Freak Week: That’s Entertainment

Meanwhile, the big controversy of last week involved a celebrity endorsement. People got all offended when Chris Farley was forced into post-mortem support of DirecTV, so imagine how Citroen’s new European ad with John Lennon is going over. In a word, poorly. The spot uses footage of Lennon talking about the need to generally blaze new paths rather than rehashing the past — a message Citroen then applies to itself, with beauty shots of its ultra-modern, “anti-retro” cars. On Twitter, Lennon’s son Sean tried to explain (if not exactly defend) his mother Yoko Ono’s deal with Citroen. “She did not do it for money,” he wrote. “No new LPs, so TV ad is exposure to young. … Having just seen ad I realize why people are mad. But intention was not financial, was simply wanting to keep him out there in the world.” Even, apparently, at the cost of the former Beatle’s integrity.

Dogs don’t have great spending power, but occasionally a pet-related marketer will target them directly with ads in the hope that a human or two will follow. This is happening in the U.K., where dog-food maker Wagg Foods rolled out sidewalk ads last week that (with the help of some underemployed scientists) smell like real dog food. The idea is to lure unsuspecting passerby pooches (who are driven “wild” by the smell, according to the company, though hopefully not in a bad way) and thus attract their owners, too. This kind of thing has been tried before. Leo Burnett did something similar for Pedigree in Germany in 2005 (stuffing real food behind the ads rather than using a chemical scent). And a U.K. campaign for Animal Planet in 2001 featured lamppost ads that smelled like dog urine, the one thing that might drive dogs wilder than food.

Best of BrandFreak: Capri Sun will destroy your children

It takes courage (or perhaps there’s a less charitable word) to suggest your product might inflict weird and terrible harm upon consumers. And not just upon any consumers — upon children! AdFreak’s sister blog, BrandFreak, covered just such a campaign last week — Ogilvy’s new work for Capri Sun. Four commercials show bad things happening to kids who toss away or otherwise mistreat the product’s distinctive pouch packages. One becomes a balloon animal and floats away; another becomes a chew toy; a third is frozen in time as a sand sculpture; and a fourth gets a turtle’s body to go along with his (embarrassed and shocked) human head. The tone is meant to be comical (“Respect the pouch!” is the tagline), but there is an undertone of menace, particularly in the case of Sandy Mandy, who loses an arm as a wave hits the shore. If anyone objects to the campaign, though, at least it has a strong environmental message. Kids, litter at your own risk.