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.

"Scumbag Steve" meme the latest victim of product placement

I miss the days when "meme" was a scientific term (coined by Richard Dawkins). But now it's so bastardized that most young 'uns thing it's what you call those captioned photos that are generated by morons and spread virally by their friends.

Scumbag Steve is one of the classics of the genre, based on a 6-year-old MySpace photo of a guy who calls himself Blake Boston. The whole idea behind it is to match his douchey expression with some dick move you'd expect from him.

According to fastcocreate.com's Joe Berkowitz, the version you see at the top of this post was actually seeded by Mekanism on popular image sharing site imgur in what must be the laziest "advertising" placement of all time.

From fastcocreate.com:

The ad is Imgur’s first step in a new Promoted Image ad unit. It will be featured in the site’s image gallery, alongside similar pieces of content. Users will be scrolling through images of the next Sad Keanu or Schrute Facts, and eventually encounter the Brisk version of the Scumbag Steve meme in an elevated profile. The next phase of the ads will require a more curatorial role for Mekanism, though.

I just have two questions:

• Why not just do this without paying, and use your own network to promote it?
• When does Blake Boston get paid?

Crappy pizza ad really speaks to its daytime target market

Which, of course, is unemployed young people lying around the house all day who suddenly get an overwhelming attack of the munchies:

Via imgur

If real, this is hilarious. It reminds me of a guy I knew in the early '90s, who would delivery pizza with "extra oregano" if you asked for him by name.

Epic media package

Found on imgur with the caption, "I found this in my country's newspaper. Bad ad placement!"

Ummm... no. They obviously bought the whole page as a **ahem** package and controlled the surrounding fake editorial. It's brilliant, really, if rather cheeky.