cs2532aa@unm-cvax.UUCP (03/28/85)
About eight months ago, a new clothing store called "GERMER'S" rolled into
town here. The place started out in a large yellow tent, and about 3 months
later moved into a horrendously ugly yellow building. The store gets a lot
of attention around here because of its loud, offensive (to some) commercials
featuring some guy who yells a lot and throws things at the camera. In one ad
that ran for a weeks or so, he had his head shaved on camera -- about a month
later he shaved the heads of two women, etc. etc. Really stupid stuff.
Now, I heard a rumor that this outfit hops around the country, opens a store,
raises a little hell, and then skips town (not necessarily in any illegal
sense) after about a year. Is this true? The cities I heard that they have
been in before are St. Louis and Fresno.
Any horror stories about the outfit are welcome, and even encouraged. The
number of people who are sick and tired of this place and its asinine ads
is overwhelming, but as one of the local tv station managers says, the tv
stations can't really decide NOT to sell the guy advertising time.
.rne.
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Real World . . Ernie Longmire / 311 Don St. SE / Los Lunas, NM 87031-9405
UUCP . . . . . {{purdue,cmcl2,ihnp4}!lanl,ucbvax}!unmvax!unm-cvax!cs2532aa
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"Be stiff!" -DEVOron@brl-tgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (03/30/85)
> later moved into a horrendously ugly yellow building. The store gets a lot > of attention around here because of its loud, offensive (to some) commercials > featuring some guy who yells a lot and throws things at the camera. In one ad > that ran for a weeks or so, he had his head shaved on camera -- about a month > later he shaved the heads of two women, etc. etc. Really stupid stuff. > Sounds like Crazy Eddie's ad team in advanced stages of their disease. -Ron
doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (04/01/85)
> but as one of the local tv station managers says, the tv > stations can't really decide NOT to sell the guy advertising time. As far as I know, that station manager is lying. Except for the "equal time" provisions, stations certainly can (and indeed are required to) control whose ads appear and what the content is. Here in Phoenix we have a little furor going on because a local station neglected to pre-screen a commercial. The ad was aimed at children, and asked them to phone a "976" number. 976 numbers are a marketing device whereby the local Bell company bills each caller on behalf of the company which has the number. In the immediate case, each time a child called the number, Mountain Bell added $1.85 to the kid's phone bill, passing most of that on to the holder of the 976 number. Some "latchkey" kids had run up >$50 in extra charges for their parents to pay. The commercial ran four times before the station manager was warned by another station to "watch out for" those commercials. They no longer are being aired by that station, and all other stations in the area have refused to run them. -- Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug