When Twitter Promotions Go Wrong: IL Pizzeria Offers Food For Flashing

from the just-gtfo dept

By now you should be familiar with the concept of advertising being content and content being advertising. If you're new to the class, the idea is that clever, timely, and wanted ads can be every bit as entertaining and drawing as entertainment content itself. It's essentially what makes a good ad: something you want being presented in the way you want it, all without pissing you or a large section of the customer off base. Oreo serves as a wonderful example of this, having put out a timely Twitter quip as an ad in last year's Super Bowl.

But make no mistake, you can do this wrong. And one pizzeria in Champaign, IL, home of the University of Illinois, got it horribly, horribly wrong.

If you're a female customer who goes to Drew's Pizzeria in Champaign, you can apparently flash your boobs and walk away with some free pizza. Since sober girls usually won't flash people for free pizza, it seems that these boobs-for-pizza trades unsurprisingly happen more often at night, according to a Craigslist post.

Drew's Pizzeria's Twitter account, now deleted in an attempt to bury its head in the internet sand, offered such wonderful incentives to eat their pie as:

"FREE PIZZA for the next pair of nips right now, ladies only!"

"Pizzas $5 right at Drews or free for titties."

"WE WANT MORE TITS!!! #showusyourtits #uiuc FREE PIZZA"

Now, we have a couple of problems here. First, while you won't find a guy with a deeper appreciation of the female anatomy than I, screaming how much you want to see boobs at your pizzeria using the all-caps faux pas is akin to the creepy guy in the corner of the strip club who keeps asking one stripper exactly what time she'd be leaving out the back and whether she's allergic to ether. And who didn't see the eventual backlash coming? Large swaths of men may think of free-spirited ho-bags when the term "college girl" is uttered, but that's bullshit. College is also the place where feminism spreads, where activism finds roots, and where the love of battling a corporation is second only to a love of a cancelled class. Of course people rallied against these idiots.

But, hey, they cancelled their Twitter account, so they're clearly sorry. I imagine we'll get a claim of a hack by the Syrian Electronic Army any moment now. In the meantime, there has to be a better-behaved business that will sell you some pizza in rural Illinois.

Filed Under: pizza, promotions

DailyDirt: Serious Food Regulations That Don't Sound So Serious...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are plenty of cases where food regulations are reasonable safety measures, but sometimes there are serious government decisions that sound a bit ridiculous (eg. the Supreme Court deciding that a tomato is a vegetable in 1893). Here are just a few examples of more recent politically-charged food proposals.

• Pizza is not a vegetable, but just 1/8 of a cup of tomato paste counts the same as a half cup of vegetables, according to Congress. It's actually not that easy to directly compare the nutritional value of various servings of fruits and vegetables, but plenty of people simply see highly-processed foods as an unacceptable component of school lunches. [url]
• The USDA had a suggestion to try out a "Meatless Monday" recommendation, but it quickly backed off doing so. The proposal would have encouraged corporate and school cafeterias to offer a vegetarian meal on Mondays, but there were obvious objections from parts of the agriculture industry. [url]
• California's Proposition 37 would require labels on genetically modified foods -- and consumers will likely be surprised at the amount of GMOs in their diet. If it passes, the result of this vote could make GM foods a larger national issue. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: food, gmo, meatless mondays, pizza, prop37, regulations, usda, vegetable

DailyDirt: You Say Ketchup, I Say Catsup...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Ketchup actually started out as a fish sauce and somehow evolved into the much more widely-consumed condiment we know today. Early recipes of ketchup contained sodium benzoate -- which was banned in the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. That ban led to other formulations which contained vinegar as a preservative and used ripe tomatoes. Here are just a few more fascinating factoids about this tangy, thixotropic, tomato-based foodstuff.

• MIT researchers have developed LiquiGlide -- a non-stick coating that could let people get every last drop of ketchup out of a bottle easily. Anticipation is no longer making me wait.... [url]
• Malcom Gladwell is famous for (among other things) his talk on spaghetti sauces and the discovery that customers want a spectrum of choices when it comes to spaghetti sauces. But ketchup seems to be the exception to the rule because there's just a single dominant brand -- and there are far fewer than 57 varieties of it. [url]
• Should ketchup count as a vegetable in school lunches? The tomato sauce on pizza may not count as a vegetable serving according to mothers and the USDA, but it might for some politicians. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: catsup, condiment, food, ketchup, liquiglide, malcolm gladwell, pizza, sauce, sodium benzoate, tomato

DailyDirt: Burger Innovations From Around The World

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The USA has no monopoly on hamburger innovations. Sure, Americans probably eat more burgers than any other country, and we came up with the drive-thru and drive-in processes for burger orders. But the possibilities for burgers have no limits, and here are just a few global developments in the world of burger technology.

• In Germany, McDonald's crowdsourced a few new menu suggestions which were released as actual products for sale over the month of May. The "Pretzelnator" was the first item -- offering folks a ham & cheese sandwich on a pretzel-like bun. [url]
• In Japan, the phrase "have it your way" translates to "put as much bacon as humanly possible on my Whopper, please." Japanese Burger Kings will put 15 slices of bacon on your burger for about 100 yen, and for about 7,000 yen, that's 1,050 slices of bacon on your order. [url]
• Pizza Hut in Dubai has added cute little cheeseburgers to pizza crust. They've also added mini chicken fillets on pizza crusts and cream cheese, too. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: bacon, burgers, food, pizza, pretzelnator, whopper
Companies: burger king, mcdonalds, pizza hut

DailyDirt: Hot Dogs!

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The weather is warming up, and backyard barbecues are getting dusted off. What's easier to grill than a good old hot dog? Absolutely nothing. Here are just a few links to get you in the mood for some delicious dogs.

• The Brits have outdone themselves with a new culinary creation: Pizza Hut UK has created a hot dog stuffed pizza crust. American ingenuity just isn't what it used to be. [url]
• If you're really into hot dogs with plentiful toppings, just check out some MLB ballparks. Warning: if you don't like hot dogs, this is a slideshow of more than 20 hot dogs smothered in condiments that'll probably make you sick. [url]
• The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is trying to get people to stop eating hot dogs... with scary billboards that suggest hot dogs are deadly. Some of the billboard ads look like parodies of anti-smoking campaigns, so it's difficult to take them too seriously (though the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council isn't laughing). [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: ballparks, food, hot dogs, pizza, toppings
Companies: national hot dog & sausage council, physicians committee for responsible medicine, pizza hut

Pizza Shop Sues Former Employee For 'Stealing' Recipe

from the can't-own-a-recipe dept

Reader Brian points us to a story where his hometown pizza shop is apparently suing a former employee, claiming he "stole" their family recipes, and used them to open a competing pizza place 20 miles away. We've seen some similar disputes in the past, but have pointed out how the very lack of the ability to use intellectual property to prevent competition in the restaurant business is part of what has helped that industry thrive. Without seeing the actual lawsuit, it's difficult to know what they're actually suing him for. Perhaps they could make a trade secret claim, but recipes themselves cannot be copyrighted, so there's no copyright claim here.

But, really, as you read the quotes from the pizza shop owners who are doing the suing, it appears that they're making an emotional claim, saying things like: "Don't take something that someone else's family started and claim it as your own, because it is not." Okay, sure, but how do you think your family came up with the original recipe in the first place? It wasn't invented from scratch. They got a basic recipe from somewhere else, and perhaps improved upon it, but when someone orders a pizza from your shop, do you tell them who gave the family the original recipe? Of course not.

Then there's this: "I just don't want to compete against my own food." Right, so you're using the law for anti-competitive purposes. The law is supposed to encourage competition, not discourage it.

Filed Under: copying, pizza, recipes

Italy Demands Apple Remove Joke iTunes App; Starts Legal Action Against App Author

from the humor-sensors? dept

btr1701 passes on the news of how Italy's tourism minister apparently has absolutely no sense of humor. There's an app in the Apple iTunes store for iPhones and iPads called "What Country," which summarizes every country in quick stereotypical snippets. It's meant to be amusing. For example:

Britain is characterised by "tea, weird sense of humour, football hooligans and rain", while Germany is summed up with "beer, discipline and autobahns". China is reduced to "overpopulation, kung fu, Great Wall, Tibet and tea ceremony", while the most defining characteristics of the US are "melting pot, hamburger and the American dream".

As for Italy, well, it's summarized as "pizza, the Mafia and scooters." And, apparently, Italy's tourism minister, Michela Vittoria Brambilla, has such a lack of humor that she declared the app "offensive and unacceptable," demanded that Apple remove it from the store and (most ridiculous of all) is asking the state's attorney to take legal action against the author. Apparently, someone thinks it's illegal in Italy to make a joke about Italy.

Filed Under: apps, italy, jokes, liability, mafia, pizza, scooters
Companies: apple

Little Ceasar's Says Pizza Pizza Pizza Menu Offering Infringes On Its Pizza Pizza Slogan

from the pizza-pizza-pizza-pizza dept

It's time for some morons in a hurry to start ordering some pizza -- but perhaps not a pizza pizza pizza. Michael Scott points us to the news that lawyers for pizza giant Little Caesars are threatening a Michigan restaurant with a trademark infringement claim, because it has an item on its menu called "Pizza Pizza Pizza." For years, Little Caesar's has used the slogan "Pizza Pizza." However, it's difficult to see how anyone goes into the Pronto! Restaurant, and sees the menu item "Pizza Pizza Pizza" and thinks, "gee, I must be getting a Little Caesar's pizza with 50% more pizza!"

One aside, by the way. It's really amazing how often reporters mix up and interchange different types of intellectual property law. In the first paragraph, the reporter claims that the complaint is about "copyright," when the quote from Little Casear's (held off until the final paragraph) shows that it's clearly about trademark law. I can understand some confusion if it's never actually made clear, but this involves an article where the lawyer specifically notes that it's a trademark issue, and the reporter calls it a copyright issue in the opening... and doesn't put the quote in with the details until the very end. That just seems like really bad reporting.

Filed Under: menu, pizza, pizza pizza, pizza pizza pizza, trademark
Companies: little caesar's

Can You Patent Pretending To Let Customers Know Their Online Ordered Pizza Is In The Oven?

from the patenting-bullshit dept

Jeff Nolan points us to an amusing article trying to dig into some questions over whether or not Domino's "patent pending" pizza tracker is real. Launched a little over two years ago, apparently, if you order a pizza from Domino's online, it takes you to a website where it alerts you in real-time to the status of your pizza: is it in the oven, has it been put in a box, is it on its way, etc. Domino's was quite proud of the fact it had filed a patent for the technology, but there have been some concerns about whether the technology is real, or if it's just a pretty flash animation connected to nothing in reality.

The "evidence" against it being real is that one anonymous commenter on a blog post about the tracker said that it told him his pizza was in the oven and then boxed before he discovered a series of voicemails from the store claiming they could not fulfill his online order because they were "out of deep dish." The second example comes from a guy who just ordered some bottles of soda (no pizza) and was somewhat amused/horrified to watch as his order was "placed in the oven" and then boxed -- only to be delivered two hours later (a bit late) after someone called him asking him if he had ordered something from Domino's, and if so, what it was. That guy notes, of the patent application:

Is that really patent pending technology? I didn't know you could patent bull*&%t

Well, there have been patents on anti-gravity devices, even though they're not supposed to grant patents that, you know, violate the laws of physics -- so perhaps that answers the question there. There's also the patent on sending signals faster than the speed of light.

As for Domino's?

Tim McIntyre, the vice president of communications at Domino's, insisted that his company had not patented bullshit.

"The Pizza Tracker is real, and it is accurate to within 30 seconds," McIntyre told The Daily Caller just seconds after we indicated to customer service that we were investigating the veracity of the Pizza Tracker's sometimes extraordinary claims. Every update customers see on the Tracker except for the final 'delivered' update, McIntyre said knowingly, is triggered by a button press in the store itself.

He later explains that the only part that is "faked" is the delivery time. They just assume the pizza was delivered 10 minutes after it leaves the store (which I would imagine might lead to angry customers who live further away, or if there's a bad traffic jam or something). As for the complaints, apparently there's a bit of a "glitch" with this amazing patent pending technology, such that if someone at the store "clears" an order, the system interprets that as "baked and ready," since, despite all the brilliance going into this patent-pending technology, no one thought to add a feature that tells the customer something's wrong with the order.

But, of course, you shouldn't build that yourself. You might infringe on Domino's possible patent.

As for the patent application itself, I've been looking around for it and haven't turned up anything. Anyone know which patent application it is?

Filed Under: patents, pizza
Companies: domino's

Domino's Turns A Loss In A Lawsuit It Wasn't Involved In Into A TV Commercial

from the wow dept

People have been discussing, lately, how Domino's new advertising campaign is certainly on the gutsy side. Basically, the company started running commercials that admitted pretty clearly what anyone who's ever eaten at Domino's has known for years: its pizzas were dreadful. The new commercials effectively admitted this in touting a brand new recipe that they insist is much, much better, and saying that customers hated the old pizza (in slightly different words). It seems the ad campaign continues to break new grounds, as well, as the latest ad actually uses a lawsuit between two competitors as the key point to bash Papa Johns -- even though the Papa Johns won that lawsuit. Found via Rebecca Tushnet, the ad itself mocks Papa Johns for "puffery" in its advertising slogan of "Better ingredients. Better pizza." Watch it below: The actual lawsuit had nothing at all to do with Domino's, though you wouldn't know that from the commercial. It actually involved Pizza Hut suing Papa Johns over the slogan, as Pizza Hut argued that Papa Johns was implying its ingredients and pizzas were worse than Papa Johns. While Pizza Hut won at the lower level, an appeals court reversed and the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal, so Papa Johns could use the slogan again. Domino's, again, had no part in the lawsuit, but is apparently mocking Papa Johns in its commercials for claiming in court that such a slogan involves "puffery" and wasn't meant to indicate that it's pizzas were better than a specific competitor's.

You have to hand it to Domino's ad team, though, for taking a lawsuit that didn't even involve itself, and then creating a TV ad about it, which doesn't even mention how the competitor they're mocking won that lawsuit. That's bold.

Filed Under: advertising, lawsuits, pizza, puffery
Companies: dominos, papa johns, pizza hut