A plethora of dumb commercial ideas attracted big media attention in the last couple of days. Maybe it's because not much is going on in Washington, and people are just tired of stories from Afghanistan? Who can tell....
Anyway, one of them is hucksters' recent use of the Presidential couple, without permission, in billboards and advertising. First, PETA used Michelle Obama's photo to publicize its manic campaign against the wearing of fur. Then, an outfit called Weatherproof mounted a billboard above Times Square showing the President wearing one of their windbreakers. I'll focus on the latter, which has received more attention.
It's a sort of unwritten rule, of course, that the President's image not be used for commercial purposes. There is little doubt the company knew this, even though the management type interviewed by ABC seems to stem from faraway Australia. The drill is that the White House has to protest the overstepping of boundaries, and the company probably will take down the advertising. Meanwhile, of course, they'll have achieved a windfall of (relatively) free publicity, and that presumably was the whole idea from the start. (I had never heard of Weatherproof as a brand of jackets before - had you?). And if the photo of the President standing on the Great Wall of China might give the impression that his windbreaker is a cheapo product made in China, well, they say that even bad publicity is good.
From the Obamas' personal standpoint, maybe these advertisers' use of their images should be taken as a positive political signal. It can't be all bad that, despite all the political mudslinging over the past year, opinion-swayers at PETA and Weatherproof still believe the Obamas' images are "with it" enough to sell outerwear (or unouterwear, in PETA's case).
A White House that wanted to nip the free publicity game in the bud, however, might find steps it could take... ranging from making new law to legal action under existing law, but I rather like the image of the Pres dropping hints during his next public appearance that the windbreaker turned out to be not very warm, or was too expensive; or maybe he could be photographed donating it to Goodwill.
Comments