On nearly every episode of Project Runway, Heidi Klum and The Gang ask designers to explain for whom their outfits were created: “Who’s wearing that? What does she do for a living? Where is she going?”

In marketing, we often ask ourselves the same questions, though ours are usually more concerned with identifying demographics than with building a lush backstory: “Who’s buying this? What’s her household income? What does she eat for breakfast?” That kind of thing.

Apparently, creative directors do it, too. In case you were wondering:

“The characters in the Capital One TV commercials actually represent Visigoths, not Vikings,” Pam Girardo, a spokeswoman for Capital One Financial, writes in an e-mail message.

“The Visigoths were a clan of barbarians with origins in the Baltic region,” Ms. Girardo says, and “over the course of several centuries they migrated southward such that their territories included most of Western Europe, extending all the way to the Mediterranean.”

“The lead Visigoth, named Garth, in the commercials speaks with what could be called a Continental accent,” she adds, “representing the full extent of their Western European roots before their emigration to the United States to take on their current role in the Capital One advertising.”

[NYTimes]

Well, someone deserves credit for thinking that through.

Me, I just thought he was a cute, fuzzy guy with a leather fetish.

A new media study says shamed oil giant BP has lost close to a billion dollars in online brand value since the late-April Deepwater Horizon explosion. The study, via media firm General Sentiment, says that just since June 1, BP has lost more than $32 million a day in brand value….

[Greg Artzt, CEO of media metrics company General Sentiment] says it will cost BP a fortune to dig itself out of the hole it is in just on the media side. “At the retail level, it will affect them,” he predicts, adding that the numbers show that BP would have to do a tremendous amount of advertising merely to counterbalance the negative commentary. “And they are clearly worried about their brand; they do a lot of advertising. But look at their market cap. They won’t recover.”

And, in case anyone is looking, the firm says the estimated media value cost per gallon of the 126.3 million gallons or so of oil that has gushed into the Gulf (based on government high-ball estimates) is $6.66 per gallon. The Exxon spill was 11 million gallons.

[full story at MediaPost]

Of course, the company’s total equity as of 2009 was listed at over $100 billion, so, you know, BP isn’t really hurting yet. Maybe in another 50 or 60 months.

Anyway for those who love a good chart, happy Tuesday:

Oh, wait.

Well, you know where this is going, right?

We may not be stupid enough to have wiped ourselves out as a species (yet), but we’re certainly capable of doing it to others. Take the Louisiana pancake batfish, a species so “new” that it was only recently discovered by Louisiana State University ichthyologist Prosanta Chakrabarty, who noted the fish’s freakish behavior and appearance…

[more at TheAwl]

Please stop using “u” when you mean “you” and “r” when you mean “are” and “ur” when you mean “your” (or occasionally “you’re”*) as if you were Prince or mentally handicapped or still had the kind of cell phone where you need to hit “1” three times to text the letter “c”. Such days are over.

And that goes double for those of you who do this on blogs — you know, the kind you write with a full keyboard, you lazy bastard. We have moved on to smart phones and smarter grammar and you are bringing us all down, asshole.

* I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you can tell the difference. Do not disappoint me.

I mean, I’m sure there are at least a couple of straight men who’ve come here looking for sexy, topless ladymodels whose boobs have been painted with cars and motorcycles to help sell insurance. Can I get a w00t?

http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/xdoowt_boob-crashes_auto

Yes, it’s a real ad. And yes, of course it’s Russian. I mean, even the French have standards.

[via AnimalNewYork]

…even though his locker room pics are fairly hot. But whatever: just leave me Oguchi Onyewu, and I’ll be fine.

Or, on the off chance that Oguchi should find some other distraction on his way back to the U.S., I will accept Ronaldo’s Portuguese teammate, Simao Sabrosa. You know, just to help out. What can I say? I’m a giver.

Alternate view:

Hey, I gotta ogle someone now that football season’s over, and Scott Fujita has departed for Cleveland anyway.

My mother — my adoptive mother — always wanted me to be a lawyer. Specifically, she wanted me to follow in her father’s footsteps and go to Baylor Law School. Thankfully, I stopped listening to my mother sometime in junior high.

I know now that I would’ve been a terrible lawyer, I would’ve hated law school, and I would’ve hated Baylor’s Southern Baptist environment even more. Thankfully, I opted for the Methodists, who were, morally speaking, almost as liberal as the Episcopalians who ran my grammar school.

That said, I do have a fondness for debate and rhetoric, and I do love — well, not love, but enjoy — skimming legal briefs and even court transcripts. To me, they all read like act two of To Kill a Mockingbird, which is pretty compelling stuff, no matter how you feel about Gregory Peck.

And so, when I heard that the transcript for yesterday’s closing arguments in the Proposition 8 trial (aka Perry v. Schwarzenegger) had been posted online, I headed on over for a little light reading.

I was hoping that Ted Olson, arguing for the plaintiffs (aka Our Team), might bust out with some Atticus Finchy poetics. Sadly, his remarks were fairly dry — dry and very, very compelling. He ran through many of the standard arguments in favor of gay marriage, stuff we’ve probably heard a thousand times over, but he also raised some very persuasive, technical, legal points:

page 2970

I think it’s really important to set forth the prism through which this case must be viewed by the judiciary. And that is the perspective on marriage, the same subject that we’re talking about, by the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court — the freedom to marry, the freedom to make the choice to marry.

The Supreme Court has said in — I counted 14 cases going back to 1888, 122 years. And these are the words of all 25 of those Supreme Court decisions about what marriage is. And I set forth this distinction between what the plaintiffs have called it and what the Supreme Court has called it.

The Supreme Court has said that: Marriage is the most important relation in life. Now that’s being withheld from the plaintiffs. It is the foundation of society. It is essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness. It’s a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights and older than our political parties. One of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause. A right of intimacy to the degree of being sacred. And a liberty right equally available to a person in a homosexual relationship as to heterosexual persons. That’s the Lawrence vs. Texas case.

Marriage, the Supreme Court has said again and again, is a component of liberty, privacy, association, spirituality and autonomy. It is a right possessed by persons of different races, by persons in prison, and by individuals who are delinquent in paying child support.

It is the right of individuals, not an indulgence dispensed by the State of California, or any state, to favored classes of citizens which could easily be withdrawn if the state were to change its mind about procreation. In other words, it is a right belonging to Californians, to persons. It is not a right belonging to the State of California.

And the right to marry, to choose to marry, has never been conditioned on or tied to procreation. It hardly could be  rooted in the state’s interest in procreation, since the right to marry, in Supreme Court cases, has been invoked sustaining the right to contraceptives, to divorce, and just a few years ago in that Lawrence case, to homosexuals. [emphasis totally mine]

page 2993

[W]hat the Court repeatedly talked about in Lawrence vs. Texas is the right of individuals, the constitutional right of individuals — this is on page 574 of the Lawrence opinion.

“Our laws and our tradition afford constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationship, child rearing, and education.” That’s not a complete list.

And then the Court goes on to say, “Persons in a homosexual relationship may seek autonomy for these purposes just as heterosexual persons do.”

The Court was talking about the private, intimate behavior. If the Court had said, “Instead, you can go to jail for five days because we caught you doing those things, we will take away your right to drive on highways, we will take away your right to marry because you do those things or you engage in that conduct,” that seems to me that that is just as unconstitutional, especially if the thing which is taken away is also a fundamental constitutional right.

In other words, because you engage in something that’s protected by our Constitution, we’re going to take away — because we don’t like it, we’re going to take away a right to do another thing that’s protected by our Constitution. [emphasis totally mine]

That can’t be constitutional. And so I don’t think that there is any distinction. I submit that there can’t be any distinction. And the language of the decision talks about the individual right to engage in that activity. That can’t be a precondition for engaging in the right to marry.

page 2997

Your Honor pointed out at the conclusion of the summary judgment hearing, this issue is not about same-sex  marriage. Just as in 1967, it wasn’t about interracial marriage. It was the right, in 1967, in the Loving case, the right to marry without limitation based on race.

Here, the issue is the right to marry without limitation based upon sex. That’s another reason why this requires heightened scrutiny. [emphasis totally mine]

The evidence was overwhelming that this is a stigma. It’s a government-imposed stigma. It’s a government-imposed stigma placed in the constitution of the State of California.

What could be a stronger signal to other citizens and to other people that they are not okay, these people are not normal?

page 2999

The latest words from the proponents, Counsel for the proponents is, “We don’t know. We don’t know whether there is going to be any harm [caused by gay marriage].”

And I would submit that, “We’ve always done it that way,” that “It’s a traditional definition of marriage,” which is something that “We’ve always done it that way,” is the same — is the corollary to the “Because I say so.”

It’s not a reason. You can’t have continued discrimination in public schools because you have always done it that way. You can’t have continued discrimination between races on the basis of marriage because you have always done it that way. That line of reasoning would have prevented the Loving marriage. It would have justified racially segregated schools and maintaining subordinate status for married women. [emphasis 100% totally and completely mine]

Sweet.

I tried skimming the defense’s remarks, too, but obviously, I wasn’t not so interested in what they had to say. (See? I would’ve made a terrible lawyer.) As far as I can tell, the bulk of their argument goes like, “Marriage has been between a man and a woman for centuries, so there’s clearly a reason to keep it this way.” In fact, he says this:

page 3027

Why has marriage been so universally defined by virtually all societies at all times in human history as an exclusively opposite-sex institution? It is because marriage serves a societal purpose that is equally ubiquitous. Indeed, a purpose that makes marriage, in the often repeated formulation of the Supreme Court of the United States, fundamental to the very existence and survival of the human race.

And also:

page 3030

Without the marital relationship, your Honor, society would come to an end.

Which…well, do I really have to point out the giant, gaping holes in that argument? I mean, is that even an argument, or is it just a ghost story?

Judge Walker didn’t seem to have much patience with that sort of thing, either. When the defense argued that the state has an interest in maintaining opposite-sex marriage because of its procreative nature, Walker broke in:

page 3032

THE COURT: But the state doesn’t withhold the right to marriage to people who are unable to produce children of their own.

MR. COOPER: That’s true, your Honor, it does not. It does not insist —

THE COURT: Are you suggesting that the state should, to fulfill the purpose of marriage that you have described?

MR. COOPER: No, sir, your Honor. It is by no means a necessary — a necessary condition or a necessary requirement to fulfilling the state’s interests in naturally potentially procreative sexual relationships.

THE COURT: Well, then, the state must have some interest wholly apart from procreation.

MR. COOPER: It doesn’t necessarily follow that that is true.

It rationally furthers the state’s interests to extend — to attempt to channel into the marital union all potentially procreative relationships, as well as all male-female relationships.

Which seems to me pretty weak. But as I said, I’m totally biased.

Either way, this stuff’s going all the way to the Supreme Court, so get comfortable, y’all.

For no good reason, I’ve been thinking of John Gavin lately. Then again, I suppose there’s always good reason to think of John Gavin:

Technically, he was before my time, but until cable came along and offered endless hours of new programming, the networks ran lots of re-runs, and on Sunday afternoons, chances were pretty good that John Gavin would show up in something or other. My favorite of his oeuvre was and still is Thoroughly Modern Millie, though Imitation of Life comes in a very close second. Gavin was in Spartacus, too, but I only discovered that when I got older, because Spartacus wasn’t the sort of thing Mississippi TV stations felt comfortable running. Which was really too bad for my burgeoning libido:

Now, I’ve stumbled across another film — one that seems to have been Gavin’s bungled attempt at superspy stardom: 1968’s Niente rose per OSS 117, aka OSS 117: Double Agent. (No, that’s not a knockoff of some other spy franchise. Why do you ask?) It was an Italian number, and despite its English title, the film doesn’t appear to have been released in the U.S.

Which is fine, because as far as I can tell, OSS 117 made about as much sense as Modesty Blaise, which was, coincidentally, also a European spy feature and came out two years earlier. However, maybe there’s reason to give it a chance. Please note:

And then there’s the nellified, nehru-jacketed villain (who is not a knockoff either):

I smell a bittorrent session in my immediate future.

N.B. Gavin stopped acting when he was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Mexico by former acting pal Ronald Reagan — which technically makes Gavin a Republican, but my fantasy world has a built-in override system to work around such inconveniences. Apparently the man’s still alive.

First, this ad from a South African fast food restaurant called Nando’s:

Yes, it’s an offer for a complimentary soft drink, valid only for three hours, only to Uruguayan citizens, and only if Uruguay loses to South Africa in the two teams’ World Cup face-off tomorrow. It is cheeky and edgy and slightly funny, but maybe not so much for Uruguayans, who are probably tired of being confused with their drug-producing Colombian and Bolivian neighbors.

And here’s ad #2, which comes from the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which is apparently a pretty conservative agency. Despite the weird-ass, Little-Mermaid-under-the-sea color scheme, it was designed for Rainbow Month, known in many parts of the world as Gay Pride. Voila le fabulousness:

I, um, well. Hmmm.

So, we’ve got Nando’s laughing at Brown People — not that South Africa has a reputation for doing that — and the LCBO laughing with The Gays, kinda.

Exhibit A is clearly in poor taste, but it’s not especially surprising given the testosterone-laden, pissing-contest nature of the World Cup. I’d expect more from a sport that just came out of the closet, but you know: baby steps.

Exhibit B isn’t much better. I mean, I think it’s great that a governmental agency has given support to Pride celebrations — even if it’s only advertising support. But something about the copy seems a little presumptuous, no?

All things considered, I think I prefer the Nando’s ad. Hell, at least the restaurant isn’t feigning any kind of camaraderie. And aggressively targeted ads like the LCBO’s always make me a little uncomfortable, anyway.

You know, this much indecision probably means it’s snack time.

[AnimalNewYork, AdsOfTheWorld]

Like I said, I’m an on-and-off vegetarian. I’ve also been a pescatarian, and for a very brief time, a vegan. It was tough to do when I was younger, but as I’ve aged, I’ve lost some of my taste for meat. That helps.

But as much as I might love to be a devout vegetarian, I’m incapable of being a devout anything. I live in the Gray Zone: I admire the high-minded and noble, but I can’t walk that walk myself. I’m a pragmatist, not an idealist. At the dinner table, that means I’m mostly a vegetarian, I prefer not eating meat, but if someone’s gone to the trouble of fixing hamburgers, or if I’m out at a restaurant like Cochon, I’m gonna go with the flow. Cowardly? Maybe. But I manage to keep more friends.

I’ve been thinking about this a good bit lately, so when I stumbled across the following chart about global meat consumption, I found it a little interesting.

Among the top-ten meat-consuming nations, we find:

• Not one country from Africa.

• Only one country from Asia: the tiny island of Nauru, which seems like an anomaly. Purportedly, over 78% of the population there is obese.

• Only one country from South America, despite the fact that Brazil is renowned for its love of beef almost as much as Argentina is.

• Even though we think that Americans eat far too much meat, there are others who eat far more.

Anyway, food for thought. (Har.)

[elistmania]