Marketing

"Power Balance" Wristbands: Rubber Bands with a Big Marketing Budget

Submitted by Anne Landman on

PowerBalance WristbandsPower Balance of Orange County, California makes rubber bracelets with a holographic inset that "are designed to work with your body's natural energy field" to increase strength, balance and flexibility. The bands sell on Amazon.com for anywhere from $4.25 to $30.00. The company has poured tens of millions of dollars into a marketing campaign that features sports heroes and athletes like Shaquille O'Neil promoting the product. But on December 22, 2010, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ruled that claims that the bracelets improve strength, balance and flexibility "were not supported by any credible scientific evidence," and made Power Balance admit that it engaged in "misleading and deceptive conduct in breach of 2.52 of the Trade Practices Act of 1974." The Commission told Power Balance to stop making bogus claims about the product, refund the purchase price of the wrist band to people who feel they were misled, publish a corrective advertisement to keep consumers from being misled in the future and remove the words "performance technology" from the brand. The Australian ruling isn't valid in other countries, however.

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Main Source: 
BizCommunity.com, January 11, 2011
Topics: 
Advertising
Marketing

Rite Aid Healthwashes Cigarette Sales

Pharmacy Brand SmokesThe Rite Aid drug store chain announced that it is once again teaming with the American Heart Association (AHA) to promote AHA's "Go Red for Women" campaign. Rite Aid collects donations of one dollar or more from customers in exchange for little red paper dresses that contain detachable coupons for merchandise. Rite Aid issued a press release touting the campaign and their free "heart health guide" that contains advice on how to prevent heart disease. Absent from the promotion and the press release, and kept quiet by AHA, is the fact that Rite Aid contributes mightily to causing heart disease in women by selling cigarettes.

Cables Show U.S. Government Works for Boeing

Submitted by Anne Landman on

Classified State Department cables published by Wikileaks show high-up U.S. government officials have entertained and obliged special requests from foreign heads of state to help close big deals for Boeing. In 2006, a senior Commerce Department official hand-delivered a personal letter from George W. Bush to the office of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, urging the king to complete a deal with Boeing for 43 airliners, including some for the king's family fleet. The cable shows that as part of the deal, the King wanted his personal jet "to have all the technology that his friend, President Bush, had on Air Force One." Once he had his high-tech plane, the King said, "God willing," he would "make a decision that will 'please you very much.' " The U.S. obligingly authorized an upgrade in King Abdullah's plane. In other instances, Bangladesh's prime minister, Sheik Hasina Wazed, sought landing rights at Kennedy International Airport, and the Turkish government asked for assurances that one of their astronauts could join a future NASA space flight. U.S. diplomats served as marketing agents for Boeing by using State Department visits as bargaining chips and offering deals to foreign heads of state and commercial executives with the power to purchase airplanes from Boeing.

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Main Source: 
New York Times, January 2, 2011
Topics: 
Corporations
Marketing
U.S. Government

Taxpayers Subsidize Big Screen Movie Promos for Cigarettes, and More

Submitted by Anne Landman on

Burlesque the movieSteven Antin's new movie, Burlesque (PG-13), features about twenty different brands of products, including gratuitous use of R.J. Reynolds' Camel cigarettes. Other films that have showcased cigarettes this year include the Disney film The Sorcerer's Apprentice (rated PG, which features Newport cigarettes), and For Colored Girls (rated R, by Lionsgate, which features Marlboros). States are now spending millions to subsidize the production of movies, meaning taxpayers are not only paying to help big companies advertise their products, but they are also helping pay to showcase smoking -- a harmful addiction that many states are simultaneously spending millions to reduce. California taxpayers shelled out $7.2 million to subsidize the movie Burlesque alone, which not only features gratuitous smoking, but also showcases a slew of other brands, including Famous Amos cookies (the character Jack holds a box over his genitals), Dos Equis beer, Michelob, Cheerios, Cocoa Puffs, Oreos, KitchenAid, Ultimat Vodka, Coldwell Banker, Chase Bank, Patron Tequila and many more.

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Main Source: 
SmokeFree Movies, December, 21, 2010
Topics: 
Advertising
Health
Media
Tobacco

Is the "Druggiest Campus" List a PR Stunt?

Submitted by Anne Landman on

alcohol and marijuanaThe Monterey Herald accused The Daily Beast of shameless self-promotion after the news Web site posted a list of what it claimed were the 50 "druggiest" colleges and universities in the United States. California State University Monterey Bay was ranked the seventh most drug-infested campus in the country, which the Herald disputes as illogical and unfair, particularly since UC Berkeley was ranked 46th, and UC Santa Cruz and Humboldt State didn't even make on the list. The Herald accused the article's authors of using shoddy methodology, like surveying relatively small samples of students, and considering U.S. Department of Education statistics for on-campus arrests and drug law citations for 2009, without regard to how aggressively each campus carries out enforcement. Using the latter measure, the Herald points out, would make campuses that actively discourage drug use through stricter enforcement rank higher on the "druggiest" list than would schools that ignore students' possession and use of marijuana and other recreational drugs. The Herald says that rather than shedding light on the problem of drug use on U.S. campuses, but the goal of the authors "was to get newspapers and TV stations in at least 50 college towns around the country to produce stories mentioning the Daily Beast, and it worked exceedingly well" -- and put The Daily Beast at the top of the list for shameless website promotion.

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Main Source: 
Monterey Herald, December 16, 2010
Topics: 
Journalism
Marketing

Lorillard Loses

Submitted by Anne Landman on

A Massachusetts jury has ordered cigarette maker Lorillard, Inc. to pay $71 million in damages to the family of a Boston woman who said she was seduced into smoking Newport cigarettes as a child. The plaintiff, Marie Evans, died from lung cancer at age 54, after smoking Newport cigarettes for 40 years. Before her death, she gave a videotaped deposition in which described how, starting at age nine, she received free samples of cigarettes from a man in a white truck who would drive through their neighborhood passing them out to children. Evans said the trucks "seemed to be there waiting when we got out of school." Evans' sister, Leslie Adamson, corroborated her testimony. Evans accepted some responsibility for never being able to quit her nicotine addiction, even after suffering a heart attack at age 37. Lorillard denied marketing cigarettes to children and targeting black communities with Newports.

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Main Source: 
Boston Globe, December 14, 2010
Topics: 
Health
Marketing
Tobacco

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