Faux Ad Has Firm Fuming
The Federal Wage and Labor Law Institute has been averaging between 100 and 150 misdirected calls a day since December’s Esquire magazine listed the firm’s 800 number in a joke ad for a faux charity called Feed the Waifs.
In the mag’s annual Dubious Achievement issue, beneath a picture of ultra-slim Kate Moss, the ad reads: “For just 39 cents a day, less than the cost of a cup of coffee, you can keep this girl and other super-models just like her alive.” Mark Haag, director of the Texas-based labor law consulting firm, said regular customers have been unable to get through on the line, while ad readers call to ask if it’s true they can sponsor a starving super-model on a diet of warm miso soup and tuna carpaccio. “The whole thing is incredibly frustrating,” Haag said. “It doesn’t take a mental giant to call the phone number before you print it. I just hope this appears as a dubious achievement in the ’94 issue.”
Morgue Humor: The final tally in a marketing triumph worthy of the Addams Family is in. The L.A. County Coroner made worldwide news this year by opening Skeletons in the Closet, a primarily mail-order operation that sold gift items from the morgue.
Merchandise included a key ring made from a coroner’s toe tag, plus T-shirts, mugs and tote bags with a skeleton logo. The biggest seller for ’93 turned out to be the $20 beach towel with a body figure done in a chalk-line design (the kind drawn around corpses on the street) that’s available in five colors. It was described by marketing director Marilyn Lewis as “the hot item in a cold place.”
Trend Watch: This might never make it to the level of a permanent sightseeing tour or become worthy of a hawker-sold map on Sunset Boulevard, but at least one addicted Menendez trial watcher has mentioned hearing of fellow TV trial aficionados who have driven the route the brothers said they took the night of the shooting to see if it matches the time Lyle and Erik said it took.
