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This post is part of a series on celebrity spokespeople who ended up doing serious harm to the brands they were hired to promote, or vice versa. See how we rank the 20 top spokesperson fiascos.

The cliché of the pencil-thin model is made corporeal in the body of supermodel Kate Moss, the waif that launched a thousand brands. Among those brands tying their fortune to her size 0 sails were H&M (STO:HMB), Burberry (LON:BRBY) and Chanel.

Unfortunately, they made the same mistake many baseball owners did -- failing to ask just how their star could maintain such a remarkable body. The answer for Moss, apparently, was toot. When she was photographed in 2005 by London's Daily Mail using cocaine at a Babyshambles recording session, the fashion industry recoiled in faux revulsion.

Leading the retreat were the brands to whom she had lent her good name, the same H&M, Burberry and Chanel. Each invoked the morals clause to terminate her contract, making that a multi-million dollar line of coke.

So that was the end of Moss, right? Think again. In the fashion world, morals transgressions are so, like, yesterday. Within a year, Moss had signed new contracts with Calvin Klein and other top fashions brands. Brendan Behan, who said there is no such thing as bad publicity (except your own obituary) knew what he was talking about, at least in the fashion world.

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This post is part of a series on celebrity spokespeople who ended up doing serious harm to the brands they were hired to promote, or vice versa. See how we rank the 20 top spokesperson fiascos.

By guest blogger Mike Brewster:

Former women's number one Martina Hingis hung up her tennis shoes for good last year after testing positive for cocaine in a post-match drug test -- within the hallowed confines of the All England Club Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (that's Wimbledon to you and me, pal), no less.

At one point Hingis' career was on a Chris Evert/Martina Navratilova-type trajectory, but got derailed by a slew of injuries that started in the late 1990s. The main culprit was a chronic foot problem she always maintained was caused by defective sneakers from her Italian sports apparel sponsor, Sergio Tacchini.

In 2001, Hingis filed a $40 million lawsuit against the company, claiming that the sneakers, which she wore from 1996 through 1999 as part of a $5.6 million endorsement deal, "were unsuitable for competition." Sergio Tacchini fired Hingis that same year as its main celebrity endorser.

Even though the Manhattan Supreme Court dismissed the suit in November 2002, the company never really recovered. The brand that once clothed John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors and Pete Sampras filed for bankruptcy last year, and just last month its remaining assets were purchased by Hong Kong businessman Billy Ngok. And as we all know, these days nothing says "quality athletic shoes" like Chinese manufacturing.

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Before Michael Vick, quarterbacks were (mostly) tall, slow white men who passed the football, handed it off or got creamed by pass rushers. Vick changed the game by combining the strength, speed and agility of a running back with the arm and savvy of a quarterback. With it, he turned the traditional also-ran Atlanta Falcons into a contender. How could any company in the sporting goods field not sign such a sure-fire hall-of-famer as a spokesperson?

And sign him they did. Nike (NYSE:NKE) created a "Michael Vick Experience" ad campaign. He appeared on the cover of the 2004 version of Electronic Arts' (NASDAQ:ERTS) Madden football. The sponsor money rolled in, and when the Falcons signed Vick to a 10-year, $130 million contract, he had reached the pinnacle of sports success.

Then came the expose. News reports tying Vick to a dog fighting ring, then naming him as the pivotal figure in a horrendous gang who raised killer dogs in a kennel on Vick's property and buried the losers nearby. By the time Vick was taken into custody, his brand was so fouled that companies couldn't back away from him fast enough. The only sales of equipment with his name on it was to dog owners who used them as chew toys.

In a fiasco, everyone involved suffers. I just wish the everybody here hadn't included innocent dogs.

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This post is part of a series on celebrity spokespeople who ended up doing serious harm to the brands they were hired to promote, or vice versa. See how we rank the 20 top spokesperson fiascos.

Basketball star Kobe Bryant may be this generation's Michael Jordon, a combination of lightning-quick moves, shooting touch and court savvy unmatched by any backcourt player in the world. As leader of the Los Angeles Lakers, he has become a fixture on the scoring leader stats sheet and the All-star roster.

Raised in Italy while his American father Joe "Jellybean" Bryant played basketball there, Bryant was a polished and appealing personality when he entered the NBA straight out of high school. His popularity quickly translated into lucrative endorsement contracts with Nike (NYSE:NKE), Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) and McDonald's (NYSE:MCD).

Therefore, the sports world was stunned when a Colorado hotel maid accused the married Bryant of sexually assaulting her. The resulting tawdry court case made Bryant the laughingstock of the league's fandom. Although the case was eventually settled out of court with Bryant's public apology, the damage had been done. McDonald's declined to renew its agreement with Bryant, having had one unhappy meal too many.

Since then, Bryant has mended his marriage, grown in his career (MVP in 2008), and regained endorsement contracts. I doubt, though, that you'll ever seen Kobe and Ronald McDonald share the court again.

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In the buildup to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was the prohibitive favorite to win gold in the 100-meter sprint, having set a world record the year before at the World Championships. Many companies vied to tie their name to his speedy frame, and his coach estimated that Johnson was bringing in a cool $480,000 a month in endorsement money from companies such as the Italian family-owned sports company Diadora.

Once the Olympics began that September, the sponsors must have been high-fiving one another as Johnson, on the biggest stage in sports, broke his own 100-meter record by running a 9.79, which won him the gold medal.

He should have kept running, right out of the stadium and to a safe hiding place. Test of his urine found evidence that Johnson had been using steroids. He was stripped of his medal, his time was disallowed, and after further investigation, his 1987 world record was also invalidated. Diadora pulled its $2 million contract, and other sponsors followed suit. Johnson ended up living in his mother's basement, and Diadora probably made a bonfire of its Ben Johnson campaign.

The aftermath of this scandal is felt even today, as baseball and cycling struggle to overcome the same pollution of competition and incredulity of their fans. There's not a company in the world that yearns to cultivate the brand 'cheater'.

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This post is part of a series on celebrity spokespeople who ended up doing serious harm to the brands they were hired to promote, or vice versa. See how we rank the 20 top spokesperson fiascos.

In a confrontation between bombast and street cred, Fox mouth Bill O'Reilly managed to rip the Pepsi (NYSE:PEP) bottle from rapper Ludacris's live, warm fingers. In August of 2002, O'Reilly, upset with the musician's street language and what he perceived as glorification of crime and misogyny, called for a boycott of Pepsi. At the time, Ludacris was a featured representative of Pepsi, no doubt part of the companies attempt to reach out to the 18-34 demographic.

After the company dumped Ludacris in response to the boycott, Pepsi immediately stepped back into a pile of controversy by signing the rock and brain-damage icon Ozzy Osbourne, he of bat-head biting-off fame. (Nothing goes better with bat than an ice-cold Pepsi.)

O'Reilly's diatribe helped call attention to the brutality of Lucacris's lyrics, not atypical for the genre but fear-inspiring to the Fox nation. For example:

"Hollow laid hollow sprayed I'm the hollow man
I get to my hollow point wit my hollow plan
Hollow bullets I pull it I'm about to live in vain
And then I drill em refill em make sure they feel the pain"

(BTW- Is this a shout-out to T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men?)

While the controversy cost Ludacris his Pepsi deal, O'Reilly was to swallow his tongue for a second time two years later when the rapper was signed by Anheuser-Busch (NYSE:BUD).

I don't see Bill O'Reilly pulling in big endorsement contracts these days. So who's your daddy now, Bill?

Read the entire series

This post is part of a series on celebrity spokespeople who ended up doing serious harm to the brands they were hired to promote, or vice versa. See how we rank the 20 top spokesperson fiascos.

Hip-hop/R&B artist Akon is the only person to have twice held both the first and second spots on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously. Winner of a Grammy for his hit "Smack That", he has expanded his repertoire to include producing music and founding his own music production and distribution companies. Such a popular entertainer and entrepreneur would obviously be attractive to a company such as Verizon (NSYE:VZ), looking to hook into the cell-addicted young American.

Akon brought strong ties to the world market, too. Born in Senegal, and raised in New Jersey, a Muslim rumored to have wed multiple women, his exotic background added to his appeal.

Unfortunately, for Verizon, his background failed to properly prepare him to control his on-stage antics or properly estimate the age of his audience. In April of 2007, during a set in Trinidad and Tobago, Akon invited a young lady onto the stage to join him in a simulated sex routine. Unfortunately, the lady proved to be the 15-year-old daughter of a minister. Even more unfortunately, for Akon and Verizon, Akon's film crew recorded the incident and uploaded it to the web, where it drew great public censure. Shortly thereafter, Verizon pulled its sponsorship of Akon's Sweet Escape tour and quit offering his music as ring tones.

Akon's song "Sorry, Blame it On Me," is an apology to the young lady at the center of the scandal. Verizon is still waiting for its song of apology.

Read the entire series

This post is part of a series on celebrity spokespeople who ended up doing serious harm to the brands they were hired to promote, or vice versa. See how we rank the 20 top spokesperson fiascos.

In 1987, Anheuser-Busch (NYSE:BUD) was featuring renown musicians such as Stevie Winwood and Phil Collins in a "The Night Belongs to Michelob" ad campaign. I'm sure the ad hacks in charge thought they'd had a stroke of genius when they conceived of using Eric "Slowhand" Clapton, performing his hit "After Midnight", as part of the series. 1 a.m., guitar god, and Michelob; seems like a natural, right?

I can't help but think that someone should have checked on Clapton's habits before launching the ad. Having fought well-publicized heroin addiction and a taste for cocaine, Clapton revealed to Rolling Stone that at the time of the ad's release he was in a detox facility. Battling alcoholism. His nights belonged to imaginary snakes rather than dirty-dancing runway models.

My suggestion? I'd steer clear of junkies as spokespersons, unless I was selling needles, smack or size 0 dresses. The image of spokespeople puking their guts out doesn't make me yearn for a beer.

Read the entire series

This post is part of a series on celebrity spokespeople who ended up doing serious harm to the brands they were hired to promote, or vice versa. See how we rank the 20 top spokesperson fiascos.

Companies wishing to appeal to sensory-overloaded customers sometimes have to swallow hard and sign edgy spokespersons (I'm looking at you, Pepsi). But what could go wrong for UNICEF Belgium, the local arm of the United Nations Children's Fund, in adopting the beloved Smurfs as its spokescreatures?

Plenty, it turns out, when the Fund decided to use the Smurfs to shake people out of their complacency about the plight of the soldier children of Africa. To this end, they created an ad that ran (briefly) on Belgian television, showing the air-bombing and destruction of a smurf village, including the collateral blue damage. The tiny azure baby wailing amidst bomb craters and smurf corpses was an especially compelling touch.

Apparently, when the ad ran on Belgian television during the evening news, it left the audience in smurfy shock. According to a UNICEF Belgium spokesman, controversy was its goal, but the chief reaction to the snufftoon seems to have come from an amazingly large populace of smurf-haters, who have plastered the video across the Internet. The moral? When you adopt a warm fuzzy spokesthingy, injure it at your own peril.

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A private equity group unfamiliar to the stock market world claims to have made a bid to acquire struggling donut maker Krispy Kreme (NYSE:KKD). According to The Winston-Salem Journal, MGL Asset Management Group has offered $7.25 a share for the company, a premium of almost $2 a share over its closing price Monday.

The mystery surrounding MGL, its assets, ownership and ambitions have caused some to meet the proposal with skepticism. The company provides almost no information on its web site, and its spokesperson told the Journal that the bid was legit, but declined to elaborate.

The skepticism about this offer seems to stem from the wisdom and timing of such an acquisition. Although KKD just reported its first profitable quarter in over three years, overall, since selling in the $50 range before the carb craze, it has waffled ever since below the $10 mark, bottoming out at $2.50 a share just last November.

At a shareholder meeting recently, the CEO of Krispy Kreme reiterated the company's plans to build international business and increase the range of snack foods sold in convenience stores. Neither option, in my opinion, is likely to have a strong impact on the company's bottom line in the near future, if at all. One profitable quarter after three and a half years of losses in a company with a tired brand doesn't whet my appetite.

I wonder what drives MGL's interest? Perhaps they're looking at the hole picture, with a glazed look in their eyes.

Burger King (Burger King Holdings, NYSE:BRC) has made good headway recently by constructing sandwiches large enough to bring down a New York crane and marketing tied to video games and hot movies. Therefore, it would have been the last company I would expect to unveil a $190 hamburger.

Actually, the burgers aren't widely available, yet- only in one location, in West London, and only once a week, by reservation. I suppose the burger, Wagyu beef piled high with white truffles, Pata Negra ham, white wine/shallot mayo, Himalayan rock salt and a soupçon of Iranian saffron. The combo includes Cristal champagne onion straws, a limited edition bottle of Coke, and Cabernet Shiraz wine from Australia .

Emma Hall, who reported on the experience for Ad Age, found the meat 'not perfect', due to the health code's requirement that it be cooked to 165 degrees, but liked the mayo, ham and truffles. Other diners she interviewed were pleased, but mostly not $190 worth of pleased. Personally, for $190 I'd expect the King to detail my car while I ate.

This mother of all burgers was created as a PR stunt to help recast the BK brand as a higher-quality product, with proceeds benefiting a local charity. The company plans to expand the limited-time program to Spain and Germany. For now, I'll have to drown my longing in a Whopper, sans truffles, sans saffron, and Cristal-free fries.

File this under Only in America; the recently-passed national transportation bill includes $42 million to fund further research on a proposed Anaheim to Las Vegas (Disneyland to Casinoland) magnetic levitation high-speed rail system, designed to whisk the entertainment-starved between the two spots at speeds up to 310 mph. I can just see parents loading the kids on the Maglev and shipping them off to Disneyland (Walt Disney, NYSE:DIS) while Mom and Dad hit the craps tables in Sin City.

This funding, of course, is only a drop in the enormous bucket of this cutting-edge technology. The final cost to construct the system is currently estimated at $12 billion. Imagine the ticket prices- even more than entry to Disneyland, including refreshments!

The technology, which has been under study for more than 20 years, has been proven in a number of demonstration project and is currently in use in several sites, most notably a 19-mile stretch in Shanghai, China. The advent of superconductors has helped the technology leap forward, and many countries have preliminary plans to construct the systems. In the U.S., various groups are promoting maglev lines connecting Baltimore and D.C., San Diego to a new proposed airport, through the Pittsburgh area, and Atlanta to Chattanooga.

Part of the high cost of such system stems from the need to construct new corridors; maglev trains don't operate on rail, but rather float over a different type of rail on a cushion of air maintained by magnetic repulsion. In this respect, finding a corridor across the southern desert should be easier than in densely inhabited areas.

However, I have to wonder if this makes financial sense. Assuming a round-trip price similar to that of an airline ($172 at this moment on Delta), just to gross $12 billion, this train would have to carry 10,000 passengers a day, every day for 20 years. To net $12 billion, the number would probably be, who know? 100,000 a day?

With countries around the world preparing to build their own demonstration projects, wouldn't it be smarter to learn on their dime, and wait until the economies of scale are in our favor before building such a costly system?

And do you suppose our money could be better spent connecting sites of less ephemeral value? In this instance, I wouldn't mind if what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

The town of Orrville sits on the northern edge of the Ohio Amish area, and has that same bucolic feel. A friendly town that once was no more than a railroad stop for the agriculture, and a bedroom community for the heavy industries, of Wooster and Massillon, it is now best known as the jam capital of America, the home of the big (and growing) J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE: SJM).

Smucker has more than just its office in Orrville. For over 100 years, it has made jam in its factory right in the center of town. Of the 8,500 Orrville residents, 1,100 currently work for Smucker. It also operates the Simply Smucker's store in town, where visitors can view 350 varieties of Smucker's products, some available for taste-testing.

Since its fortunes and Orrville's are intertwined, it's fortunate for the community that Smucker appears on Fortune magazine's annual list of the top 100 companies to work for year after year, even finishing number one in 2004. The company is also known for its local charitable contributions. This year, for example, Smucker and its employees provided almost half of all funds raised by the United Way of Orrville.

If you haven't checked out HBO's Flight of the Conchords, you're missing a wonderfully droll, clever series. The show follows the exploits of a pair of New Zealand musicians trying to break into the American music scene. Their song Business Time might provide a welcome break during your, er, business time.

This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and check out other Battle of the Brands posts.

How to compare the two dominant pizza brands, Yum! Brands Inc.'s (NYSE: YUM) Pizza Hut vs. Domino's Pizza Inc. (NYSE: DPZ)?

Most annoying ads? The wing man series by Pizza Hut is a recent annoyance, but Domino's still, in my mind, has not lived down the ignominy of its Noid commercials in the 1980s.

Most obscene side-dishes? What in the hell are dipping strips? Like we don't realize they're just pizza dough with goo indistinguishable from the plaque clogging our arteries. Bad Pizza Hut! Bad!

Size? Pizza Hut -- 12,800 outlets in 90 countries. Domino's -- 8,624 outlets in 55 countries.