Observant viewers of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” may have noticed that the Comedy Central program has a new advertiser. No, not a video game or even a new flavor of Bud Light: a family-owned outfit out of Kansas is buying ad time during the influential comedy-news program. That company: Koch Industries.
You may have heard of Koch Industries when they were nominated for the initial rounds of the 2014 Worst Company in America tournament, defeating student-loan megalith Sallie Mae, but ultimately losing in the second round to Time Warner Cable. Or you may have heard of them because of the generous political donations that the brothers who control the company have given in recent years. Their political activities are very controversial, for reasons that are outside the scope of this blog post.
It’s clear that Koch Industries wants to present itself as a cuddly, ethnically diverse company that wants to make Americans’ lives better. Yet they also don’t really offer any consumer-facing products, with the exception of some disposable paper items that their Georgia-Pacific division sells. Why advertise directly to consumers? Jon Stewart knows.
“Clearly the Koch brothers are trying to say to our audience of not-yet-dying-off voters, ‘even though you’ve heard certain things about the Koch brothers, how bad could they be? If they were evil, would a baby agree to appear in their advertisements?'” he pointed out in a segment intended to welcome the new advertiser to the Daily Show family.
Democalypse 2014 – South by South Mess: Ad of Brothers [Comedy Central]
“Wow, that’s the kind of ad that a company usually makes when it turns out a byproduct of their manufacturing process is giving young pubescent males talking nipples,” Stewart observed.
This clip raises many questions. Will Koch Industries fire back? Will they keep running their ad, even though it’s sure to give many regular viewers giggle fits now? Did Comedy Central and its corporate parent Viacom know ahead of time that one of its most popular programs was about to bite one of the many hands that fund it?
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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