Tyson's ad titillation

January 24, 2002 Posted: 1539 GMT

By Alan Wastler

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -- "Be a man! Come up here, you f------ f-----. Be a man. I'll f--- you in the ass. B----!"

Gosh, what a great commercial.

Well, that's what it was. And it worked.

More people are aware of the impending Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson fight in April than before, thanks to the fighters' "confrontation" Tuesday night. And those people are, perhaps, a little more interested in the outcome. After all Tyson, spitting out those words and other choice little bon mots at reporters, is casting himself as the perfect mentally defective villain.

In case you missed it. Tyson turned what was supposed to be a typical trash-talk press event for the Tyson-Lewis rematch into a circus. He and Lewis and various bodyguards scuffled. Afterwards Tyson made obscene gestures and remarks to the press corps.

Vince McMahon and the WWF couldn't have done any better.

Now many people, not that there weren't a lot before, would like to see Tyson get his butt kicked. If the promoters are lucky, a good portion of those people will decide to pay for it.

Great commercial.

And despite all the hand wringing and despairing about this incident and other sports shenanigans of late, America loves commercials.

Of course, we usually take them a little tamer.  A cute little Chihuahua or a hip and helpful computer geek are more mainstream. As long as it's entertaining. Heck, sometimes entertaining commercials can take on a life of their own. "Wassup?" and "Where's the beef?" are now standards of the American cultural lexicon, thanks to commercials.

Okay, if America loves commercials so much, why is advertising in such a slump?

Because while people may love entertaining commercials nobody -- sellers or consumers -- wants to pay for them. Companies cut about $10 billion in ad costs in 2001, looking for ways to improve the bottom line. Of course, most marketing boosters will tell you that cutting marketing is the worst thing to do if you need improved sales.

But such logic is typically lost on most businesses, which amounts to lost opportunity.

Witness Adcritic.com, one of the Web's more popular sites, now shuttered. If you

wanted to find a funny commercial, that's where you went. The Budweiser frogs ("Bud. Wise. Err."), Pacific Bell's Laurel Lane series ("Web hog!!!"), Microsoft's bra-security ad, you could watch them all there. For free. You could even go to chat rooms and message boards and discuss the commercials with other fans.

That gave the site over 200,000 registered users and a lot of traffic. At its peak it served 32.5 million videos in one week in January 2001.

But serving that many videos costs money -- and the well-trafficked site wasn't getting enough advertising to pay for it. Ironic, since it was mostly serving ads people wanted to see.

"A Budweiser executive once grabbed me at a conference and told me how great our site was and how much good it was doing them. He didn't give me a check though," said James Riley, Adcritic.com president.

But the site might come back. It's now holding talks with several prospective bidders. It could make sense for several companies. After all, a place where people voluntarily watch commercials and then discuss them is kind of, well, a free focus group.

Let's just hope if the site does re-emerge, some big corporate backer doesn't lose sight of what made Adcritic.com popular: funny, entertaining commercials that are free. Those commercials, by the way, often include the risqué and the over-the-top. And the controversial. Whether you agree with the viewpoint or not, these are the things that grab attention. That's their job.

If Adcritic were still running, you could bet the Tyson display would have made the cut.

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Allen Wastler is managing editor of CNN/Money
Click here to send mail to Allen Wastler

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