Showing posts with label AOL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AOL. Show all posts

Friday, May 30, 2008

Why the sudden Cheetos uproar?


So, I'm amazed at what appears to be a sudden uproar concerning the Cheetos campaign. (If that sentence isn't proof enough that I have no life, than I don't know what else I can tell ya.) It all started on Monday morning, when Bob Garfield's column in Ad Age ran under the headline, "Cheetos Ads That Promote 'Random Acts' Are Irresponsible." Whew! Garfield compares the campaign's premise of encouraging youth to commit random acts to "stick it to the man" as stealing marketing tactics from the drug trade. Don't need to tell you how many stars he gave the campaign, but let's just say that Cheetos' agency, Goodby, Silverstein + Partners, may have never seen this treatment before. Then, yesterday, someone at AOL Living picked up the story, which now has 239 comments. Here's the amazing thing: this campaign has been out for months now, so where was the initial outrage? Seems to me that if a thing can sit around for months without anyone expressing outrage, than it's a trumped up controversy—although, yeah, not the best ad idea ever.