Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S8E01 - Jumping The Shark: Spokesperson Disasters
Episode Date: January 3, 2019This week, we look at spokesperson disasters. Hiring a celebrity spokesperson is an advertising strategy many brands can only dream of. But famous names don’t come cheap. From Oprah Winfrey, to... Gilbert Gottfried and Eric Clapton, celebs attract a lot of attention. But so do their mishaps. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly.
As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus.
They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them.
Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already
heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant
Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s.
I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh.
I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,
who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion,
who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those
people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such
a success. And please, do me a favor,
follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan,
you just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. We'll be right back. And no matter your team, your favorite skater, or your style, there's something every NHL fan is going to love about BetMGM.
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You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. TV writer and producer Gary Marshall had an idea for a new sitcom back in 1971.
It was called New Family in Town.
It was a fun look at family life in the nostalgic 1960s.
Marshall shot a pilot episode and cast Ron Howard in the lead.
But ABC didn't like the idea, so they passed.
The next year, George Lucas had a big hit
with the coming-of-age film American Graffiti,
starring Ron Howard as a teenager in 1962.
With that success, ABC suddenly became interested
in Gary Marshall's sitcom idea.
It was dusted off, slightly retooled to take place in the late 1950s, and renamed.
New Family in Town was now called Happy Days.
The cast was star Ron Howard as teenager Richie Cunningham,
Marion Ross and Tom Bosley as his parents,
Anson Williams as Potsy,
Don Most as Ralph Mouth,
and Henry Winkler as tough guy Arthur Fonzarelli,
better known as The Fonz.
Happy Days broke into the top 20 in its first season.
By season four, it was the number one show in North America.
In season five, Happy Days aired a three-part episode
that has gone down in history.
It was called Hollywood 3,
and the storyline had the Happy Days gang going to Hollywood
because the Fonz had been invited for a screen test.
While there, the Fonz gets into a clash with the California Kid, a cocky local beach guy.
Because Henry Winkler was an expert water skier in real life, the Happy Days writers
decided to include a water skiing competition in the episode.
So they had the California Kid challenge the Fonz to a race that culminated in a ski jump over a shark that had been caught in an enclosed area.
Why would somebody want to jump a shark?
Chicken?
The Fonz chicken.
Absurd. Absolutely absurd.
The Fonz will accept your challenge.
Hold it, man. Hold it. We're talking sharks here.
The Jump the Shark episode has gone down in history
as the moment when Happy Days storylines took a dive and never recovered.
But here's the thing.
The viewing audience for that three-part episode was over 30 million.
The sitcom was the number two most popular TV show that year
and would stay in the top 20 for nine of its 11 seasons,
making it one of the longest-running sitcoms in ABC network history.
In spite of that, the phrase Jump the Shark became a pop culture reference point.
It has come to mean something has passed its peak moment of greatness,
that a disastrous decision has been made,
and a decline is imminent.
In other words, if something has jumped the shark,
its happy days are numbered. The world of marketing has jumped the shark on more than a few occasions,
especially when it comes to celebrity spokespeople.
Many brands dream of landing a big celebrity.
The prestige rubs off on the product,
the celebrity attracts big attention,
and brands laugh all the way to the bank.
But sometimes those big celebrity endorsements go horribly wrong
and the collateral damage is spectacular.
When that happens,
brands can kiss happy days goodbye.
You're under the influence.
In the world of advertising, landing a celebrity is a big deal.
Some research suggests people are willing to pay 20% more for a product endorsed by a celebrity.
It's also a very expensive advertising strategy
as celebrities do not come cheap.
That's why everything has to go just right
when creating a spokesperson advertising campaign.
Because celebrities attract a lot of attention.
So, do their mishaps.
Like, when Oprah Winfrey
listed the new Microsoft Surface
tablet as one of her favorite things
in 2012, it got
a lot of attention. Oprah
tweeted about it saying,
Gotta love that Surface.
Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts.
Hashtag favorite things.
That was a powerful endorsement.
Except for one small thing.
At the top of Oprah's tweet, it said,
Via Twitter for iPad.
In other words, Oprah had tweeted about the Microsoft tablet from her Apple iPad.
It didn't take long for the Twitterverse to notice that little snafu.
While some thought it made Oprah look like a sellout,
others came to her defense saying there weren't many Microsoft Twitter apps available at the time.
Either way, it showed just how easily a celebrity endorsement can go off the rails. Beef Council
Back in 1987, the Beef Industry Council launched a big multimedia advertising campaign. The campaign had a dual strategy, to try and halt the decline in beef sales and to position beef as a healthy food choice. The Beef Council wanted to feature credible spokespeople in the campaign,
spokespeople the public trusted.
A decision was made to hire two well-known celebrities,
actors James Garner and Sybil Shepard.
Garner was chosen because of his movie and TV fame
and his easy-going sense of humor.
Sybil Shepard was in the middle of her run as the star of the top-rated TV show Moonlighting.
Both were extremely likable and considered two of the most believable celebrities around.
The campaign was an important one for the beef industry.
The media buy alone was over $30 million.
The slogan?
Beef. Real food for real
people. Print ads
provided nutritional information
and recipes. Radio ads
featured catchy jingles. And the
television commercials featured
the celebrities.
Sometimes I wonder
if people have a primal, instinctive
craving for hamburgers.
Something hot, juicy, and so utterly simple.
That you can eat it with your hands.
That you can eat it with your hands.
I mean, I know people who don't eat burgers, but I'm not sure I trust them.
Beef. Real food for real people.
Not long after the television commercials began airing,
Family Circle magazine published an interview with Sybil Shepard.
In that article, Shepard was asked about her beauty secrets,
and she was quoted as saying,
I've cut down on fatty foods, and I'm trying to stay away from red meat.
Hmm.
The Beef Council suddenly had a beef with Sybil Shepard.
In her defense, Sybil Shepard claimed she was misquoted and her eating habits had been
relayed second-hand to the magazine by her publicist.
Shortly after the quote came out, Shepard apologized to the beef industry.
Observers noticed Family Circle magazine
was conspicuously left out of the beef industry's media buy.
In spite of that sizable speed bump,
the campaign still managed a positive impact
and public sentiment towards beef improved.
Sybil Shepard's contract was not renewed in
1988.
You tell me
what you know and I'll confirm.
I'll keep you in the right direction
if I can. But that's all.
Just
follow the money. The film
All the President's Men was released
just 14 months
after three of the most powerful people in the Nixon administration
were sentenced in the Watergate scandal.
Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman,
Attorney General John Mitchell,
and Nixon's Chief of Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman
were all convicted of obstruction of justice,
conspiracy, and lying under oath.
In the subsequent years after serving their jail terms,
the three went on to have varying degrees of success.
Haldeman invested in hotels and real estate.
Mitchell was disbarred.
And John Ehrlichman had an interesting brush with advertising. In 1987, he was hired by a company called Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream to be in their television
commercials.
The campaign idea was provocative.
The ice cream company wanted to make a claim that seemed unbelievable.
It was launching light ice cream that was 93% fat-free,
and dryers wanted to claim fat-free ice cream could still taste great.
The idea was to hire famous people who had either fabricated stories
or had told big lies in their past.
The key idea being,
you may not have believed me before, but you should believe me now.
In other words, the campaign was to feature unbelievable people endorsing an unbelievably good ice cream.
So Dreyer's advertising agency approached convicted Watergate conspirator John Ehrlichman to star in one of the commercials.
In the ad, Ehrlichman says,
When I said I never knew a thing about the Watergate break-in,
you probably didn't believe me, did you?
Well, to show you what a good guy I am, I'll give you another chance.
This Dreyer's Grand Light ice cream is 93% fat-free and it tastes great.
Then he goes on to say,
Try this stuff. It's unbelievable.
And believe me, I'm an expert on that subject.
There was an immediate public outcry.
The ice cream company said it received about 325 complaints from customers
who threatened to boycott their product.
After just a month, the company pulled the Ehrlichman commercial
but continued airing the other ads in the campaign.
The president of the company said they had anticipated
a certain amount of negative response to the Ehrlichman commercial,
but they certainly weren't prepared for the intensity of the complaints.
John Ehrlichman might have been able to laugh off his role in Watergate,
but the public still couldn't.
In spite of the protest,
the campaign generated initial sales
50 to 70 percent over projections.
And in an ironic footnote,
sales peaked, then stalled shortly after.
The reason?
The first batch of the new light ice cream really didn't taste good.
Seems the public was right not to believe Ehrlichman this time either.
And we'll be right back after this message.
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Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca In 1979,
Anheuser-Busch sold
over 7 million barrels
of Michelob beer.
But by the late 80s,
that number dropped
by 35%. Beer drinkers had begun favoring imported
brands and Michelob was being left in the dust. So, in 1987, Michelob decided to change its image.
It needed to woo back its 1980s customers and attract a brand new set of 20-something drinkers.
It needed to become cool again.
And what's cooler than rock and roll?
To launch their campaign,
Michelob brought in the big guns,
tapping some of the biggest names in the music industry,
including Phil Collins, Roger Daltrey,
Steve Winwood, and Eric Clapton.
The theme was,
The Night Belongs to Michelob.
The supergroup starred in a series of 60-second ads that placed Michelob in the nightlife scene.
Many of the rockers traded the use of their songs in exchange for tour sponsorship.
Clapton's ad showed the singer leaving his concert and crossing the street to play at a dark, hazy bar,
all set to a slowed-down version of his 1973 hit, After Midnight.
The campaign was a hit, boosting Michelob's sales for the first time in nearly a decade.
But the celebration didn't last long.
Shortly after the campaign launched, it came out that Eric Clapton was in rehab.
In late 1987, the singer-songwriter had entered a treatment facility in Minnesota for alcoholism.
A crushing blow to the campaign.
At the time, the alcohol industry was already under scrutiny
for sponsoring concert tours,
with many accusing the industry
of contributing to the underage drinking problem.
Having an alcoholic musician spokesperson
for a beer brand didn't help.
Clapton said he found himself in rehab
sitting in a room full of recovering alcoholics
when the first ad aired on TV.
Someone said,
Is that you?
Yep.
Anheuser-Busch terminated Clapton's contract immediately.
Some of Clapton's fellow rockers
didn't approve of his association with Michelob in the first place,
many becoming vocal about their distaste of Clapton selling out.
Tom Petty said,
how is someone supposed to take your next work seriously
when your last one was a beer commercial?
Well, as it happens, Clapton's next work won a Grammy.
Michelob sales, however, resumed their decline,
proving that, sometimes, a scandal hurts the brand
more than the celebrity.
For over a decade, Gilbert Gottfried played his most famous role.
Affleck!
Yes, since the millennium, the comedian voiced the familiar duck that frustratingly quacks
at people who can't remember the name of the supplemental insurance provider called
the American Family Life Assurance Company, or Affleck for short.
When I got hurt and misworked, I thought I had supplemental insurance.
Supplemental insurance?
What's that?
Affleck. Well, even best insurance doesn't give you cash to cover things like loss, pay, other expenses. and miss work. I thought I had supplemental insurance. Supplemental insurance? What's that? AFLAC.
Well, even best insurance
doesn't give you cash
to cover things like loss,
pay, other expenses.
This does.
What does?
AFLAC.
You shouldn't ask about it
at work.
Really?
What's it called?
AFLAC!
AFLAC.
Without it,
no insurance is complete.
AFLAC.
It was a happy relationship.
Until March of 2011,
when a 40-meter tsunami struck the Pacific coast of Japan,
killing over 15,000 people.
As many celebrities did, Godfrey took to Twitter.
But he wasn't expressing his sympathies for the country. Instead,
he was tweeting
jokes. Gottfried
posted several jokes that made light
of the tragedy, including
Japan is very advanced.
They don't go to the beach. The beach
comes to them.
The tweet sparked an instant
media outrage. And
within just one hour of hitting the send button, the spokes duck was fired.
You see, three quarters of Aflac's business was conducted in Japan.
Gottfried deleted the tweets and issued an apology, but Aflac stood by their decision.
Aflac also put out an immediate nationwide casting call to replace Gottfried as the Aflac Duck.
Pre-Duck, Aflac had 11% brand awareness.
Post-Duck, Aflac brand awareness rose to 95%.
And it had spent over $80 million media dollars per year to support their quacker.
Suffice it to say, it was a valuable part of their branding.
The Duck had amassed over 230,000 Facebook likes,
double the likes of the Aflac brand itself.
And it was on the Duck's page that the brand announced the job opening.
Interested parties were asked to submit a 30-second audio file
showcasing their best Aflac quack to quackaflac.com.
It was smart marketing. Nearly 30,000 people viewed the job description.
Aflac poured through nearly 13,000 applications from the general public.
The search itself garnered over 70,000 media stories.
Web and social media traffic soared,
and the job search campaign even won Aflac
a coveted Cannes Lion advertising award.
After a month-long search,
Aflac plucked their new duck out of obscurity,
36-year-old Dan McKeague,
a radio station sales manager from small-town Minnesota.
Aflac! Aflac!
With their new spokes duck, the company's web traffic grew by 20%,
Twitter followers increased by nearly 15%,
and direct sales leads jumped by 80%.
Aflac had taken a lame duck story and turned it into a duck dynasty.
In 2004, Oscar Pistorius became a world champion.
That year, the Paralympic athlete nicknamed the Blade Runner for his blade-like prosthetic legs won a gold medal for the 200-meter track event in Athens.
In 2008, the South African runner brought home three more Paralympic gold medals from Beijing.
The next year, he even began competing against able-bodied athletes.
He was young, inspirational, and unstoppable.
Naturally, he began fielding endorsement offers from big brands,
including Nike.
In 2011, Nike came out with an ad showing Pistorius
darting off the starting block with the line,
I am the bullet in the chamber.
From the get-go, the ad was controversial,
many claiming the allusion to gun violence
wasn't appropriate in this day and age.
But Nike stood by the ad.
That is, until Valentine's Day 2013.
The shockwaves being sent by the arrest of famed Olympian charged with murdering his
glamorous model girlfriend in the wee hours of this Valentine's Day morning.
That morning, Riva Steenkamp, girlfriend of Oscar Pistorius, was found shot and killed at his home in South Africa.
Within 24 hours, he was charged with her murder.
As the news became public, the two-year-old Nike ad quickly went viral.
The bullet-in-the-chamber metaphor had become far too literal.
By February 20th, Nike suspended its sponsorship with the athlete
and pulled the ad until further details emerged.
Nike South Africa made a statement saying,
At this moment, it's a matter that's being investigated.
There is an issue at hand here which is much bigger than a sponsorship.
Throughout the trial, Pistorius maintained he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder.
But after seven months, he was found guilty of homicide and sentenced to five years in prison.
Following the verdict, Nike officially terminated its contract with Pistorius.
While Nike has a history of sticking with their athletes through thick and thin,
murder was a different issue. Nike could no longer run with the Blade Runner.
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When a brand suffers a spokesperson disaster,
the company usually tries to distance itself from the problem
and the celebrity is quickly dropped.
Then there is the rare time when a disgraced spokesperson
is actually sought out.
When beverage owner Frank D'Angelo wanted to launch his new sports drink
called Cheetah Power Surge, he wanted to get some quick notoriety.
So he hired Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson.
As you may remember, Johnson had been stripped of his 1988 Olympic gold medal
in the 100-meter race after testing positive for steroids.
D'Angelo saw an opportunity with the disgraced athlete.
And he hired Johnson to appear in this mock interview television commercial.
Today on our show we have Ben Johnson. How are you, Ben?
Put your cards on the table.
Ben, when you run, do you cheetah?
Absolutely.
Then Johnson holds up a can of Cheetah Power Surge.
I cheetah all the time.
Cheetah Power Surge. I cheat all the time. Cheetah Power Surge Energy Drink.
An all-natural source of energy without caffeine.
Frank D'Angelo said he knew exactly what he was doing when he hired Ben Johnson.
He wanted to play with the similarities between the word cheetah and cheater.
And he wanted a commercial that would get more attention than its budget would normally allow.
He got his wish.
Within two weeks, everyone was talking about Cheetah.
D'Angelo said he received between 5,000 and 10,000 emails from the public
and maintains that only one email was negative.
The commercial remained on the air for the duration of its media buy.
Ben Johnson said he was just happy
D'Angelo could look past his mistakes
and hire him for the commercial.
Like the John Ehrlichman ice cream ad,
it was a complete 180
from the usual spokesperson disasters.
Instead of losing endorsement money,
a disgraced celebrity actually made money.
When the Fonz jumped the shark in Happy Days, it wasn't the beginning of the end.
The sitcom still ranked in the top 20 for several more years after that,
which means Happy Days didn't jump the shark
when it jumped the shark.
But many brands have jumped that great white,
especially when their spokesperson meets misfortune.
The list is long,
from Jared and Subway
to the Marlboro man dying of lung cancer.
Lots can go wrong.
When Oprah Winfrey tweeted she loved her new Microsoft tablet from her Apple iPad,
it was a silly mistake.
When Beef spokesperson Sybil Shepard was quoted saying she stayed away from red meat,
it was embarrassing.
And when Nike athlete Oscar Pistorius murdered his girlfriend,
it was a shocking tragedy sometimes spokesperson disasters are self
inflicted as with Oprah and Gilbert Gottfried sometimes they are the result
of personal issues as Michelob discovered with Clapton then sometimes
in rare instances disgrace celebrities are actually sought out because of their notoriety.
But self-deprecating humor clearly has its limits.
The advertising business has an insatiable need for attention.
That hunger can lead to risky decisions.
The wattage from a celebrity can shine a bright light on a brand,
but when something goes wrong,
a brand can find itself caught in the headlights.
When you're under the influence.
I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terror Stream.
Producer, Debbie O'Reilly.
Sound engineer, Keith Ullman.
Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre.
Research, Jillian Gora. Co-writer, Sydney Oman. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Research, Gillian Gora.
Co-writer, Sidney O'Reilly.
Follow me on Twitter at Terry O'Influence for show updates and bonus material.
See you next week.
Under the Influence.
Right after Happy Days in Laverne and Shirley.
By the way, I know you've been dreaming of wearing an Under the Influence t-shirt.
Or maybe I was dreaming that.
But anyway, we have them for sale on our shop page.
And if you listen to the show while sipping a tea or a coffee,
have we got the mug for you.
Go to terryoreilly.ca slash shop. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative.
And that's where Felix comes in.
Felix is redefining weight loss for Canadians with a smarter, more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals this year.
Losing weight is about more than diet and exercise.
It can also be about our genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix connects you with
online licensed healthcare practitioners who understand that everybody is different and can
pair your healthy lifestyle with the right support to reach your goals. Start your visit today at
felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era,
dive into Peloton workouts that work with you.
From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program,
they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals.
No pressure to be who you're not.
Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are.
So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton.
Find your push. Find your power.
Peloton.
Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca.