Levi Johnston, one of the nation’s best known baby daddies, is getting into the nut business. In a new series of commercials for pistachios, Johnston wears a green Alaska t-shirt and strolls up to the camera flanked by a bouncer. “Now Levi Johnston does it with protection,” the announcer quips, as Johnston pops a green one in his mouth. Cute line, but was Johnston really the biggest celebrity they could get? Oh wait, there’s former Miss Teen South Carolina too.
The commercial’s maker is none other than Roll International, the parent company of Fiji Water. Fiji Water, you may recall, was the subject of a recent Mother Jones expose showing that, among other things, the water is bottled under a military dictatorship, and its bottles use twice as much plastic as competitors’. Roll seems to be trying to make pistachios sexy, both by using Johnston and by a video contest asking viewers how they “do it” (and by “do it” they mean crack open pistachio nuts). But like the Fiji Water Twitter strategy, Roll’s TV approach is flawed. So they want to be sexy? Fine. But keep the kids out of it, would you? Throughout the contest promo there’s porny music in the background. One shot catches a young woman from above, rolling on the floor as she puts a nut in her mouth. “Do you do it on the floor?” the narrator asks. A few seconds later, there’s a shot of young kids hanging out while the narrator asks “Do you do it in a tree?” I’m not saying it’s pedophilia or anything, it just seems a little odd and inconsistent. Videos are below, judge for yourself.
