Remember what a big deal the 1987 "Revolution" Nike ad was?

[click to embiggen]

Buzzfeed reports that this complaint letter is framed at Nike headquarters. I remember when that ad came out, and it was actually a really big deal that an actual song by The Beatles had been "sold out" to sell shoes.



John Lennon had been dead for almost seven years at that point, and the publishing rights to most Beatles-era Lennon-McCartney songs had been purchased by Michael Jackson in 1985. In an unprecedented move, Wieden+Kennedy paid paid $250,000 to Michael Jackson and another $250,000 to Capitol Records which held the North American licensing rights to The Beatles’ recordings.

Apparently, Paul, George and Ringo were not happy about it. Through their record company, Apple, (which would later fight with Apple Computers) filed a lawsuit in July 1987. They named Nike, Wieden+Kennedy, and Capitol-EMI Records for $15 million in damages. It was settled out-of-court for an undisclosed sum.

Yoko Ono, however, approved of the song's commercial use, telling Time that the ad was "making John's music accessible to a new generation."

The real revolution — of advertisers using the borrowed interest of unaltered classic songs for campaigns — was unstoppable. It's now almost inconceivable to imagine a time when new and old hits were not repurposed as anthems for big brands. Even though it is pretty lazy creative, when you think about it.

And the letter? The imgr source cuts off the signature. But one thing I can say for sure, is that he or she was also a Monty Python fan.

The Beatles' Apple is now Apple's Apple

Remember Apple? No, not that Apple. This one:

Via

When I was a kid, in the '70s and early '80s, finding an original Beatles album with the green apple label at a used record store was like finding gold. The iconic brand was founded by The Fab Four themselves as part of Apple Corps Ltd., and was intended not only to publish Beatles albums and singles, but also to sign unknown and deserving talent in music, fashion, even technology.

via

The original "Apple Store" in London, known as the Apple Boutique was a bust, losing so much money that The Beatles closed shop and gave away all the merchandise. The label did much better, signing notable performers such as Mary Hopkin, James Taylor, Badfinger, and Billy Preston (as well, obviously, as being home the most famous band in the world at the time).

Blank apple label signed by James Taylor.
Am I the only one who saw naughty things in it?

The original Apple brand was still going strong with Beatles reissues in 1978, when an upstart computer company, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) started using the fruit for its own branding purposes. Apple Corps. sued for trademark infringement, and was awarded $80,000 in 1981. Part of this judgement was Apple Computer's agreement not to distribute music.

When Apple Computers started to offer Midi music functionality in the late '80s, Apple Corps. sued them again and won $26.5 million in 1991. But when the iTunes Music Store and the iPod appeared in 2003, Apple Corps sued again... and somehow lost their case.

Finally, in 2007, the two companies announced a confidential agreement in which ownership of all of the trademarks related to "Apple" (including all  Apple Corps logos) went to Apple Inc. (as Apple Computers was now known) the Corps licensing its trademarks back for continued use. Rumours said that $500 million had changed hands.

From then on, the two brands got along. The Beatles finally came to iTunes, while their 2010 remastered CDs and records from the late '60s featured the familiar green apple.

Yesterday, Cult of Mac announced that "the Canadian IP Office has just disclosed that the Beatles’ iconic recording label is now Apple, Inc. registered trademark."

According to original source, Patently Apple:

The Canadian database records show that there was unsuccessful opposition to Apple owing the logo by a company named Apple Box Productions Sub Inc.. The Canadian IP Office database shows that Apple Inc. has since been granted the registered trademark. As we reported, Apple originally filed for the famed Apple Corps logo trademark in Europe in March 2011.

And so, a '60s brand that was known for losing money and giving stuff away is now owned by a 21st century brand known for being overpriced and proprietary.

Just don't forget, Cupertino, that in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the tip.

This post was written on a MacBook Pro, while listening to Abbey Road on an iPhone 4.

A bad trip to the '80s with Lois jeans

Buzzfeed posted this absurd early-'80s ad for Lois Denim. Based on the minimalist techno hit "Da-Da-Da" by trio, it features models with bad hair gyrating into the camera.



Man, am I glad that decade is over.

Remember when Sarah Michelle Gellar took on McDonald's?

Of course you don't, because you had no idea that 4-year-old who started the great burger wars of the '80s would grow up to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

But if you're over 35, I'll bet you remember that Burger King jingle...

(Found on Buzzfeed)

1980s War on Drugs PSAs do not age well #FdAdFriday

He is pitying the living fuck out of that fool.

Especially when they feature Mr. T and New Edition. (Although I'm not sure Bobby Brown should be giving any lectures about drugs.)



Via Buzzfeed

I miss the good old days of ugly Lego

This Lego ad, from about 1981, is immensely popular on the internet circa 2012. It, and two others of the same vintage, were recently featured on the academic blog Sociological Images as examples of gender-neutral marketing of children's toys.

SI's Lisa Wade contrasts the Lego of her childhood with today's more gendered Lego sets for girls that put women back in the kitchen:

Or the beauty shop:

Granted, there are lots of different Legos for kids, but this is the one Mastermind Toys lists as "a brand new LEGO world for girls!"

I get it. I only have a son myself, but all of his little girl friends have totally bought into this whole "princess" thing — even though their parents are socially progressive yuppies like me. Kids should be able to (safely and responsibly) play however they want with whatever they have (my son has started making "spy weapons" out of cardboard tubes) so is there really a problem here?

Lisa writes, "In the circles I run in, it’s being roundly criticized for reproducing stereotypes of girls and women: domesticity, vanity, materialism, and an obsession with everything being pastel."

By the way, this controversy is a few months old already. What inspired me to weigh in was an even older Lego image, from a 1973 catalogue, that was featured on Retronaut:

This was around the time when I started playing with the iconic blocks, almost 40 years ago. Note that the craptacular ambulance built by 5-year-old "Maria" could have just as easily been built by "Mario".

And then it hit me what the real problem is.

Lego stopped being a "blank slate" imagination toy sometime in the '80s. While you can still buy plain blocks if you look hard enough, Lego is now much more about getting kids to act out branded and scripted narratives than asking them to start from scratch.

Here's an example. It's the bio of "Emma", one of the Lego Friends:

Favorite animal: Horse, Robin
Hair color: Black
Favorite color: Purple
Favorite food: Fruits and veggies. And chocolate. And cupcakes. And pizza…
I love: Designing clothes and jewelry, crafts, interior decorating, remodeling and horseback jumping.
I’m also good at: Yoga, giving makeovers, martial arts, making origami animals.
My friends think I’m sometimes: Forgetful, but I never forget to accessorize.
I want to be: A designer
Motto: “That’s SO you!”
I would never: Leave home in clothes and accessories that don’t match!
I like to hang out: At the beauty salon and my design studio.

There is literally nothing left to the imagination here.

Toys representing fictional characters with complex backstories existed when I was a kid, too, but not in Lego form. Instead they were "dolls" and "action figures".

I still have mine.

So my question is, should Lego be held to account for defining and gendering the play narrative for its dolls and action figures more than any other toy company?

To be fair, no. Parents do not have to buy these sets for their daughters, and they could well buy kitchen sets for their sons. It's just another company in the business of making money by giving kids (and parents) what they say they want.

I think the real shame here is that a classic toy that engaged children in unique imagination exercises 30 or 40 years ago has become just another product tie-in to increasingly monotonous children's entertainment. And part of this monotony is the cute girlie-girl thing.

I just miss my ugly, impractical Lego machines and houses. And I miss ads that sell nothing more than imagination. But then again, I miss being able to lose myself in a bucket of plastic bricks for an entire afternoon.

There is hope, though. In some places, Lego and its advertising still rock.

Check out this German campaign that shows retro lego geniuses. And this amazing Russian campaign that turns Lego kits into something else. And this fantastically minimalist American one from 2006.

Knight Rider's War on Drugs

In this 1985 PSA featuring David Hasselhoff in his Michael Knight character from the Knight Rider series, you can actually watch the American "War on Drugs" making a wrong turn:



As Knight discusses the drug issue with his artificially intelligent Trans-Am, KITT, the two end up clashing on social marketing theory. The car wants to do a rational campaign, based on statistics that paint a vague but ominous picture about the health effects of "drugs", but Knight says kids don't care about that. In the end, KITT gives up and suggests a direct appeal to authority:

"Illegal drugs are bad news. Don't mess with them."

It's true that bare statistics are not very effective social marketing messaging. Numbers are easy to ignore. You have to make consequences relevant, personal, and close if you want to really influence behaviour through fear.

Obviously, the writers of the ad thought they had a great solution to delivering the stats that their client wanted, but wrapped in a cool celebrity delivery. I'm sure they thought Hasselhoff was someone the teens would look up to, and the authoritarian tone is one that was popular in the Reagan era.

It's funny to look back at this now, though. Particularly when you can appreciate the irony of Hasselhoff warning kids about illegal drugs. The man, you see, had serious issues with a completely legal drug, alcohol:



There goes that message...

Update: This post was picked up by Copyranter on Buzzfeed.

Classic Benetton ad is still freaking out the squares

This infamous Benetton ad from 1989, by Creative director, copywriter, art director and photographer Oliviero Toscani, is still stirring up shit. A prominent Facebook breastfeeding advocacy page reports,

"Clearly Facebook doesn't like this image. This iconic, 23-year-old ad from UNITED COLORS OF BENETTON has been pulled down from countless accounts now, and [two users] have both been banned from Facebook for posting it, [one] for 24 hours, and [the other] for 3 days. It has been removed from this page several times."

A similar page has also been blocked for it.

Back in the '80s, Benetton was attempting to blow people's minds with its rather blunt attempts to show "interracial" love, understanding and equality. I wonder if people reporting on this image were more offended by the nipple itself, or that it showed a black woman nursing a white baby?

Nonetheless, Facebook remains a bastion of American breast anxiety.

See more classic Benetton ads here.

Emma Watson's new Lancôme spot is like an awful '80s music video

Via BuzzFeed:



It really is. Don't believe me? Let's set the wayback machine to "suck":







Had enough?



Okay. My point is made.