Taco Bell goes retro with “Where’s the beef?” defense

Want to know when you’ve lost the PR battle? When you get headlines like this:

Taco Bell Defends Beef, Calls Suit ‘Bogus’

Taco Bell’s real problem is that this lawsuit doesn’t sound that outlandish. It just confirms a lot of people’s secret suspicions – whether true or not. Taco Bell’s brand promise is cheap, pseudo-Mexican-themed food. Nobody looks at them and thinks, “Good food.” They think, “Inexpensive, filling and no I don’t really want to know what’s in it.” Even the company’s defense plays into this. Chihuahua HQ has put out a press release saying,

Our seasoned beef recipe contains 88% quality USDA-inspected beef and 12% seasonings, spices, water and other ingredients that provide taste, texture and moisture.

“88% of our meat is actually meat. No, really.” You’re not going to win a lot of hearts and minds with that one guys.

What the company needs to do is go with this instead of fighting it. How about an ad campaign with a Lenten theme – “Taco Bell, perfect for meatless Fridays.” Or, “Taco Bell – Fast food for vegetarians.”

FDA announces recall of “Toxic Waste® brand Nuclear Sludge® Chew Bars”

NOMINITAVE DETERMINISM IN ACTION!

There’s really nothing you could possibly add to that headline but if you want to read the FDA announcement go here.

Starbucks goes after Big Gulp crowd with new “trenta”

Quoth the Washington Post:

The new, nearly quart-size cups — meant only for iced coffee and tea — are available in 14 states starting today, and everyone, everywhere, should be able to indulge by early May. As the National Journal has pointed out with a handy chart, you will be indulging in a drink larger than most stomachs.

Trenta is Italian for 30 so it only makes sense that *$ new supersized drink contains … 31 ounces. (What’s wrong with Trentuno?)  Is anyone going to say, “Trenta-size me.”

Trenta joins other words repurposed by *$ like

• Venti – “fan” (French),  “wait” (Danish & Norwegian), 20 (Italian)
• Grande – “seniors" (French) or large (Spanish, Catalan, Italian)
• Tall – “I’m broke but want to hang out here anyway.”

Don’t know what they’ll charge for this beast but it shouldn’t be much more than a re-negotiated mortgage payment.

Goodbye to my major claim to fame: Carl Kassell’s voice on my answering machine

 

The man, the myth and the message

Time and progress have come to the CollateralDamage household and we are getting rid of the land-line telephone. So we no longer have a group phone. That phone line is where, for the past 12 years, Carl Kassell‘s voice has resided. Unfortunately when I wrote that script for Carl (I should really put that on my resume) I made it specific and included our soon-to-be-gone phone number. Click here to listen to Carl as he answered our calls for so long.

I won this cherished item by correctly answering 4 (count ’em FOUR) questions about the news on NPR’s quiz show Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me. (It was their first year-end show and they upped the ante on the questions. They’ve never done it again and so I remain the only person ever to have gone 4 for 4.)

Having Carl’s voice is, in fact, every bit as cool as you think it is. More than once I have received messages about how cool a thing it is from people who have called the wrong number. And once a wrong number even called back to hear it again. Carl Kassell has also helped to encourage a certain sense of humility in me. Several times I have received a phone call from friends who said, in disappointed tones, “Oh … you’re home. I wanted to hear the message. If I call back, do you mind not answering?”

People frequently asked me how I got to be on the show. It’s a question I find confusing because the answer is so obvious: I called the number they repeat dozen times each week. No secret to it. I wonder if Wait, Wait … has a policy against two-time winners? I’m going to use the same tricky maneuver I used the last time — the telephone — and try to go for the gold again.

Until that happens I will cherish the cassette tape with the Wait, Wait logo on it and all that greatness within it.

Our Yitzhak Rabin moment?

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry." — Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik

“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” Ms. Giffords said last March. “But the thing is the way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that.”

Vogue’s hot, new fashion trend: Sexually exploiting children for fun and profit

Here’s what Xeni Jardin said at BoingBoing and I can’t do better (click here if you want to see one of the pictures.):

The December issue of French Vogue, edited by Tom Ford, features an extensive spread of child models presented more or less like whores. The girl above is 6. Lemme spell that for you: s-i-x! I’m a big Tom Ford fan. Or, well, was. Artistic freedom and everything, and no, this shouldn’t be made illegal—but I believe this is Totally Not Cool.

Apparently French Vogue is where they run all the most appalling stuff. They managed to hit #5 on 2009’s list of Top 10 Marketing Blunders with a salute to black-face featuring a photo spread of the very Caucasian Lara Stone painted head-to-toe in dark make-up. Keep up the good work gang! It’s going to take a lot of work to keep them out of 2011’s Top 10.

Around the world it’s Word Of The Year®™ time!

Countless (and pointless) places are taking a moment to declare the word of the year, if for no other reason than it lets them pretend they’re working. Here are the ones I’ve been able to find:

1. Merriam-Webster: Austerity
2. Germany picked two: One is “niveaulimbo” which translates as “limbo level”, and refers to the constantly lowered standards of television programming and conversations. The other is Wutbürger, or “enraged citizen.” 
3. The Philippines: j3j3mon, or jejemon – a little monster who only writes in text speak.
4. Denmark: Vuvuzela (Yawn. That is so last summer.)
5. The Flemmings chose Tentsletje, or tent-slut, “a word for a woman who has multiple sexual partners at a music festival, a popular summer pastime for young people in Flanders.” No news yet about how the Walloons voted – but I always think Walloon should be word of the year because of how it sounds.
6. The Dutch themselves (who live just north of the Phlegms) picked Gedoogregering – the nickname given to the current minority government. The word that came in third should have won:  bestuursobesitas — an exaggerated desire to develop company policy and carry it out.
7. The Swiss seemed to have picked the German word Ausschaffung (deportation) which became popular in the run-up to a recent referendum to automatically expel any foreigner convicted of a serious crime. (The Swiss continue a tradition of intolerance with this choice. Last year’s word was Minarettverbot, = ‘minaret ban.)’
8. Russia: Аномальные погодные условия — anomalous weather conditions. Re: Last summer’s sweltering weather. Followed by: Ничего подобного никогда не было (There’s never been anything like this).
9. China: "to swell" (漲, pronounced zhang) is used when describing rapid rising prices and forms part of the Chinese word for inflation.
10. UK: Big Society – As in the new coalition government’s dream of…

 

And what about Eyjafjallajökull? Blowout Preventer? Robo-signers?

American Girl’s Hawaiian doll is a Caucasian

When last we checked in with American Girl™®© they were selling a doll which they described as homeless for a mere $95. But that’s so 2009. They are kicking off this year with their 2011 Girl Of The Year®, Kanani Akina™ who “loves welcoming visitors to her Hawaiian home.” No big deal if it weren’t for the fact that Kanani has dark blonde hair, brown eyes and a skin color that suggests a health-minded approach to tanning. In other words, she doesn’t look in the least bit like actual native Hawaiians who usually have black hair, black eyes and a darker skin color. It is especially odd that American Girl™®© decided to call American Surfer Girl Hawaiian at a time when The World’s Most Famous Hawaiian (and Leader of The Free World™®©) is known for his surfeit of melanin.

In Hawaiian Kanani means"the beautiful one." Apparently the beautiful one in Hawaii is Haole. While her last name, Akina, may sound Hawaiian it is actually Japanese (another group known primarily for black hair and eyes and a distinctly non-Caucasian skin tone). So American Girl™®© just decided to appropriate some ethnic sounding names, put a flower in the doll’s hair and call it Hawaiian. Aznuts, as the Hawaiians say. Hell, even Disney – which has a very long history of messing up on ethnic issues — was able to do this right.

This doll was brought to my attention by my wife, Jennifer — aka “Mrs. CollateralDamage” aka “Broke Hoedown” aka “One of Those Darn Cats” – who has spent quite a bit of time in Hawaii and so was totally flabbergasted when she came across it that her eyes did that Tex Avery thing. For that, at least, I can say, “Well done, American Girl™®©!”

BTW, Soong-Chan Rah has a wonderful tale of a parent and child dealing with American Girl’s issues around ethnicity. Highly recommended.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 190,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 8 days for that many people to see it.

 

In 2010, there were 87 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 1395 posts. There were 173 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 7mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were cracked.com, facebook.com, en.wordpress.com, blog.larrybodine.com, and fimoculous.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for bulldog, pringles, willie nelson, tigger, and panda.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

!!!HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILLIE NELSON!!! April 2008
5 comments

2

Nickelodeon wasting marketing opportunity for Avatar: The Last Airbender March 2008
25 comments

3

The ultimate guide to great & real baseball team names March 2008
7 comments

4

10 Worst Marketing Blunders of 2009 December 2009
24 comments

5

School district must pay $95K for banning Tigger socks December 2007
3 comments