Word: tacos
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...lost about a third of its retail businesses after casinos moved in and former customers gambled away their discretionary dollars. In South Dakota, when slot machines were legalized to revive the Black Hills resort of Deadwood, the three car dealerships, the hardware store, the clothing shop and the local Taco Bell all converted into mini-casinos--a more lucrative business, gutting the town's retail base...
WHAT WERE those hokey dancing taco-and-bell doing on the premiere of Dana Carvey's new comedy show two weeks ago--was this a plug or a parody of lead sponsor Taco Bell? It was hard to tell as the fast-food duo sang, "We're paying him a fortune to use our name, 'cause he's a shameless whore...
...fact, this was an odd TV moment when parody and plug became one. The Taco Bell Dana Carvey Show was intended to be an ironic resurrection of 1950s-style brand-name TV shows like The Lux Video Theatre or The U.S. Steel Hour. The deal originally struck between ABC and Pepsico, Taco Bell's parent company, was that each week a different member of the Pepsi family would serve as "both title and target" for Carvey's wry satire, positioning the sponsor as quite the cool dude for rope-a-doping a few edgy punches...
...maybe it sounded better on paper. Taco Bell pulled out of future Carvey shows the day after the premiere, though the company wouldn't say whether it objected to the ribald skits (which included a prosthetically enhanced President Clinton breast-feeding animals) or the darts aimed at the ad business. ABC quickly promised to tame the show, and Pepsico decided to limit sponsorship to its less familial, more attitude-seeking brands, and thus was born last week's somewhat safer episode, The Mug Root Beer Dana Carvey Show...
...more competition in the marketplace," says Cheryl Kroyer, director of media services at Polaroid's ad agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. So advertisers who can afford it are going back to sheer, unavoidable visibility--and there are few things more visible than the Church Lady dancing with a life-size taco. Kroyer notes that the networks have powerful economic reasons for getting ever cozier with advertisers. "With more networks and TV channels chasing the same dollars, [TV executives] are willing to give more than just basic airtime...