The Charlie Sheen Show
The antics of one-man train wreck Sheen are sure to fill numerous
lists. His battle with the producers of America's No. 1 comedy,
"Two and a Half Men," brought the show to a complete halt. But that
was only, well, half of it. Sheen sent deranged tweets, gave
interviews flanked by porn stars and raged on radio shows, and
Americans kept tuning in. Thankfully (we think), Sheen survived,
Comedy Central got a roast out of it and Ashton Kutcher snagged a
new job.
Nivea's Uncivilized Ad
The company's campaign for a men's line included photos of
sharp-dressed guys chucking remnants of their former scraggly
selves. The problem? Under the photo of a clean-shaven black man
tossing what looked like a severed head with an Afro, ran the words
"Re-civilize yourself." After blog outrage, including a charge that
Nivea was "unapologetically racist," the company didn't even
attempt to defend the ad. It simply apologized and vowed never to
run it again.
Target .com's
Buggy Relaunch
Site crashes, broken links, missing baby and wedding registries,
and carts with a mind of their own were just a few of Target 's
problems six weeks after the retailer unshackled itself from
Amazon. The
redesigned Target .com launched Aug. 23, ending the retailer's
decade-long relationship with Amazon. Target enlisted more than 20
vendors -- including SapientNitro (as
partner and lead integrator), Interpublic Group of Cos.' Huge ,
Infosys, IBM and Endeca -- to
build its own e-commerce technology and website. With that many
cooks in the kitchen, it wasn't a surprise to hear reports of
friction and miscommunication.
Booty-Shaping Shoes Busted
You can firm up your butt just by strapping on a pair of shoes and
walking around? No sweating? No grunting? No exertion? Sound too
good to be true? According to the FTC, it is . The agency announced
in September that Reebok had agreed to a $25 million settlement to
resolve charges that it deceptively advertised toning shoes and
apparel. In a statement, Reebok said it was standing behind its
shoes and agreed to the settlement only to avoid a protracted legal
battle. While Skechers, another big "toning" shoe marketer, escaped
that round, SEC filings indicate that it's bracing for its own
multimillion-dollar settlement.
BofA Tries to Make You Pay
With consumers still feeling they're in a recession and middle
Americans angry enough about bailouts and bank profits to give
Occupy Wall Street a chance, this was definitely not the year for a
bank to do something so tone deaf it bordered on stupidity. Like,
say, propose a $5 monthly debit card fee on consumers. Which is
exactly what Bank of America did.
It abandoned the scheme after a customer outcry -- and after other
banks rejected the idea, as well.
The Ongoing J.Lo Fiat
Fiasco
When football and Fiat fans saw Jennifer Lopez shaking her
moneymaker for the Fiat 500, responses ranged from puzzled to
furious. But they misunderstood, said Chrysler. The spot was not an
ad for a car, but a marketing tie-in for J.Lo's upcoming music
video. It wasn't long before Impatto, the agency behind that part
of the effort, was dropped and a "real" ad was released. It also
featured Jenny from the Block, now driving around the Bronx. Or so
it seemed. J. Lo was too busy to film the Bronx scenes, so a double
was used.
HuffPo Punishes Aggregator
In his ongoing chronicling of the aggregation sins committed by The
Huffington Post, Ad Age writer Simon Dumenco offered an example of
how a HuffPo staffer used and abused one of his columns. HuffPo
responded: "We have zero tolerance for this sort of conduct" and
then indefinitely suspended the staffer. But the punishment may
have been worse than the crime. Bloggers at Gawker, The Awl and
elsewhere pointed out that the writer was publicly skewered for
doing as she was taught, as "overaggregating" has basically been
HuffPo's business model from the start.
Groupon's Super Bowl Fumble
A few of us thought Groupon's Super Bowl ad -- which pivots from
Timothy Hutton talking about the plight of Tibet to Timothy Hutton
pitching a Groupon for a Tibetan restaurant -- was hilarious. The
other 99%? Not so much. And with the social-media multiplier
effect, it wasn't long before a full-scale scandal was brewing.
Groupon initially stuck to its guns and defended its agency,
Crispin Porter & Bogusky. Then it apologized. Then CEO Andrew
Mason just threw Crispin under the bus, saying he'd placed too much
trust in the shop "to be edgy, informative and entertaining, and we
turned off the part of our brain where we should have made our own
decisions." So who's he going to blame for that IPO?
