Talk:Bill Cosby in advertising

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Bill Cosby in advertising/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ed! (talk · contribs) 13:31, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• The article's lead should summarize the rest of the content. The two cited statements in the lead need to be incorporated into the body of the article.
  • Pending.
• "Ebony agreed, suggesting Cosby has the advantage of being able to be selective. He suggested that he presents advertisers with" -- "he" who?
• Incomplete thought: "In advertising field was initially reluctant to use black spokespeople, for fear of angering white customers." -- Also, you'll need more on the background of this, no time frame is given and no idea of when Cosby got into the field or of his impact.
  • Pending.
• "Cosby's first ad was for White Owl cigars." -- what year?
  • Sadly, there's near zilch on this. I'm guessing Cosby might have intentionally downplayed White Owl over the years, given the his wholesome image in the 1980s, which doesn't really fit with the no smoking movement suddenly happening in the era. That, and I don't think it was a significant campaign.
• "Cosby's 1972 animated series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids challenged contemporary views on educational content on commercial television." -- according to who?
  • Pending.
• Past tense needed: "A 1981 article in Black Enterprise listed African-Americans who have been hired as spokespeople"
  • Fixed.
• Incomplete thought: "Cosby was one of the only to command the million dollar contracts for a full campaign, as opposed to one-off ads."
  • Pending.
• How is this relavent to the article? -- "The company had been found the previous year to be check kitting,[22] pleading guilty to 2000 counts of fraud.[1] Hutton was hit by and a 1987 probe finding they laundered money.[23] The second came just a week before the the 1987 stock market crash. Weeks, possibly days from collapse,[24] they merged with another firm; their remnants are now part of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney."
  • How does it read now? I do feel that something to that extent is needed to explain that they were an odd choice, and set up the "those crooks" quote in the Integrity section.
• "Even in its day, the ad was considered rare," -- considered by who?
  • Fixed.
• There's no mention of why his advertising contracts tapered off after 1988.
  • Sadly, I can't find any material on that, and I've scoured. I suspect it was over-exposure + halking New Coke + halking a not popular financial company that together weakened his appeal, but there's no sources to say whether this was the case, or whether he just decided he was too rich to bother anymore.
• There's also no mention of Cosby's impact as an advertiser. Did his contracts mean more sales? I also think one of the things you're trying to emphasize is that he was a groundbreaker as a popular African-American advertiser. That would need to be expanded in an "impact" section.
  • Pending.
• The current organziation could use some refinement. Namely, I think his advertising of Jello is generally the most well-known, and that should have a section. Maybe his other major contracts should have sections too, the current chronological order doesn't make a lot of sense.
  • Pending.
• "In 1973, a writer in The Village Voice..." -- which one? Op-ed writers should be identified per WP:NEWSORG
  • I was unaware of that... fixed.
• "It echoed the suggestions of other authors that Cosby has become out-of-touch with lower-class African-Americans." -- This will need to be past-tense. Also, which other authors? The article should have more comprehensiveness of who was making such criticisms.
  • Pending.
• Citations needed:
  • "An article in Black Enterprise magazine suggested that part "of the Cosby mystique is that he can endorse a number of products and still retain credibility in each individual sell." Shortly after being signed by Coca-Cola, Cosby appeared at a bottlers' convention. He refused to drink the bottle of Coke he carried on stage, citing "I'm waiting for all the Jell-O pudding I ate to settle.""
    • Fixed.
  • "Anthony Tortorici, director of public relations at Coca-Cola, stated that the "three most believable personalities are God, Walter Cronkite, and Bill Cosby."" -- also, when did he say this?
    • Fixed.
  • In the infobox: "Years active 1962–present"
    • I've removed that. I suspect I forgot to nix the start date of his comedy career overall, when I copied over the template. His first ad spot was pre-1965 (before I Spy), but I can't find anything more specific than that.
  • ""with a black person holding something, buying a product, so the absence of pictures, in retrospect, said a lot."" -- Refs are always needed directly after quotes.
    • Pending.
  • "Advertising Age named Cosby the top advertising personality of 1978."
    • Fixed.
  • """It got away from us. We never intended it to be a national campaign. The campaign got out of hand, and bit us in the ass.""
    • Fixed. The next citation referred to the previous.
  • ""So this buddy says, 'I didn't mind your commercials for Jello, Del Monte, Ford cars... Ideal Toys, or Coca-Cola, although Coke does do business in South Africa... But, Bill, why do commercials for those crooks at E. F. Hutton?' My buddy didn't understand my commercials improve race relations. Y'see, by showing that a black man can be just as money-hungry as a white man... I'm proving that all men are brothers."" -- Also, you need to state who said this.
    • I've cited the book I found it in, but Google Books doesn't show the citations. Google listed it as being used in a 1997 news article, but it's paywalled.
  • Cosby's quote after "Cosby has defended his numerous endorsements thusly:" -- also a year on this quote is needed.
    • I've added a ref, year, and the source name in the prose.
• A large amount of citation formatting is necessary. Ref 5 is a bare url. Ref 7 needs to be in a cite web template.
  • Fixed.
• Ref 8 is not a reliable source.
  • I'm not entirely sure why I chose that page, considering it was irrelevant. I've deleted that one, added two others.
• OCLC numbers needed: Refs 2, 22, 23, 24
  • Added.

All told, the article needs some pretty substantial improvements, namely to its formatting and referencing. These very drastic changes will require quite a bit of fixing from the ground up. As such, I do not believe the article is or can easily become GA level at this time. When these improvements are made, anyone is welcome to nominate the article for review again. —Ed!^(talk) 14:11, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I discovered this recently, and intended to edit tonight, but didn't have the opportunity. I'll try and get to it immediately. -- Zanimum (talk) 02:39, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

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