That was classy, folks. Apparently, the monkey-masked graffiti artist will not be on hand to accept the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature if he wins.

The reasons cited for his exclusion range from unpredictability to a potential Oscar winner showing up in disguise. Then what seems to be the real reason comes out:

“We suggested to them that it might be a good idea that if he did win, one of [the executive producers] would accept in his place – that it would not be dignified for the Academy to have somebody come up wearing a monkey’s head.”

Dignified, huh? Dear Academy, I have just seven words for you:

“It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.”

Readers, I assume you forgot about this because you really, really wanted to forget…but you must be reminded.

*mumblemumble*Academy!*mumblemumble*Jesus!*mumblemumble*Weouttahere!

I believe if Banksy showed up with three doubles dressed in a monkey mask disguise, then you have immediate TMZ-fodder for at least a month. Seriously, I can see the headlines now…”WHO REALLY ACCEPTED THE OSCAR STATUE FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE??”

It would be the only time in Academy Awards history when the most anticipated moment of the night would happen only an hour and fifteen minutes into the show, and not five hours and twenty-six minutes in.

I simply say that Banksy’s potential moment onstage would be a big way of appealing to a younger audience. Anne Hathaway and James Franco as hosts are a good step in the right direction, especially if the writers used for the Oscar promos end up writing the material for the show itself.

But if the status quo doesn’t change before next weekend, just remember…

It’s hard out here for a chimp.

Thanks to the folks over at the VO-BB for finding this before me.

Here’s an article from Advertising Age that at first look, I thought might be some voice of reason to clients about the use of celebrities to endorse their products. Then, well…just give it a read. It’s got some industry jargon, but you should be able to plow through that without much trouble. Go ahead…I’ll wait.

http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=148174

Back? Awesome. Let’s continue.

OK. So my biggest problem with the article is the fact that they were so tied to their research study, and unfortunately, the examples are like instant fail. Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong were in the top (bottom?) two celebrity TV ads, according to the cited study, which can be found here. The problem with them is that they had a ton of negative press last year. But more on how they measured this stuff…

The metric they used is called “lift,” which is used to measure how much better or worse their advertisement did when compared to its competition’s ads. Yeah…they’ve come up with a measurable way for clients to say, “Nah nah nah nah nah nah” to their competition. Except when it’s “negative lift,” which is the advertisement’s equivalent of a facepalm.

One thing that stood out to me was this:

The bottom line is that good ads stand on their own, and this study empirically shows that a celebrity has little to no impact on an ad’s effectiveness. In fact, regardless of gender or age, ads without celebrities out-performed ads with them.

I know that this article isn’t the proof we were looking for when it comes to celebrities in voiceover. In fact, VO is never mentioned in the article or in the study, but it’s something that clients (hopefully) will start to see. That the risk of using a celebrity in an advertisement of any kind has a direct correlation with that celebrity’s potential for doing something dumb. And we’ve all seen or heard enough TMZ or Perez Hilton to know that celebrities do just as much stupid crap as the rest of the mere mortals out there…but I digress.

I know we in the industry look at this with a pair of jaded glasses, and most of us are going “well, DUH,” but it’s the clients that need studies like this to hopefully persuade them to start letting good creative and transparent talent carry their message.

And speaking of transparent talent, you know there’s nothing worse than hiring a celebrity and nobody noticing. Now I am talking about voiceover, and I know that a bunch of you know several instances where this was the case. I’m talking about those celebrities who really don’t have a recognizable voice, and aren’t doing character stuff. It’s one thing to have the soothing drawl of Morgan Freeman or Jeff Bridges talking about a product…but again, they have voices of distinction. Sometimes celebrities do well other areas of VO. I hear tell of Justin Timberlake doing a serviceable job as Boo-Boo in “Yogi Bear.” I don’t really know, because I never saw it. Neither did most, as I hear it. With a 14% score at Rotten Tomatoes, I can only wonder why.

So, anyway…celebrity endorsements get a “meh” from consumers. If it continues, maybe clients will listen. Only time will tell.