
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 27, 1995                   TAG: 9509270053
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium

THEY WERE NICE PANTS ... BUT EVEN THE ADS ARE GONE

``STEAL THESE KHAKIS,'' the ads seemed to say. Levi's had expected some pants-napping, but dropped the ads after New York's mayor complained.

An ad campaign expected to encourage looters to break bus stop shelters to yank out a pair of Levi's khakis was itself yanked Tuesday after complaints from the mayor.

Levi Strauss & Co. began putting actual pairs of the $50 pants in bus shelter ads in New York City and San Francisco this week, with the full expectation that people would steal them.

In fact, the company was so sure that the crowbar-and-brick crowd would stoop to vandalism to get at the pants, it designed the ads for pre- and post-theft presentation, and paid in advance for repairs.

The khakis were placed between the same hard plastic panels used for conventional two-dimensional advertisements, with ad copy that reads, ``Nice Pants.'' Once they disappear, an outline of the khakis remains with the words, ``Apparently they were very nice pants.''

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was not amused at the thought of New Yorkers shopping with crowbars on city streets. He condemned the ads as ``a terrible mistake ... exactly the wrong message to be teaching to people.''

By the end of the day, New York's Department of Transportation, which regulates bus shelters, and Gannett Outdoor Advertising, which sells the ad space in both cities, decided to pull the ads in New York.

``We both agreed these ads will be pulled,'' said Transportation Commissioner Lee Sander. ``They will all be down by tomorrow night.''

The controversy surrounding the ad campaign was just what Levi's wanted: free publicity.

``The thought did cross our mind that some pairs might be stolen,'' Brad Williams, senior marketing specialist with the San Francisco-based company, said Tuesday morning, before the ads were pulled in New York. ``But we think that adds to the talk value of the ads.''

``We factored the vandalism into their contract,'' Doug Watts, a vice president at Gannett, said earlier. Gannett charged Levi's an extra fee, anticipating the replacement of shattered plastic ($300 a sheet) and twisted panel boxes ($2,000 apiece).

The ads were to run through the end of October, pants or no pants. Levi's even issued a warning to would-be thieves: The sample khakis are mostly waist sizes 32 or 34.

``Anybody bigger will be disappointed when they try them on,'' Williams said.

by CNB