There’s a quote attributed to John Wanamaker that goes: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Marketing analytics is getting better all the time, but it’s still pretty hard to pin down what really works. (At least the traveling salesman problem has a brute force approach!) Here are just a few interesting links about advertising.
Authenticity is important — even to a Nazi. Psychologist Paul Bloom talks about how we’re all essentialists at TED and mentions how kids could think veggies are tastier if they’re included in a Happy Meal. [url]
Eating healthier has a lot of benefits. And all sorts of food distributors are trying to figure out ways to incorporate healthy snacks into people’s meals… while still keeping profits as high as the usual not-so-healthy snacks. Here are just a few examples.
There are plenty of world records that no one really cares about — but it’s still entertaining to see folks keeping track of some weird records and winning contests that are just a bit bizarre. Here are some real winners, depending on your point of view.
Perhaps no legal liability lawsuit brings out passionate arguments (on all sides) like the infamous McDonald’s “hot coffee” lawsuit, in which McDonald’s was sued and lost for providing a woman with coffee that was too hot (on appeal the case was eventually settled). Some feel that the case is the quintessential example of bogus lawsuits, while others suggest that the case actually had merits. Of course, given its high profile nature, there have been attempts here or there to replicate it in some form or another, and up next, we’ve apparently got a lawsuit against Disney for serving nacho cheese at Disney World that was too darn hot.
A San Diego couple, Michael and Maria Harris claim that their 4-year-old son Isaiah had his face burned from “scalding hot” nacho cheese served to them at Disney World. They appear to be claiming that Disney was negligent in making “no effort” to keep the nacho cheese at a reasonable temperature, and are claiming “permanent scarring, pain and suffering” to Isaiah from the burns, while the parents have suffered “emotional distress.” Perhaps there’s more to the case than is in the article linked above, but shouldn’t parents be at least somewhat responsible for keeping things that are scalding hot from their children’s faces?
Preserving food in various ways has been a pretty important part of developing stable societies. Without a reliable food supply, it’s kind of hard to move forward and to do anything other than creating a stable food chain. But with modern food processing, food can last indefinitely… though it may have gone a bit too far. Here are just a few quick links on a how a few foods stand up to somewhat extreme conditions.
As you can see, the boat is way off in the background. And the boat is seen for a grand total of 3 seconds. Yet, the couple got very upset:
“We didn’t see the advert ourselves at first, but lots of people kept saying to us: ‘Oh, we saw the Badger on the McDonald’s advert.’ It was quite irritating, especially as we are not fond of fast food and the Badger has a beautiful galley where we cook everything from scratch. We even make our own bread,” said Gloria Parsons, 63, who owns the boat with her husband Alan, 72.
“Then one night we were watching something and the advert was on every break, right across about two hours of the programme. Lots of people were very excited to see the Badger on screen, but we weren’t. She is very precious and very special to us, and we felt upset that this large corporation would just ride roughshod over our feelings. It wouldn’t be acceptable to go into someone’s garden and just take a shot of their house, so why use the Badger?
A radio station heard about them being upset and called McDonald’s, who agreed to re-edit the commercial without the boat and issued an apology. Of course, in the end, the joke may be on the couple, as their efforts have brought a ton of attention to the original ad and just by judging from the comments on YouTube, people really like the commercial.
On April 1st, Grist posted an April Fools story about McDonald’s that claimed the fast food chain would no longer follow through with its global composting initiative after scientists at the University of California-Berkeley found that none of the items on McDonald’s menu were suitable for composting — and none of the “food” would break down even after 1,000 years.
The story was certainly inspired by a recent blog post by Joann Bruso claiming that the Happy Meal she had purchased and placed on a shelf for an entire year looked virtually unchanged — no mold, no decomposition or smells. In this case, McDonald’s reacted by posting a response on its website, calling Bruso’s story an urban legend.
Apparently, many people fell for Grist’s joke because it just seemed so plausible. Allison Arieff, a writer for GOOD and The New York Times, tweeted the news — and just minutes later, McDonald’s Twitter contact tweeted back a very odd reply:
Arieff: “McDonald’s scraps composting program because the items on their menu WON’T DECOMPOSE. Yikes. http://ow.ly/1tClQ (via@edibleIA,@edibleSF)”
Molly at McDonald’s: “They say April Fools jokes are a form of flattery! This one had us laughing too! ^Mol”
Here’s a story that’s further spreading the idea that the food at McDonald’s is so unnatural that it won’t even decompose, and what does McDonald’s do? Laugh it off, of course. Was this the right response? Well, it was definitely not one that people were expecting. McDonald’s had a chance to address the criticism, but instead they chose to just brush it off. Maybe they didn’t want to open a can of worms, and since they’re so big, they figured that they could get away with it. And they’re probably right — the number of people who were turned off by their response (or even aware of the story) was likely to be insignificant for the fast food giant.
However, it’s likely a different story for smaller businesses. They really need to pay attention to and deliver what their customers want. It’s probably not a good idea to attempt to brush off customer complaints with “humor.” Perhaps even McDonald’s should be more careful with its tweets now that everything they say will be archived for posterity. We’ll see how long it takes for tweets to decompose.
One of the more famous examples of abuses of the YouTube video takedown process was the case of Lenz vs. Universal Music, which involved Universal Music issuing a YouTube DMCA takedown to a woman who posted a very short clip of her baby dancing to a Prince song that was playing in the background. It was a clear case of fair use, and while after the woman filed a counternotice Universal chose not to sue, the EFF filed a lawsuit against Universal Music, saying that the DMCA notice was fraudulent, since it was such an obvious case of fair use. While Universal Music argued that since fair use is just a “defense” and not a “right” it need not consider fair use in sending a takedown, the court disagreed.
You would think, then, that any takedown notices on similar short videos of kids dancing to music would avoid a similar scenario. Copycense points us to the news that a guy has received a notice from Google of potential infringement for his short clip of his kid dancing along to what appears to be a version (not the original) of the Kool & The Gang song “Celebration.” As in the Lenz case, this video is a kid dancing to somewhere around 30 seconds of a song:
The notice claims that the video contains content for which the copyright is held by record label Razor & Tie. The guy who got the takedown seems a bit confused, in that he appears to be blaming McDonald’s for the mess, when it appears McDonald’s had nothing at all to do with the takedown. In fact, the record label Razor & Tie may not have anything to do with it either… as I’ll explain below. The song used in the video was from a CD that came with a McDonald’s Happy Meal. Looking around, it appears that in April, McDonald’s announced a promotion with record label Kidz Bop to issue music CDs. Razor & Tie is the parent company of Kidz Bop. The problem here is clearly not McDonald’s. All it did was include the CD in Happy Meals. It’s got nothing to do with the takedown, and the guy’s anger at McDonald’s is misplaced (though, you could make the argument — and it’s a stretch — that McDonald’s should tell its partners to avoid these sorts of ridiculous copyright claims that scare people away from buying Happy Meals).
The next assumption, then, would be that Razor & Tie is guilty of sending the takedown, but I don’t think that’s true. If Razor & Tie had sent a DMCA takedown, the video would be down. When Google receives a DMCA takedown, it almost always (or perhaps always) pulls down the content immediately in order to retain its DMCA safe harbors. The user would then need to file a counternotice to start the process of potentially getting the video back up. The fact that the video is up and the notice the guy received simply tells him to review the videos suggests that no DMCA takedown was sent.
Instead, the blame almost certainly lies with Google’s content recognition engine/filters that the record labels pushed them to use to try to catch copyright infringement ahead of time. Now, Razor & Tie is somewhat complicit here, in that it appears to have uploaded its catalog to train Google’s filters (if I remember correctly — and correct me if I’m wrong — Google needs the copyright holder to submit copies for its filter to work). So, Google had this particular song on file, and noticed the similarity. Google’s filter algorithms don’t appear to consider fair use (or, perhaps more likely, they do a bad job of it in many cases) and the guy then is sent the automated notification, even though it makes everyone — McDonald’s, Razor & Tie and Google — look bad, though the blame from the recipient appears to be in almost reverse order of culpability.
Unfortunately, the guy who received the notice also appears to be confused concerning his own rights. He says he is going to take down the video, though he clearly has a strong fair use case in asking for the video to be left alone. It seems likely that Google would allow the video to stay up, and I highly doubt that Razor & Tie would do anything else (it would be ridiculous to try to claim that this was not fair use).
Either way, this highlights a variety of interesting things. First, despite all the publicity of the Lenz case, these types of “takedowns” (even if it’s not a DMCA takedown) still happen. Second, people on the receiving end of these notices assume that there is no recourse that would allow the video to stay up. People get official sounding notices and they assume they need to jump. Third, Google’s content match filter isn’t particularly good on fair use issues. Fourth, when these sorts of bogus notices are sent, it reflects very poorly on a variety of companies. In this case, McDonald’s is getting most of the blame, despite being almost entirely blameless (well, it did decide to put out these silly music CDs, but that’s a separate issue). Even Razor & Tie may be getting misplaced blame (though it may depend on the “rules” it set for Google’s filter). Amusingly, it may be Google that deserves the most blame, and it appears to be getting the least.
Still, no matter what the situation, it’s simply ridiculous that a guy filming 30 seconds of his kid dancing should have to worry about any of this.
Last month, we wrote about McDonald’s attempt to get dismissed from a lawsuit involving a McDonald’s employee who is accused of uploading naked photos found on a phone that was left at the fast food joint. Apparently, the company hasn’t been dismissed from the lawsuit, but Michael Scott points out that the court has said that McDonald’s can sue the employee in question over the matter for any damages. The court appears to have said that because a McDonald’s employee promised to safeguard the phone, it became the company’s responsibility — but the fact that the employee was then negligent allows McDonald’s to separately sue the employee for any damages.
Late last year, we wrote about the odd case where a guy sued McDonald’s over the fact that naked photos of his wife appeared online. Apparently, he had left his phone at a local McD’s, and now claims that an employee uploaded the photos. As we pointed out in the original post, we had a lot of trouble believing that McDonald’s, the company, should in any way be liable. What if the phone had been found by a random other customer? The situation could have been exactly the same, but would the restaurant have been liable? It appears McDonald’s is making exactly that argument. Michael Scott points out that the company has made it clear that, if anything was done wrong here, and it was done by the employee, it was done well outside the scope of employment and it makes no sense for the company to be responsible for it.
