April 04, 2007

Great Moments in PR

A supermarket chain got itself into a huge muddle over the meaning of Easter yesterday in its attempt to sell more chocolate eggs.

“Brits are set to spend a massive £520 million on Easter eggs this year — but many young people don’t even know what Easter’s all about,” said the press release from Somerfield after a survey.

It then went on to claim that the tradition of giving Easter eggs was to celebrate the “birth” of Christ. An amended version changed this to the “rebirth” of Christ. Finally a third press release accepted Church teaching that Easter celebrated the resurrection of Christ.

The press release was written by Hayley Booth, 30, of the PR agency Brando...

An explanatory note on her second release read: “Please find below the amended story revealing Britons’ mounting ignorance regarding Easter...

Posted by Dr. Frank at April 4, 2007 04:35 PM | TrackBack
Comments

I thought the eggs and the bunny represented the arrival of spring in druidic cultures and that the christian parts were tacked on by the pope trying to "save" the savage saxons.

or something

Posted by: sam at April 4, 2007 05:47 PM

where are my passover chocolate covered bitter herbs?

Posted by: the erica at April 4, 2007 10:11 PM

this is an interesting topic but id rather opine on the following:

this morning i listened to milk milk lemonade for the first time in about ten years. i had to listen to it three times in a row, it was so good. half of the things i thought i understood when i was 18 (the year i purchased it)are... wait, i started that sentence wrong. all i know is now, being smarter, i picked up some concepts that i missed the first time through.

hats off to frank portman.

the man is, hands down, the most brilliant songwriter this world has ever known. ill take your mozarts, captain beefhearts, john lennons and jimmy pages and throw them in the trashbin if you try to compare anything they ever accomplished with "book of revelation" - and that's just the first track on the album. the whole thing is just fucking mindblowing.

if anyone reading this doesnt have that album, do NOT wait another second living in darkness.

Posted by: chris riordan at April 5, 2007 08:35 PM

I'm a fan of you since the 90's...maybe u don't know but u've a lot of fans here (italy)
u plaied in the best rock'n'roll band ever.
when u get back in italy?

Let me know
thank u for all
Lorenzo

Posted by: Lorenzo at April 5, 2007 09:15 PM

You'll be pleased to know plenty of British children are still being forced to Sunday school. Why when I grew up we even linedanced along to the names of books of the bible, Genesis (left step) Exodus (left step) Leviticus (left step)Numbers (heel tap) Deuteronomy (right step) Joshua (right step) Judges (right step) etc.

Though as a society in general we pride ourselves on our Godlessness and therefore intellectual superiority over middle America.

Posted by: Anarchie at April 6, 2007 12:03 AM

Lorenzo, you were talking to me, right? Thanks man, I love my Italian Faninos more than any other subcategory of my fandom.

Frank - www.totallyawesomemagazine.com is up and the first issue is sort of out and available. I didn't use any of your blog stuff but the minute you write another book or put out another album ill promote the poop out of it.

If I were you, I would write an ongoing seriel novel for TotallyAwesomeMagazine and then sell it as a book when you are done because you will have retained all of the copyrights since the publisher is such a rightous guy

Posted by: chris riordan at April 6, 2007 05:34 AM

So pride to be one of them...
Lorenzo

Posted by: Lorenzo at April 6, 2007 11:42 AM

me and lorenzo, rolling in a benzo...

Posted by: chris riordan at April 6, 2007 09:06 PM

Interesting and funny article. God bless all the dummies. Thanks for sharing.

Posted by: d at April 7, 2007 05:36 PM

You would think they would just look on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter

How hard is that.

Happy Easter to Dr. Frank and the women who love him.

Posted by: Lexington Green at April 8, 2007 06:06 AM

Does that Easter wish extend to them manly men who love him as well?

Posted by: chris riordan at April 11, 2007 04:38 PM

Hilarious, but your formatting confuses, me, Frank. PThe Times, I'm fairly sure, didn't link to itself.

(I'm assuming it's obvious and agreed that inserting a link into a quote is as bad as inserting anything into a quote: it's a claim that something was quoted that, um, wasn't.)

Anyway, might want to watch out for that sort of confusing formatting accident.

Posted by: Gary Farber at April 14, 2007 03:38 AM