[Stoney]

ESPN Drops Ad Campaign Because of Horrible Casting Call Stereotypes

Posted Nov 14th 2008 12:32PM by Shane Bacon (author feed)
Filed under: NCAA Basketball Media Watch
Even the always polished ESPN has the ability to take things one step too far.

The network has dropped an ad campaign for college basketball because of a memo that was leaked from Anomaly, a company that has produced ESPN commercials in the past, with some pretty harsh requests for certain roles to be filled by actors.

A leaked memo from Anomaly, a New York agency that has produced past ESPN ads, described a casting call for actors in which it sought someone to portray a Tennessee student as "a slutty girl who would hang out at the cowgirl hall of fame" and a Notre Dame student who is "an Asian kid ... who's always fighting."
The concept of the ad was to have students working at an ESPN call center, representing their schools as they phoned people to try to get them to watch ESPN college basketball coverage.

While most people around the sports blogging world look at ESPN like the mass bully they sometimes are, few can complain about their commercials. That said, this seems a little extreme, even if the fault doesn't land on the sports network. Obviously you don't want to pick a company that would actually send out casting calls to stereotype people as "slutty" and "Asian." This isn't a fraternity mixer we're talking about.

The campaign was killed as soon as the memo leaked. "Our marketing department just learned of this casting call today," said ESPN's Mike Soltys. "The language and approach reflected in that document were not approved by us and in no way represent ESPN or the respect we have for the college community."

I understand that you need diversity in these commercials, but haven't any of these people met actors before? They are as diverse as college, especially the younger crowd. Blacks, whites, sluts, virgins -- actors come in all shapes and sizes.

The memo with the stereotypes the commercials were searching for was first leaked on Awful Announcing and some of the requests are actually pretty ridiculous (while some are absolutely hilarious).

Our guy for Duke UNIVERSITY is a smart, with it, young WHITE male...(Our guy from the University of Texas is) straight out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, Texas is a young man's man. He is the kind of guy that could field dress a deer and then take you to the debutante ball in 20...Syracuse would need a "Jewish kid" who loves college - all you can eat buffets in the cafeteria, who knew?...(Purdue is a male) Child prodigy. 14-year-old. Or open to an 18-year-old who looks 14. Aeronautical engineering. Wiz kid. Think McLovin from Superbad.

I'm assuming ESPN will not be using Anomaly for a very long time.