Latest JFF Bowl Wrinkle: It Won't Pay

Brandweek, Feb 15, 1999 by Terry Lefton

The ruckus raised by Just For Feet's inaugural Super Bowl ad, often panned as racist, may not be entirely over: chairman Harold Ruttenberg now says JFF's not forking over the $1.6 million it was to pay Fox TV for the spot because it aired in the fourth quarter not the third.

"We spent a million and a hail marketing the ad [not counting production costs, air time], telling people it was going to be in the third quarter," he said last week at the Super Show in Atlanta. "It's in the hands of the attorneys now ... We are not paying."

Saatchi & Saatchi's Rochester, N.Y., office, normally a business-to-business shop, crafted a spot showing a barefoot black Kenyan runner drugged by white men who then shod him in new sneakers (Brandweek, Sept. 28 and Jan. 11). Despite the outcry, Ruttenberg views the Bowl marketing effort as a success.

"Lots of people said they didn't get it, but Just For Feet was a lot better known the week after the Super Bow] than it was the week before," he said. But the perceived racist connotations, "weren't intended. We had an advertising agency that didn't do their job properly."

Regarding Ruttenberg's grievance, a Fox rep said, "In live TV it is difficult to guarantee when the commercial will run." He said some Bowl ad contracts promise specific air times and others merely a best effort, but wouldn't say which category JFF fails into.

And Saatchi Rochester's current standing on the $25 million account? "I don't think it's fair to comment at this stage," said Ruttenberg, normally not at a loss for words. "But it was absolutely a trial relationship."