Adweek reports this morning that Steve Biegel, the former creative director of the U.S. arm of Dentsu (Japan's largest advertising agency), sued the company Wednesday, saying he was pressured to visit a brothel and engage in other sexually explicit activities on company outings and then was fired after he complained in November of 2006.

In a lawsuit seeking unspecified damages filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Steve Biegel said he and other company employees were put in awkward, sexually charged situations by Toyo Shigeta, the chief executive officer of Dentsu Holdings USA.

Dentsu provided this statement on the lawsuit: "Steve Biegel is a former employee who was terminated almost a year ago. When Dentsu refused to yield to Mr. Biegel's unreasonable demands, he made outrageous allegations which the company has refuted. He has now filed a claim to obtain money to which he is not entitled, for incidents he alleges took place over three years ago and which he never complained about while an employee of Dentsu. The company intends to counterclaim that Mr. Biegel has libeled Dentsu and defrauded the company. We look forward to the opportunity to vindicate our company in court."

Biegel said in the suit he was the executive responsible for developing television, radio, print and outdoor advertisements for many of Dentsu's most important clients when he was asked to go on a trip in June 2004 to the Czech Republic where a commercial was shot for Canon Inc.

A few bad apples in PR are in trouble, the lazy ones who pitched press releases straight to Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, have been put on his personal blacklist and hung out to dry in his blog. Yep, there's a naked list (lacking a "mailto", sadly) of every email address that Chris reckons crossed the line of good PR as they didn't bother to figure out who at Wired should really be getting the release. There are 300+ emails on that list, some from well known PR companies.

There is no getting off this list. If you're on it and have something appropriate to say to me, use a different email address.

Ouch, I sense that quite a few PR companies are going to have their own troubles with spam in the future.
I hear what Chris is saying, it never ceases to amaze me how many people use this contact form to ask us how to contact us and where to direct releases, or what our snailmail is. Am I the only one who can see the text on that page? Seriously? Because it is all listed right there! Honestly this is driving me crazy.
If rule #1 of good PR is: Build Relationships, Not Lists. then Rule #2 should be read the god damned contact page. And if you're too lazy to do that, perhaps you should read Marketingsherpas crash course in how to pitch us in particular, as their assistant editor Irina Missiuro did all the hard work for you.

Suspect VFX Supervisor/Lead Flame Artist Tim Crean created the detailed VFX lace that grows across Christinas back in Select's ad for the Procter & Gamble celebrity perfume.
You might have already seen it, this spot has been airing in Sweden for the past two weeks and is planned to air worldwide. Maybe you sense a deja vu if you recall this 2005 commercial where a nude Gisela grows an entire body tattoo. Not that I'm saying they're similar or anything, but yeah, that whole hot nude chick grows tattoo effect has been done before. Not the fault of the post house mind you.
See the new Christina Aguilera Signature Fragrance commercial here.

Cola Wars Get Physical As Pepsi Worker Attacks Coke Employee

1995 Super Bowl commercials

According to police, Robert Koscho, 48, of Ebensburg, and the Pepsi employee, David Paulina, 42, of Clymer, were bickering back and forth while making their deliveries at the Oakland Avenue store. Police said the two are also accused of trying to run each other over with pallets full of soda bottles.
...
A Coca-Cola representative told WTAE Channel 4 Action News that the fight started over shelf space in the aisles of the store.

Shelf position is very important for product sales, and the competition for prime space can be fierce, according to Gary Baum, who owns Cook's Market in Greensburg.

A fight for shelf space. Oi.

I'm using the words "star" and "dignity" in the loosest possible way here, since Alecia Silverstone probably needs the attention, but this shtick (שטיק) is getting a wee bit tired and played out now isn't it?

Doesn't it feel if not just so 1999 then at the very least kind of awkward trying to tempt people (or at least the population who likes naked girls) away from eating meat by tempting them with... uh.. the other white meat? This is so confusing I don't know if I should call Peta or just grab a stick of butter when I look at this.

The new spot "Flat Buns" by Chris Applebaum for Hardees/Carl's Jr. has caused an uproar with teachers. In the spot, a sexy teacher dances provocatively in front of the class while two students rap "Flat Buns". The Tennessee Education Association is demanding it be pulled.

"How irresponsible can you get?” said the Tennessee Education Association in a statement on their website. ”At this very moment, there are female teachers in high school classrooms with 30+ students who are working hard to teach our children so that they can compete in today's world. It is unbelievably demeaning to every one of them to promote a television advertisement showing a young teacher gyrating on top of her desk while boys in the class rap about her body in order to sell hamburgers!"

Click the image below to view the ad.

Sloggi, the straight-laced die-hard plain cotton underwear brand recently launched a "show us your Sloggi" campaign on the web, just like the Sloggi and Daewoo competition of 2004 where the biggest, err, best ass wins. Visitors could upload a nice shot of their behind and other visitors could then vote on the best bum - the most popular gluteus maximus was naturally the one with the minimum of product covering it which seems to backfire (pardon the pun) if the intention was to actually show off some Sloggi's.

Soon plenty of marketing and media people remarked on the cheeky campaign with Planning.se sarcastically spewing facts:

Back in May, TV spots featuring Baby Spice, aka Emma Bunton, began airing in the US. Now they are running print ads (or at least I've come across one) to go with the campaign.

The spot:

What is evil? Is it something you are, or something you do? Are there evil fonts? Some say that Comic sans is evil - but there's a perfectly legit reason for comic sans existence.
Still, now that Comic Sans has escaped its designated area of children's games, and run out into the real world its being used in all the wrong places. Take this example that "merges" (Adam Baker) photographed somewhere in Canada, it's such a gem of an example that translates to "comic sans must die" in any typophiles eyes. This may not happen again - god I hope it won't - sure, nobody was killed this time, but you don't want to risk it again. Right?

Last Friday, Pepsi ad man Alan Maxwell Pottasch died. He was behind many of the iconic Pepsi ads, including "Pepsi Generation" concepts.

Pottasch died in his sleep Friday in Los Angeles, where he was on location working on a TV commercial. Even though he retired in 1991, he continued to work for the company as a consultant.

Pottasch was the creative force behind five decades of Pepsi advertising campaigns, the company said. He started working for the company in 1957, and as a marketer recognized the shift from promoting products to selling a way of life.

The French campaign group SOS Racisme brought a case against L'Oréal already back in 2000 saying they excluded non-white women from promoting its shampoo, and the ruling is just in: Guilty. The Garnier division of the beauty empire, along with a recruitment agency it employed, were fined €30,000 each after they recruited women on the basis of race. A senior figure at the agency given a three-month suspended prison sentence.

The Hearld Sun in Australia reports that Beer ads for Hahn Superdry, which star a bikini-clad woman under the title "Hahn boobs", are under fire for offensive sexism.

The state's peak health advisory body, VicHealth, has written to the Advertising Standards Bureau asking for the ads to be shelved. VicHealth boss Todd Harper said the treatment of women in the ads was appalling.

Welcome to the Advanced Marketing Institute's Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer. Here you can see exactly how well your headline scores on the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV). O rly? Let's test this thing and see if we can't score more than 100%, shall we? The crazy kids of adlist were more than willing to help. Obvious:

"Will you marry me?" - scored 75% Intellectual EMV while
Will you marry Brad Pitt? scored 40% Intellectual / Spiritual

The Media Guardian reports today that Saatchi & Saatchi London has been fired by Dr Martens for running an advertising campaign featuring dead rock stars Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, Joey Ramone, and Joe Strummer wearing the their Doc Martens boots in heaven. The ads have been flying around the net recently, mostly posted on blogs. Quite a few have commented on the ads being in poor taste.

Gyro Worldwide alerts us the launch of their latest campaign for the English denim company Lee Cooper, which has garnered "an extreme reaction in India".

Illegalsigns.ca have been keeping track of those Audi TT steel signs that have appeared all over Toronto - long story short, the TT signs are meant to be “set dressing” for an Audi TV commercial so the Film and Televison Office gave the go-ahead. But the press about the ad campaign mention no commercial, instead the TT signs are the ad campaign.

Hmmm...lets see now...how to cross-promote a cable TV show with lots of sex and violence? How about an ice cream? And name it after the show's strip club. The Sopranos Cherry Chip Bada Bing.

This flickr photo taken by Mark McLaughlin shows the red Biohazard stencil currently all over London where the sender is "Ragevirus.com", which isn't the same as Ragevirus.co.uk which is a redirected adversite for 28 weeks later the zombie-virus movie.
Silly mistake? Yes, indeed it's a mistake... But maaaybe, just maybe, the misspelling was intentional in order to create a hubub about it on the web on high traffic sites like Metafilter and personal blogs all over. Naaah.
Mark McLaughlin who took that flickr pic now owns Ragevirus.com - clever bugger seems to have bought it as soon as he saw the misspelled graffitti - while Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation owns ragevirus.co.uk. Mark points out the .com vs .co.uk spelling mistake on his domain and adds:

...hey, Fox - you should probably tell someone off in your marketing team. You silly people.

When you load the page Zooppa.com it asks you in the upper right hand corner "who are you"? The question is, who is zooppa? It's yet another place riding on the user-generated hype where people can create ads that meet a brief and if their ad is picked, they win cash prizes. Oh joy. The about page of this "first Italian American startup" reads

"It is committed to the vision of real people and real companies conducting business in a creative and rewarding viral context.

CK are at it again, trying to make another fragrance that appeals to "the kids these days" and they hope to repeat the success they had with "One" in the nineties. In this New York Times article "How to Bottle a Generation" they touch on the problem this perfume has:

Zach Klein, 24, has also participated in market surveys attempting to distill his demographic, though he was skeptical of the idea of companies adapting to the language of the target audience.