Papa John's, Huggies Pull Ads From Wonkette After Palin Post-Boycott After 'Tribute' Mocks Trig

Ad Age ^ | April 20, 2011 | Ken Wheaton

[2ndDivisionVet]

Know what doesn't go over well with advertisers? Making fun of disabled children.

On April 18, political blog Wonkette published a post titled "Greatest Living American: A Children's Treasury of Trig Crap On His Birthday" (none of which we will quote here). Trig, for those who don't remember, is Sarah Palin's youngest son, who has Down Syndrome. The initial response to this "celebration" of Trig's birthday was limited to comments getting in on the action, contributing the sort of jokes that would make Gilbert Gottfried proud.

But then, according to Slate's David Weigel, conservative bloggers stumbled across it and the outcry started. It quickly spread across political lines as people of all stripes (or claiming to be) declared the post beyond tasteless and started demanding that advertisers pull ads.

So far, the Twitter presences for both Papa John's and Huggies have decried the post. According to the Papa John's tweet, the company will make sure its ads won't run on Wonkette in the future. Huggies went so far as to tweet, "All -- We do not support the @Wonkette story & have taken action 2 pull r ads, effective immediately. TY 4 bringing this issue to r att'n!"

Wonkette, which did not respond to an email requesting comment, responded on Twitter by calling Papa John's "homophobic" and tweeting "Boycott Papa Johns, spread the word! (Your waistline, heart and tastebuds will thank you.)"

[PA Engineer]

State Farm, Gladiatorstocks.com, ARALifestyle.com, Chipotle Mexican Grill and The Ad Council had multiple advertisements on the page. I saved it as a Safari Web Archive and PDF.

[Republic]

What in the hell is the AD COUNCIL anyway? Every time I hear it, which it seems is all the time in the ‘brought to you by....’ segments of whatever, I get chilled. It’s seems so ‘Hal’ like.

[AFreeBird]

Dodge is Chrysler - is the government - is Obama.

Obama doesn’t care about a disadvantaged cracker baby. The fact that he’s Sarah’s child, makes him care even less.

It’s just the kind of man (and I use that term loosely) he is.

[UB355]

Celebrity Cruise had an ad on the page when I checked. I sent them the link.

[Retief]

Thanks. That's the guy I remember. I checked to see who wrote the article at Wonkette before they pulled the author's name. Hope he's getting the appropriate feedback. Wonder if he'll soon be filing for unemployment. I doubt it. Nothing really happened to that cartoonist that made the racist remarks about Condaleeza Rice.

[brytlea]

lol

[rae4palin]

Here’s the list of Wonkette’s advertisers:

Hyatt
* HP
* Celebrity X Cruises
* Fed Ex
* Reliant Energy
* Jack in the Box (say it isn’t so, Jack)
* AT&T
* Constant Contact
* Starkist Charlie
* Betty Crocker
* Gymboree
* Dunkin Donuts
* QVC
* Coca Cola
* Ann Taylor
* JJill
* Adobe
* Toyota
* Coldwell Banker
* Dodge
* Ford
* Avis
* Choice Hotels
* Dish Network
* LifeLock
* FinishLine

[via Jersey-Texan blog http://bit.ly/fu6Fg8 ]

btw - First time customer tonight at Papa John’s Pizza. Drove 11 miles out of my way. Delicious. And I told the manager why I was there.

[Issaquahking]

I normally don’t go to Papa John’s...but I’ve seen the error of my ways, and will be eating there a lot more often! Thanks PJ for being real Americans!

[excopconservative]

For these guys, it’s OK to demean and make fun of a disabled child, but they want to add a course against bullying to the school curriculum.

[SuperLuminal]

Dang! To think of all the ammo I’ve got just sitting there in limbo...

[1_Rain_Drop]

Is Starkist owned by Pelosi?

[Amigo04]

"Because old people are disproportionately Republican and old, a high percentage of those currently planning on voting that black man out of office will be dead before they get the chance." Jack Stuef on a post he made on Wonkette here. . Clearly this young man should be watched very closly.

[kevkrom]

Why are ANY of these companies advertising on a whacko site like that. I’m glad they are removing their ads but seriously, I had no idea these companies are even putting ads on that site..do they really need looney tunes to buy their products THAT badly

They don't, not directly.

Web banner ads like that are generally a "pool" resource. The advertisers buy space/impressions, likely tied to site traffic, and various sites subscribe to the pool to show the ads. Most such systems allow the advertiser to restrict sites from playing their ads, and sites can restrict what kind of ad gets shown. But unless/until a particular site gets to be a problem, there's little incentive to limit the ad's distribution, as long as your getting the views you want.

But once a site does something that reflects badly on the advertisers, they do have a reason to restrict their ads. The problem is, unless every advertiser in the pool (or close to it) blocks Wonkette, it's really not going to hurt their revenue at all.

[Lurker]

"Boycott Papa Johns, spread the word! (Your waistline, heart and tastebuds will thank you.)"

But the nasty lefty b**** had no problem taking their money before...