Wise Ideas

Friday Short Takes

The hot teen trend is spending less at the mall.  The Obama Administration is stepping in to save us from evil credit card companies.  Unemployed high-powered dads are taking over PTAs in suburban New York.  And who among us HASN'T wanted to just kick the kids out of the car and drive off?

These are just some of the stories I got to read all the way through this week, as I spent some quality time in medical waiting offices.    So I thought I'd save you the time, link you to these gems, and provide a bit of pithy commentary because I don't Twitter and they haven't come up with a way to actually show people's thought bubbles, although isn't that basically what Twitter is -- the thought bubbles of the technologically-enabled?.

First - you can take the cash away from the teen, but you still can't take them out of the mall. The NYTimes reports that "spending by teenagers, a closely studied but rarely understood segment of the population, is off by 14 percent." This is having a "profound impact on mall culture," where teens are lining up at once-shunned deep discounters in search of the deal.

The Village Voice found the news heartening, because gay porn retailer - er, I mean Abecrombie & Fitch -  has lost its appeal among teens who no longer think it's cool to pay $30 for a T-shirt.  However, The Voice found fault with the Times' premise that teenagers are no longer brand-driven. "Kids might have less money now because their parents lost a bundle in the market, but they will always spend on trendy shit and never care about anyone but themselves," writes the Voice's Karen Benedikt. 

Second - Washington is finally taking on the credit card industry, which thinks that it's been transparent with consumers about its shady-and-bordering-on-illegal business practices just because it sends out "Changes to Your Credit Agreement" letters on a daily basis, which, if you look really close at the extra fine print, it's just the unabridged text of Moby Dick.

The President met yesterday with executives from major credit card companies to discuss their industry's roll in this recession, and what can be done to keep America from being crushed by its self-made mountain of credit debt.   The words "increased accountability" and "Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights" were bandied about.  Strangely, no one is proposing the solution provided by a simple pair of scissors.

Third - The Times reported this week on the recent influx of unemployed "Mr. Moms" into the world of the suburban mom, as evidenced by the testosterone increase in the pick-up, drop-off, and check-out lines, and at local PTAs meetings.  “I hope all these good guys who need good jobs find them,” Gina Fidele, a New Jersey PTA president tells The Times.  “But I also hope that maybe this taste of what it’s like to be more involved — not just taking the kids to school, but really helping to organize and direct the policies in the community."  Let's hope they constructively help all these mother-heavy PTA boards find solutions to real world problems....and not take-over for a few months only to be abandoned again when they find new jobs.

And finally - the now famous "Don't Make Me Stop This Car" case, which in some circles is being called the "Monster Mommy" case -- while in others it's the "I Can't Wait To Tell My Own Bickering Kids About This Story Because There's Got To Be A Lesson In There Somewhere" incident

Personally, I hope the Scarsdale lawyer/mom isn't prosecuted for her parenting tactic, which has provided us all food for thought as we swerve through traffic trying to break up the bickerfest in the back.  And while ditching the kids on a street in White Plains may not have been the smartest of moves - at least she had plenty of quiet time in jail overnight to think about it.

It's a hecka way to get away for a much-needed night alone, donchathink?

Have a good weekend.

Halting the Gravy Train

The gravy train may be nearing its final stop for a niche group of opportunistic mommy bloggers.

In what could be a ruling with wide ranging implications in the Internet world, the Federal Trade Commission is considering cracking down on bloggers and chatty people on social media sites like Facebook, who endorse or review products and/or services -- and get something in return from the people who offer those products or services.

"Consumer endorsements and testimonials have always been viewed as extremely effective types of marketing," FTC spokesperson Richard Cleland tells ABCNews.com.  "But the concern is about those instances when 'testimonials' area delivered and it's not made obvious that it's an advertisement for a company."  

As AdAge reports, "This could present a significant issue for marketers, including the likes of Microsoft, Ford and Pepsi, who spend billions on word-of-mouth and social media."

It also presents a significant issue for bloggers who happen to be moms, and who blog about all-things-mom including things moms buy.   Because as we all know, moms read a lot of blogs (85-percent of American moms say they read blogs), and moms are the most powerful consumer group on the planet.  And as The Wall Stree Journal's blog "The Juggle" points out, word-of-mouth is a very powerful tool among the mom community, with 80-percent of moms say they buy products at the recommendation of other moms.

Take for instance the case of "The Eleven," which I wrote about back in November.  "The Eleven were chosen and assembled by Wal-Mart stores, which paid for 11 Mommy bloggers to travel to the store's Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters in order to participate in a "Salon Secret" panel," which turned out to be Pantene hair products.   

And of course, those Mommies then went home and blogged about their adventure and began spreading the good word about Pantene and Wal-Mart to their countless readers - thus creating a viral buzz worth millions to P & G and Wal-Mart.  And although one member of The Eleven, Katja Presnal - who runs the Skimbaco.com online retail site and SkimbacoLifestyle blog - told AdAge at the time that she wasn't paid with money for her positive posts, one can't deny that these particular mommies are benefiting from their blogging - as indicative by the limited of offer of "free P&G sample products" offered on Prenals's blog.

In this new world order where bloggers could be held liable for products reviews, the FTC says a blogger who crosses the line from innocent product mentions to outright endorsements-for-profit could face a cease-and-desist order, or even be forced to reimburse readers who claim to have bought a product under false circumstances.  

Blogs held accountable?!  This will either

A)  result in a sudden rush by advertisers to find mommy bloggers to officially sponsor - and visa versa,

B)  open the food gates to federal regulation of all blogs (watch out all you Politicos!),

C)  force a whole lot of mommy bloggers to send personal checks to all sorts of people they never heard of who claim they were mis-led by a post on the Elmo Color Change Bath Tub Fun Toy, OR

D)  all of the above

Could this be the beginning of ethics in blogging?  Can the Internet, the Wild West of the 21st Century, actually be regulated? 

I'm not studied enough in this issue to venture a guess or an opinion on that.  But what I can tell you....is that Gatorade 12-ounce bottles which come in a handy six-pack, can keep your kids hydrated, healthy and happy all at the same time.

(did you get that - FTC?)

True Moms or Media Moms

Today in New York, NBC Universal is trotting out it's all-star (emphasis on the "star") panel of women for the first time, to help pitch its Oxygen and Bravo cable channels, as well as other NBCU properties, to potential advertisers.

The estrogen-rich panel includes NBC personalities Meredith Vieira of "Today" and CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, as well as marketers like Lisa Caputo, Citigroup's exec VP-global marketing and corporate affairs; and agency executives such as Starcom Entertainment's Laura Carracioli-Davis. As you can read in this AdAge article, NBCU is using its powerful panel to not only show how in-touch they are with "real" women, but also to promote its cross-platform approach to ad sales.

I first mentioned this panel in a post back in January called "Celebrity Women vs Real Moms: Who Do You Believe?"   I reported that the panel, which was created by a woman, "will be offering marketing and general business advice to NBC Universal and its clients on how to reach women."  Coincidentally that same week on AdAge.com, the founders of marketing research agency (and my blog host) MomWise advised that frank, informative and realistic discussions with focus groups and panels of AVERAGE women can help crack the powerful spending power of moms,and reveal "how businesses can tailor their products and marketing campaigns to address this valuable demographic's needs during this hideous recession."

The key words here are "average" and "real," adjectives that don't come to mind when talking about the host of the number one morning show on TV, and the woman known in financial circles as CNBC's "Money Honey."   It's not a stretch to assume these women, who are very talented and good at what they do, have not been losing sleep over paying the mortgage, worrying about how they're going to  take the kids to simultaneous events on opposite sides of town, or declare it "Cereal Night" because they didn't have the supplies, time or energy to get dinner on the table.   

My husband has a name for this kind of celebrity parenting:  "Hide The Nanny."

And Meredith, of all women and mothers, should know better.  Just yesterday, she interviewed the author and creator of True Mom Confessions -- in which real women disclose their deepest thoughts and feelings about the joys and pitfalls of parenting on tape, in a new book and on this website - often anonymously. 

Their revelations veer from sad to hilarious, pathetic to pithy.  And we've all been there.  Meredith's probably even been there  - although she's got a highly lucrative escape valve as well as a highly-paid support system that most of us can only dream of.

I'd venture to even guess that Meredith, who is on this panel at the behest of her bosses, knows that a 48-year old mother of three from Oregon, Minnesota or New Jersey should be the person sitting in her chair in New York today -- giving ad and marketing executives an honest version of "what women really want." 

But that would make too much sense.  It is TV afterall.

Boy Crazy (aka All The Young Dudes....)

Lately it seems that my 11-year old son and I are living on different planets.  Every time I ask him a question, even something as innocuous as "what do you want for breakfast," he goes into uber-defense mode, over-reacts and begins complaining bitterly about my treatment of him.  My reaction is often only a stunned "Whaaaa?  Huh?"  Then, more often than not, arguing occurs.  Ahhhhhh.....good times.

So imagine my interest in this week's front page NYTimes article about "the kid whisperer," a woman by the name of Kelly Pena who was given that nickname by executives at Disney who are paying her to tell them what boys want. 

According to the article, Ms. Pena earns her salary by digging through the drawers and rummaging through the rooms of pre-teen boys - and deciphering what it all means.  She then translates this into some kind of TV-talk that Disney can understand, in order to help them develop programs boys will actually watch.

Among the "psychological nuggets" Pena has provided:  "that boys identify with protagonists who try hard to grow. 'Winning isn’t nearly as important to boys as Hollywood thinks,'" she says.  She obviously hasn't met my son.

Disney says it needs this kind of anthropologic field work in order to crack the notoriously mysterious 6 to 14-year old boy market -- which accounts for $50 billion in spending worldwide according to researchers. And they are working harder to mine these riches because of Disney's new XD cable channel and website, which are competing against Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network for the hearts and minds of all those boy$.

Meantime, instead of using a "kid whisperer," the competition is using a different filter to figure out what boys want.  "We're looking at content through the lens of making it for that 13- or 14-year-old boy who asks, 'What would my older brother be watching?'" Stuart Snyder of Cartoon Network tells USA Today.  Snyder thinks Cartoon Network's take on boy programming is grittier than Disney's.  It's also more....well...cartoon-ier.

However, what the people at all these kid-centric channels are NOT talking about, is how many boys have abandoned their channels altogether....tuning instead to the offerings on Discovery (Deadliest Catch, Survivor Man) and The History Channel, the old-school networks, (American Idol, Two and a Half Men, Survivor, The Amazing Race), and increasingly, YouTube. 

What do boys want?  What does my 11-year old son want?  I don't need a kid whisperer (who incidentally does not even have kids) to tell me.

Because the fact is that even HE doesn't know what he wants.  And if he did, I guarantee he wouldn't be confiding in some strange lady who's rifling through his stuff. 

Twitter Rage

When a pack of angry, Twittering moms was able to get the makers of Motrin to see the error in their advertising ways last fall -- companies should have noted the potential power - both positive and negative - of the new, cool media tool in town.

That's why it's fascinating that Amazon.com, a company whose success is greatly based on the social media trend, is the latest to get burned by a Twitter firestorm.

As The NYTimes reports, "in response to nearly two days of angry online commentary, particularly on Twitter, Amazon.com said on Monday that 'an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error' had caused thousands of books on its site to lose their sales rankings and become harder to find in searches."  The incident involved primarily books with gay or lesbian themes.  Amazon's slow and limited early response over the weekend, blaming "a glitch in our system," fueled the Twitter fire even further, creating cries of discrimination and cover-up.

But the damage was already done.  And the PR, marketing and advertising whizzes, like B.L. Ochman in AdAge, and like the millions in these industries who are always the first on the chopping block when recessions hit, are saying "I told you so."  

Let's back up to last November.

The story of millions of Twittering moms, who were angry about a condescending Motrin ad and were able to annoy Johnson & Johnson with enough "tweets" to convince the company to pull the ad and issue an apology, went virtually unnoticed by the mainstream media, which was rightfully busy at the time with the election of the first African-American President. 

However, the so-called Motrin moms were a huge hit in the blogosphere and among the Twitter crowd itself.  And the incident did NOT escape the attention of the advertising and marketing worlds, which have been debating how to best wrangle the Twitter beast ever since. 

Is a Twitter rage something companies should be worrying about and preparing for?  As one AdAge reader puts it, it's "the social media crowd that keeps crowing about Motrin. Motrin sales weren't hurt. It was a tempest in a teapot in an echo chamber."  As an article (subscription only) in AdAge after the Motrin incident pointed out, the Twitter rage existed only among a small sub-set (moms with Twitter) who were part of yet another small sub-set (moms who blog or who read blogs).  The rest of us, frankly, couldn't give a damn. 

Truth be told, the Amazon Twitter incident is a whole lotta nothing as well, and will blow over quickly with no financial damage done. 

However, Twitterers will be tweeting about it for some time to come.  And that's the point.  The very thing that makes Twitter so successful among its users - it's randomness - is what also makes it so dangerous.  

What might set off the Twitter crowd next is anyone's guess.  There are a lot of people out there with a lot of time on their hands, and as the old saying goes, "idle hands are the devil's playground."  And although companies can't really prepare for a random Twitter attack - they also can't afford to ignore a crowd of thumbs when it strikes.  But in this round-the-clock Internet environment, companies also can't afford to babysit their brands 24/7.  

Unless, of course, they fight fire with fire and "hire" a Twitter team of their own........

iLuv My iPhone

I've gone over to the dark side. 

That's what one of my friends calls it when someone chucks their old-school cell phone and moves into the world of smart phones.  However, my dark side is brightened by the fact that it's not inhabited by Crackberries, but rather by the imminently cooler iPhone.  And in iPhone-Land, it's not about the email, web browsing or the texting.  It's all about the apps.

First, let's talk demographics.  When the iPhone first came out a little less than two years ago - the people most likely to lust after it were men.  To be more specific, affluent men aged 18 to 34.  (This was pre-recession, remember....). In fact, many a man was literally frenzied over being the first of his kind to own an iPhone, as this 2007 Time Magazine article illustrates.  

Fast forward two years, and you'll find that women are increasingly drawn to the sleek design and intuitive platform that makes iPhone so fun to use.  Although no specific gender data is available, Internet traffic researcher Quantcast reports that as of last month -- nearly as many women as men visited buyiphone.apple.com, and that the vast majority of those interested in the iPhone have kids in the house, many of them teenagers.

With Apple reaching a saturation point for iPod and iTunes usage by teens according to Piper Jaffray's 17th semi-annual teen survey ("86 percent of students who own an MP3 player indicated that they own an iPod") - Apple is going to turn its laser vision on turning the iPhone into the next must-have device for the sullen set.  As AppleInsider reports, the cost of the iPhone's AT&T plan has prevented many parents from investing in an iPhone for their teenager.  But Apple is expected "to address this issue in the coming months, with a family of iPhone models including a high end model with current plan pricing and possibly a low-end model with fewer features and lower-cost monthly data plans."

Then it's "Catie bar the door!"  Once the kids get an iPhone -- you KNOW that mom is right behind. 

Which brings us to the app explosion (see "Apple's Apps Store Nears One Billion Served" in NYTimes), which you are seeing now in commercials and which are seemingly aimed primarily at men and boys ("Top Ten iPhone Apps" in Wired). 

However, when the average iPhone user starts looking more like me and my kids - you will start seeing the apps change as well.  Less iShoots and Tap Tap Revenges, and more useful things like nutrition guides, calorie counters, grocery price comparisons and weather forecasts.  In fact, according to MediaPost's Online News Daily, it may already be happening.  

Women, and specifically women who are moms with kids in the house, remain the most powerful consumer group on the planet.  As a new iPhone user and a member of this power elite -- I'm curious what Apple and all its App-lets will create to keep iHappy. 

Aging Up

Since the last time we "spoke," I've aged up to the feared, dreaded 50.  The good thing is if I should ever lose my mind and miraculously gain some serious "me" time to train and compete in a triathalon, I would be at the bottom of my age group and could probably kick some 54-year old a--. 

The bad thing is.....obvious.

And even though there's a whole magazine devoted to women-of-a-certain-age who are allegedly celebrating their mature lives -- it's not called "Fabulous" or "Wonderful."  It's called More.   More of what?  Wrinkles?  Menopause symptoms?  Fat around the waist?  Mood swings?  Frankly, at this point, I'd be a lot happier with less - not more!

"It's just a number" is what I keep hearing from people who are predominantly under the age of 45 and haven't thought much about the implications of the big Five-0.  "You don't look a day over 40" is the other common reaction.  I never thought I'd ever be 40, much less 50.  

However, according to the hot website RealAge.com (as seen on Oprah, O Magazine, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Good Night Afghanistan and every other media outlet on the planet), I could start "Living Life to the Youngest" by taking a 15-minute questionnaire to find out my "biological" age versus my "calendar" age.

So, I grabbed a box of white cheddar Cheese Nips (no kidding) and proceeded to answer a number of health and lifestyle questions about my diet, my exercise routine, my sitting heart rate, my driving habits, my immediate family's medical history, and what's in my daily vitamin supplements. (lots of calcium it turns out, no folic acid or potassium). 

Voila!  After only some minor lying  - (Did I ever smoke?  I said "no" because there wasn't a box to check which said "only in bars in college during "Happy Hours," which covered opening to closing time) - my Real Age was emailed to me.

Amazingly - I lost 6.2 years during the survey and am really only 43.8 years old! 

And what does RealAge.com get in return for turning my clock back 6.2 years?  It turns out it gets money from big drug companies, which is paying RealAge for access to the 27 million or so people who've taken the RealAge test.  "Pharmaceutical companies pay RealAge to compile test results of RealAge members and send them marketing messages by e-mail," reports The NYTimes.  "The drug companies can even use RealAge answers to find people who show symptoms of a disease — and begin sending them messages about it even before the people have received a diagnosis from their doctors."

This news has consumer advocacy groups like Public Citizen debating the legality of this business model, raised privacy concerns, and created a lot of buzz in the marketing, advertising and Internet  worlds about how to clone the RealAge juggernaut in other niches to actually make money off of websites. 

But one of the most interesting reactions to the RealAge phenomenom comes from a blogger on SeattleSt.com, who rhetorically asks "Who owns RealAge.com?  Hearst Magazines, that's who. They bought the site for $60 to $70 million in 2007. And, yeah, they also own O, the Oprah Magazine." 

And yes - it's the same Hearst Media Corporation which recently gave up on the print edition of the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper, and continues to threaten the existence of the SF Chronicle newspaper -- because they allegedly can't find a profitable newspaper/website business model to compete with the Internet? 

Does it really take a 43.8 year old woman to see through Hearst's spin? 

Wisdom must come with age.  Either that, or you just develop some incredibly sensitive BS-radar. 

The Less 'Poo Movement

For six days, I gently nagged my son to "please wash your hair, and USE shampoo."  On the seventh day, my husband overheard and announced to my family that "shampooing daily is a media-driven habit and scientifically unnecessary" - thus destroying any chance I might have had to get my son into the shower to turn his now straw-like mangy locks into something resembling hair.

Damn you, NPR.  My husband had just heard Morning Edition's recent report that "when it comes to shampoo, less is more," crediting the "current trend of frequent shampooing" to a 1908 New York Times column "advising women that it was OK to wash their hair every two weeks." 

The report goes on to also blame/credit Proctor & Gamble and all its competitors with driving women to shampoo more often so their hair would look like Christie Brinkley's and Farah Fawcett's.  ""All you have to do is watch her running in slow motion on a beach with her hair flopping gracefully in the wind," Steve Meltzer, a former ad executive, tells NPR - and you'd be shampooing with that brand by nightfall.

My mom, who had long, thick, beautiful hair (that I was not genetically blessed with) - shampooed two, maybe three times a week.  My mother-in-law, also a post-WWII woman, is on the same shampooing schedule.  They unknowingly were following the advice of scientists and dermatologists, who say that washing hair frequently strips it of the natural oils it needs and actually damages it.

Whether recession-driven or ecologically-driven (less water, less plastic, less stuff washed down the drain), there is a movement afoot to shampoo less.  As you can tell by this lengthy discussion on The Consumerist blog, there are people who are firmly in the "there's a reason they call them dirty, filthy hippies" camp, and those who are more open-minded and have seen a positive difference in their hair health after reducing their shampooing habit. 

I'm pretty sure P&G is well aware of this growing trend, and if it's smart it's working on dry shampoos or shampoo bars to counter-act it. 

As for my kids - who are swimmers and therefore shower daily - I'm backing off the daily shampoo nagging....at least until they bring home next lice alert from school. And that's a whole other story.

Newspaper Death Watch

It's sad to sit back and watch the death of the American newspaper.  It's been happening for quite some time, as evidenced by the Newspaper Death Watch blog that was created back in 2007, so it's not a shock.  But the speed in which the industry is dying now is nearly as fast as the broadband Internet lines that are killing it.

Even I - a loyal reader of actual printed newspapers - am now wishing someone would hurry up and put my local paper, the SF Chronicle, out of its misery.  Picking it up off my doorstep this morning, The Chronicle is nothing but a shell of its former self.  The 144-year old paper used to be a vibrant chronicler of not only San Francisco, but the greater Bay Area as well.  Today, its local section barely has four pages of news -- and is combined with the Business Section which you read backwards from the back - which somehow was a cost-cutting measure but looks more like a printing-press mistake.

The death of the newspaper industry, as discussed in detail here on NPR's Talk of the Nation this week, is more than just another business failure.  It's a social and cultural sea-change that will impact our communities in ways expected and unexpected.  As USA Today reports, "Sometime soon, millions of people may find themselves unwittingly involved in a test that could profoundly change their daily routines, local economies and civic lives.  They'll have to figure out how to keep up with City Hall, their neighborhoods and their kids' schools — as well as store openings, new products and sales — without a 170-year-old staple of daily life: a local newspaper."

(We all used to laugh at USA Today - "McNews" as we derisively called it.  Now, it might be one of the few daily newspapers to survive.)

Hundred-year old papers like the Seattle PI and the Rocky Mountain News -- the latest victims -- and hundreds of other city and town dailies throughout this country are not just pages filled with journalism,  They also serve as touchstones for communities, bringing  diverse populations together through non-fictional story-telling.  Now we know what town criers felt like when the printing press made them obsolete.

The journalists who once worked at the dead dailies are migrating online.  Many of them, like those from the Rocky Mountain News, are bound and determined to find the business model that eluded their bosses and publishers, and which they hope will resurrect and redefine print journalism --- which has always been more a calling and skill, than a job.

I wish them luck. 

All Apologies

The Michael Phelps Bong Atonement Tour made a stop at The Today Show this morning, where Matt Lauer, as expected by  The Baltimore Sun, lobbed The Human Dolphin some soft balls.  Lauer asked Phelps if he was smoking pot, Phelps never answered the question directly, Lauer never followed up.  

"It was a bad mistake," Phelps told Lauer -- using more "you knows" per second than Caroline Kennedy. "I mean, we all know what, you know, what you and I are talking about.  It's a stupid mistake.  You know, bad judgment.  And it's something that, you know, I have to, and I want to teach other people not to make that mistake."  

Sound familiar?  It's what we all said to our parents when we were caught in a similar position at his age.

Except this kid has a couple of million dollars riding on his performance and behavior.  And although Phelps told Lauer "it's not about the money," and that he's more upset about disappointing family, friends and fans - he's still being advised to appear on TV's top rated morning show to apologize for something we've long since forgiven OR forgotten about -- if we cared that much in the first place.

Advertising Age is reporting this week that corporations are steering clear of young celebs precisely because they tend to get into trouble and tarnish their image (along with that of the corporation).  But AdAge lumps the Phelps pot smoking incident in with the alleged girlfriend-beating case of hip hopper Chris Brown.  "The rise in botched endorsement deals with the likes of Michael Phelps and Chris Brown has marketers rethinking recruiting young, megawatt stars as brand ambassadors, celeb watchers said today at a gathering of top advertisers," the online edition of the magazine reports.  

Phelps lost his multi-million Kellogg's endorsement -- while Brown, who actually faces felony criminal charges, only seems to have suffered the voluntary "withdrawal" of his nomination from Nickelodeon's upcoming Kids Choice Awards. 

I'm sorry, but the Phelps thing is soooooooo not in the same league as pummeling a woman's face to a pulp.

And while I'm ranting, why is it that the A-Rod-on-steroids revelation and admission -- when he actually admitted cheating at his sport -- has gotten far less fan outrage than Phelps toking up during his off-season with a drug that definitely doesn't enhance anyone's athletic ability.  What's the deal, there?

The best thing to come out of the Phelps incident wasn't a teach-able moment for your kids or yet another Today Show "exclusive," but rather what happened at a San Francisco Food Bank recently.

Inexplicably, two tons of Kellogg's  Frosted Flakes and Corn Flakes with Michael Phelps on the front, were mysteriously donated to the facility --- which, as you can imagine, is in desperate need of donations. Kellogg's wouldn't own up to the donation, as The SFChronicle reports.  But food bank officials say its a logical conclusion that's where the cereal came from, especially since for the past 8 years, cereal has been "a very tough item to get" for human service agencies.

And no one seems to care if Michael Phelps is on the front of the box - or what he got caught doing in his own free time.  As SF Food Bank executive director Paul Ashe says, "the boxes have kind of flown off the shelves." 

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Kellogg's.