Dive Brief:

• Wonderful Pistachios, owned by pistachio and almond grower Paramount Farms, has hired Dennis Rodman as its newest spokesperson.
• Rodman, the basketball star turned B-list celebrity, is noted for his unusual attire and hair colors. In the ads, Rodman wears pistachio green.
• Rodman had fallen out of the limelight in recent years. He recently returned to the headlines after visiting North Korea and befriending that nation's leader.
• Wonderful Pistachios has a history of choosing controversial spokespeople, i.e., Levi Johnston.

Dive Insight:

We tried to find something positive about this campaign. But we could not. Look: No doubt Wonderful Pistachios has had success with its product. Marketing commodity crops is hard. And Wonderful has become perhaps the best-known pistachio brand in the U.S. But that success cannot justify the use of such ads.

But let's be frank. There's nothing funny about watching this former basketball star being exploited by a mass murderer. Nor is there anything funny about the fact that this mass murderer has nuclear weapons and a penchant for killing his friends (which seems to be the theme of the commercial).