Rocky, you have always praised IOM's marketing skills as one of the main reasons they are able to sell so many of their poor quality, high priced products.
What do you think of this marketing idea?
Updated 4:51 PM ET January 16, 1998
Finger-giving frog can stay on beer labels
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A naughty frog with a raised middle
finger may be far from being a prince, but New York State still has
to let the amphibian gesticulate on beer bottle labels under free
speech rights, a court has ordered.
The prestigious U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling
dated Thursday, said the New York State Liquor Authority
violated the U.S. Constitution by banning Bad Frog Brewery from
selling beer with the insulting label.
In its ruling, the Second Circuit overturned a lower court's decision
to throw out Michigan-based Bad Frog's commercial free speech
challenge to the liquor authority's ban.
"A picture of a frog with the second of its four unwebbed 'fingers'
extended in a manner evocative of a well-known human gesture of
insult has presented this Court with significant issues concerning
First Amendment protections for commercial speech," the judges
said.
A three-member panel of the Second Circuit, comprised of New
York, Connecticut and Vermont, said the state's prohibition does
not materially advance its asserted interest in insulating children
from vulgarity or promoting temperance.
The Second Circuit said the district court found the frog's gesture
"connotes a patently offensive suggestion."
The appeals court said hand gestures signifying an insult have been
in use throughout the world for many centuries and the extended
middle finger, known in the United States as "giving the finger" or
"flipping the bird" is said to have been used by Diogenes to insult
Demosthenes.
Bad Frog did not dispute that the gesture is widely regarded as an
offensive insult and versions of the label feature slogans such as
"He just don't care," and "An amphibian with an attitude."
The labels have been approved for use by the Federal Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and by at least 15 states.
However they were rejected by New Jersey, Ohio and
Pennsylvania. |
