Our own little Super Bowl-type scandal...

Auto parts ads too racy for three TV stations

02/04/04

STACI BROWN BROOKS
News staff writer

Three Birmingham TV stations said Tuesday they yanked a suggestive commercial for Pull-A-Part auto salvage company, which bills itself "The Best Strip Joint in Town," after receiving viewer complaints.

The commercial from Pull-A-Part, whose billboards in Birmingham show models with headlights placed over their breasts, pairs curvaceouswomen with auto parts. A voice offers "tailpipe" on the TV commercial.

WABM and WTTO stopped the ads Monday. WBRC decided to stop them Tuesday. The stations' general managers say the ads started running last week. [...]

A manager with Atlanta-based Pull-A-Part says the backlash has caught the company off guard. While Birmingham is the only market where the TV commercials were aired, Marty Kogan said the "strip joint" slogan has been around since the company started in 1997. Pull-A-Part has salvage yards in Conley and Norcross, Ga. It opened on Vanderbilt Road in June.

"This whole thing was done as a fun play on words. While we knew it was edgy, it was certainly not our intent to offend anybody and if we did we apologize," Kogan said.

The ad campaign is an effort to introduce Pull-A-Part to Birmingham, Kogan said. Pull-A-Part just wants the Birmingham area to know that its business is clean, cheap and has lots of cars on more than 20 acres, he says.

The suggestiveness, he says, is "done with a wink." The company thought the commercial - created, written and directed by an all-female ad agency -would be an amusing way to introduce itself to a new market. [...]

Well, Saturday afternoon while I was folding clothes and getting the kids bathed, this came on the UPN station where I was watching Meteor.

It features a buxom young blonde chick with a genuine Southern accent, extolling the junkyard's virtues with a string of groaningly bad double entendres--"Is that a dipstick in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" "How about THIS pair of headlights?", etc.

It was just stupid and not the least bit clever and all I could think to myself is, "Wow, Channel 68's ad rates are so low even a junkyard can buy time." Catherine was sitting there in the floor waiting to go take her bath, and she looked around at Reba and me sort of sitting their with our mouths agape. "This sure is a stupid commercial!"

Out of the mouth of babes...
posted by Terry at 1:36:00 PM