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Any introduction into basic advertising will tell you that a little controversy can be good. And controversy is what women's shoe manufacturer Candie's has gotten over the months with its edge-of-good-taste print and TV ad campaign featuring Jenny star Jenny McCarthy.
Now, the company says MTV--the music television network McCarthy used to work for--rejected its latest two Jenny commercials and is "rethinking" its advertising strategy on the cable channel.
According to Candie's marketing director David Conn, MTV told him January 31 it was rejecting Candie's latest two 30-second commercials, only to change its mind 72 hours later and approve them after the company vehemently objected.
"We're not happy," Conn says, "and we're really reevaluating how MTV fits into our [advertising] lineup."
He claims Candie's has already cut in half its ad budget for MTV.
Asked what the 72-hour approval delay was all about, an MTV spokesperson said there was never a problem--and suggested the whole thing was perhaps a way to generate publicity for the shoe company. She adds that the spots are scheduled to run at the end of the month.
Still, Conn insists MTV hesitated. But for what reason?
In the fall, some New York media outlets refused to run several of the somewhat raunchy McCarthy ads.
But the new spots look fairly benign when compared to those earlier commercials, which had the former MTV Singled Out star doing stuff like gawking at a plumber's large and exposed butt crack and sitting on the toilet with her underwear around her Candie's.
The latest two installments mock the old Nike "Just Do It" campaign with a tagline reading "Just Screw It"--dumb, sure, but not that offensive.
As for McCarthy, no nudity or scatological humor here--she simply plays blundering sports star: In one, she's the high-jumping basketball phenom who ends up face-planting the backboard on a dunk attempt; the other one shows her teeing off at what looks like Augusta, only it ends up being a miniature golf course, and she goofily whiffs the putt.
Did MTV reject the ads simply because they weren't funny? They didn't say.
"We believe MTV's decision is not related to content, but political reasons," Conn says. "Networks that are much more conservative approved it." (He included E! among them.)
By "political," does he mean something having to do with McCarthy? After all, she bolted MTV after pumping up her star volume there.
Conn says no, it's just that the cable network's executives hold their advertisers to a much higher standard than they do their programming.
And now, as far as MTV might be concerned, Candie's boots are made for walking.