Heeb & The Neo-Shlock Marketing Revolution
The NY Times reports,
When it was introduced in 2002, [Heeb] magazine, particularly its name playing on an anti-Semitic slur, drew headlines and the ire of the Anti-Defamation League. “When we started, we didn’t have advertisers and literally couldn’t give ads away, because people were freaked out by the name,” Mr. Neuman said.
So Heeb started running parody ads. Unbeknownst to Streit’s, the 82-year-old kosher foods company on Rivington Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Heeb published a full-page parody of Streit’s in late 2003.
“We were just goofing off,” Mr. Neuman said. But then, Streit’s got so much positive response from the ad that the company paid to run it in the next issue, and has been paying for ads ever since.
Since then, Heeb has served as what Mr. Neuman called a “quasi ad agency.”
It’ll be great when they start publishing a “quasi magazine” too.
Heeb is fairly entertaining, and anyone — like the ADL — who takes offense needs to lighten up. We need people to criticize anti-Semitism when it actually occurs — otherwise the ADL seems like it is crying wolf, and people will pay less attention when it does point out valid instances of anti-Semitism.