Cookie-Smell Ad Campaign Derailed by Complaints
A novel advertising campaign in San Francisco that was to outfit bus stops with strips that smelled like fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies has ended days after it began. The scent, intended to make people want a glass of milk, led instead to complaints. The transportation department has ordered the ads to be removed.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
An update now on the story we brought you earlier this week about a sweet advertising campaign in San Francisco. On Monday, adhesive strips that smelled like chocolate chip cookies went up in five bus shelters behind Got Milk posters. You get the connection. Well, within hours, complaints from anti- allergy and anti-obesity groups poured in, and the transit authority ordered the scented strips removed.
JEFF GOODBY: People came out of the woodwork, but that's San Francisco and, you know, that's why we like working there.
BLOCK: Jeff Goodby is one of the creators of the Got Milk Campaign.
GOODBY: Maybe we should go wherever Keebler is, or Pillsbury, maybe we'd be more welcome there.
BLOCK: Well, by day's end yesterday, the only bus stops that smelled like cookies in San Francisco were in front of bakeries.
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