Remember the story we posted a couple of weeks ago that said Kellogg’s ‘Reputation Score’ took a nose dive to #83 out of 5600 after ditching Michael ‘RoorMaster‘ Phelps? How about an update?

This pretty much rivals CNBC for Best Freefall Performance by a Group or Duo: according to Vanno, Kellogg is now sitting at #233 out of 5841.

That’s rough, though it doesn’t affect the tasty bowl of Frosted Mini Spooners I’m currently enjoying in lieu of Frosted Mini Wheats which shall go linkless. After the zesty cannabis session I have later, I’ll be sucking down some Safeway Frosted Pop Tarts.

The founder of Kellogg would probably suggest an enema for the high fiber count I’m packing in. I’ve a better idea, Kellogg: up yours.

The kids’ cable TV network Nickelodeon broadcasts a “Kids’ Choice Awards” every year.  This year the festivities are hosted by Dwayne Cougar Johnson*.  I found it a little ironic that an awards show aimed at kids would feature Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps as a nominee for Best Male Athlete.  Don’t the people at Nickelodeon realize that Kellogg’s, maker of kid-friendly cereals and snacks, deemed Phelps’ bong-smoking incident so heinous it had to drop its contract with him for fear the taint of his egregious private adult actions would stain the sterling reputation of the maker of Froot Loops™ Cereal Straws?  (I guess they don’t, since the awards appear to be sponsored by General Mills, maker of Cheerios.)

Would Phelps have made the Nickelodeon list if he hadn’t given numerous mea culpae for his sin of smoking pot with other adults in private?  It’s hard to say, but maybe not.  After all, Nickelodeon doesn’t seem to have an issue promoting an alleged domestic batterer, Chris Brown, in its nominations for Best Male Singer.

Hat tip to Stasher UrbAge for the story.* It’s my little inside joke.  “The Rock” -> Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson -> Dwayne Johnson reminds me of John Cougar -> John Cougar Mellencamp -> John Mellencamp.

When Kellogg announced it would not renew its endorsement contract with Olympic medalist Michael Phelps after a photo of the athelete smoking pot surfaced, it may have cost the food company its sterling reputation, reports company reputation index Vanno.

Out of the 5,600 company reputations Vanno monitors, Kellogg ranked ninth before it booted Phelps. Now it’s ranked 83. Not even an industry-wide peanut scare inflicted as much damage on the food company’s reputation. A Vanno representative put together this chart:

via Dumping Phelps Over Bong Rip Damages Kellogg’s Brand Reputation.

Ha ha!  Have at you!  Mess with the wrath of the awakened cannabis community at your own peril, you finger-wagging corporate moralists!

DIANE BRADY, SENIOR WRITER, BUSINESS WEEK: They did absolutely the right thing. If you had to choose between 10,000 parents e-mailing you or 10,000 pot smokers, I think I’d alienate the pot smokers. So I think they did the right thing.

O’REILLY: I’m not sure because they tell me after you smoke pot, you want to eat a lot of stuff.

BRADY: But you’re not terribly discriminative about what you eat, so I think…

You think pot smokers aren’t fiercely brand-loyal?  Talk to Doritos, Hacky Sack, Billabong, the Grateful Dead, Spongebob Squarepants, jazz, Zig Zag, High Times, Volkswagen…. Have you seen Harold & Kumar and what hell they will endure to get a White Castle burger in a landscape littered with McDonald’s?

I’m kidding, of course; pot smokers are as diverse a group of consumers as dog owners.  Yes, there are certain things we buy that nobody else does (lighter leashes, dog leashes) but outside our particular hobby, we are just like every other consumer out there.  So the question isn’t whether stoners can resist the allure of Pop-Tarts; 1 out of 5 stoners I know in Portland are vegetarians who wouldn’t touch a Kellogg’s product with a ten foot organically farmed recyclable bamboo pole.

The question is this, Ms. Brady: 5,000 of those 10,000 parents have smoked pot themselves.  1,000 of them probably this year, and maybe 300 of them are smoking now.  Is it smart for a company to come across as a finger-wagging moralist for behavior half its customers have engaged in themselves?  Especially when that company is pushing junk food to incresingly obese children using cartoon mascots during Saturday morning programming.  Does it make sense to drop the finest athletic role model chubby kids could have while you’re fattening them up?

I got more to say about this after the break, so…

O’REILLY: Ms. Brady says, Mr. Shankman, that middle America is really the target audience for these cereals, and they don’t want somebody who’s publicly been outted as a drug user on the package. Now that seems logical to me. Look, we’re looking at this — a little elf there. If a little elf had a syringe full of heroin, I don’t think he’s going to be on the cereal package.

SHANKMAN: If the little elf had a syringe full of heroin, it would be a lot harder for him to come out and apologize and just simply quit. The fact of the matter is that Kellogg’s made it a much, much bigger production that it would have been. I’d rather see the parents say, hey, you know what? Michael screwed up, but he admitted his mistake and we learned from it. I think that Kellogg’s banning him is going to come back to haunt him because in four years, he’s going to win another 50 gold medals. And then where’s he going to be?

Yes, because the Keebler Elf shooting up heroin is exactly what the image of Michael Phelps wearing eight gold medals on a Frosted Flakes box would conjure in the minds of the children.  For God’s Sake Won’t Somebody Think Of The Children!

BRADY: So I think that they are perfectly within their rights. You know, Sharon Stone says bad karma for the Chinese, Christian Dior drops her. So this is what happens. This is, you know, Kobe Bryant, some endorsements…

O’REILLY: He lost a lot of endorsements after that.

BRADY: He lost, but some of them he kept.

Yes, because calling out a communist dictatorship for their shameful human rights abuses and committing adultery in a questionably consensual sexual act resulting in anal injuries and a rape charge is just like smoking a bong at a college frat house party.

When they’re playing the heroin card, it’s almost over.

Somebody doesn’t like their negative press… this just in, forwarded to me from an SSDP member:

I participated in e-mailing Kelloggs about Michael Phelps situation and I thought that you’d be interested in the responce that I received from Kellogg’s their e-mail to me is as follows: 

Thank you for contacting us regarding Olympic swimmer, Michael Phelps and our decision not to extend his contract.

We regret that the intent of our message was not clear.  The contract was set to expire the end of February and with Michael’s obligations to us met, our decision not to extend the contract was for business reasons and in no way diminishes Michael’s status as an athlete.  We believe Michael has set a tremendous example through his work ethic and his accomplishments and are proud to have been associated with him.

The timing of this unfortunate incident and the end of the contract is purely coincidental. Again, thank you for the opportunity to share the facts of this situation.  

Sincerely,

Kathi Eckler

Director, Consumer Affairs

Oh, so now Michael Phelps photographed with a bong was just a ‘coincidence’, and you were just allowing his February contract to expire.  Which explains perfectly this statement from one week ago today:

“Michael’s most recent behavior is not consistent with the image of Kellogg. His contract expires at the end of February and we have made a decision not to extend his contract,” spokeswoman Susanne Norwitz said in a statement.

Technically, Ms. Eckler is not lying.  Phelps contract did expire in February.  Kellogg did not extend his contract for business reasons.  It’s just that the ‘business reason’ in question is Kellogg not wanting to be affiliated with someone who smokes marijuana.

Your marketing Jedi mind tricks are useless against us, young Padawan.  You could easily prove that you’re not cannabiphobic – sign on Santonio Holmes in Phelps place!  He did just win the Super Bowl, and Holmes has “set a tremendous example through his work ethic and his accomplishments”.  What do you say, Kellogg?

The only strange question that threw me for a loop was when McKenna asks, “So, were you born with your radio voice?”  I wanted to throw on what I call the “monster trucks” voice and say, “Yes, McKenna, when I came out of the womb I turned to my mother and said, ‘This Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!!! We’ll sell you the seat to see Russ Belville born, but you’ll only need the edge!  Bottles!  Diapers!  Baby food!  Cribs!  Get ‘em while the getting is good because tomorrow, it’s all gone!  This Sunday, Radical Russ at the Mercy Hospital!  Be There!!!’”

Download audio file (Russ%20Belville%20on%20Marijuana%20Radio.mp3)

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If I’m reading this promotion correctly, if I fill out a form and give them either ten bucks and proof I bought one box of Corn Flakes, or five bucks and three boxes of Corn Flakes, I can get a poster that is 6’10″ wide and 1’5″ tall?  Where am I supposed to hang that up?  

Let’s see, a box of 18oz cornflakes at my local Safeway cost $1.99, so under Plan A you’re out $12 and Plan B only costs $11.

And did you know that the corn cost of a box of cornflakes is less than 5¢ per box?

Since U.S. ethanol production uses field corn, the most direct impact of increased ethanol production should be on field corn prices and on the price of food products based on field corn. However, even for those products heavily based on field corn, the effect of rising corn prices is dampened by other market factors. For example, an 18-ounce box of corn flakes contains about 12.9 ounces of milled field corn. When field corn is priced at $2.28 per bushel (the 20-year average), the actual value of corn represented in the box of corn flakes is about 3.3 cents (1 bushel = 56 pounds). (The remainder is packaging, processing, advertising, transportation, and other costs.) At $3.40 per bushel, the average price in 2007, the value is about 4.9 cents. The 49-percent increase in corn prices would be expected to raise the price of a box of corn flakes by about 1.6 cents, or 0.5 percent, assuming no other cost increases.

(Yeah, we could do the sensible thing and legalize hemp, use it for biofuel, bring down food costs like Corn Flakes by using corn for food, while simultaneously opening the market to healthier hemp-based foods — Hemp Flakes! — but if we were doing sensible things there’d be no need to boycott Kellogg’s in the first place.

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-02-06.mp3)

It’s been a full day of graphic design, conference calls, web design, and flurries of email, all to take full advantage of the weekend press on the Kellogg’s / Phelps story.  I even registered http://boycottkelloggs.net and http://boycottkelloggs.org (someone already got .com), but I don’t expect the redirects to the  Stash to be active until Monday.

Today we wrap up Phelps Week with Steve Bloom from CelebStoner and me discussing the endorsement deals and comparisons to other CelebStoner athlete.  I also have another fantastic essay from Chris Goldstein, this one on George Obama and the racial injustice in America’s war on marijuana users.

Sigh.  I get to sleep in tomorrow morning…