made the list is partially due to a more thoughtful, more public approach to resolving problems.  However, despite the now-legendary @ComcastCares feed, Comcast still sits at the top at #4.  And Facebook (you get what you pay for) comes in at #9 due to privacy beefs.

The complete list is after the jump: Read more