The Internal Revenue Service is taking a ribbing for going where many companies have gone before: into the world of bad video parodies.

The IRS conceded that it erred when it spent thousands of dollars in taxpayer money making a video riffing off the TV show “Star Trek” for a 2010 employee conference.

“The space parody video from 2010 is not reflective of overall IRS video efforts, which provide critical information to taxpayers and cost-effective employee training critical to running the nation’s tax system,” the IRS said in a statement released to TODAY.

But the IRS defended a separate video parody of “Gilligan’s Island,” which it said provided valuable training at a fraction of the cost of training people in person.

The two videos cost taxpayers about $60,000. The videos came to light after Congressman Charles Boustany, chairman of the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee, demanded that the IRS provide more information about its video budget and productions.

“There is nothing more infuriating to a taxpayer than to find out the government is using their hard-earned dollars in a way that is frivolous,” Boustany said in a statement released to TODAY by the House Ways and Means Committee.

The IRS noted that it has made dozens of more straightforward videos offerings taxpayer tips about topics such as preventing identity theft or understanding the earned income tax credit. IRS YouTube videos have been viewed more than 5 million times.

The government agency also defended its efforts to save money, noting that it had saved nearly $1 billion between fiscal year 2009 and fiscal year 2013.

“The IRS recognizes and takes seriously our obligation to be good stewards of government resources,” the statement said.

The IRS had a budget of about $11.8 billion in fiscal year 2012, according to the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent agency charged with assisting taxpayers. The advocate has argued that the IRS is “significantly and chronically underfunded” to serve the needs of taxpayers.

It’s not the first time a government agency has invoked “Star Trek” to get its message across. Actress Patty Duke and “Star Trek” alum George Takei recorded a series of public service announcements for the Social Security Administration.

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Put down that remote! A new law that goes into effect Thursday says that commercials cannot be more than 2 decibels louder than the programming around them.

TV fans, you're about to get a break from your commercial break.

Shouting TV ads are soon to become a thing of the past as a new law goes into effect Thursday at midnight mandating that the volume of commercials has to be within a range of 2 decibels (db) more or less than the programming around them.

Joe Addalia, director of technology projects for Hearst Television, was in charge of figuring out the right technology to make 31 transmitters compliant with the new regulations. He told TODAY that 2 db was "the difference between viewers reaching for the remote and not." TV stations want to encourage watchers to leave the remote alone, he said, "because right next to the volume button is the channel button."

Commercials are often so loud because the only real limit on programming volumes is the one set by stations so that the sound levels don't damage their equipment. That level, however, represents a peak sound meant to accommodate for when something like a gunshot or explosion goes off during a show. Advertising content creators routinely crank the sound of their ads to just shy of that peak level, so the entire commercial is playing at the equivalent of a 30-second bomb blast. 

Joel Kelsey, legislative director for the media advocacy group Free Press, previously testified in Congress about the need for volume regulation on commercials. Since nearly the beginning of television itself, loud commercials "have consistently been one of the issues consumers are most energized to write the FCC about. They don't like being screamed at every time the program breaks to buy deodorant," Kelsey told TODAY.

However, it took an act of Congress, the "Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act," or CALM Act, to prod the FCC into the necessary action. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate.

While station operators across the country have been busy implementing new volume-limiting controls, many viewers already have technology in their TV sets to dampen the auditory enthusiasm of "Crazy Carl's Car Shack" and "Head-On, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD!"

In a TV set's audio control settings, there may be a selection for "Automatic Volume control" or "Auto Volume" that once selected automatically smooths out the peaks and valleys in the volume. If you don't have the feature built in, you can purchase an external device such as this Audiovox Terk VR1 Automatic TV Volume Controller, found on Amazon for $21.99.

It's worth mentioning what tools consumers have at their hands, besides the mute button, because with so many moving pieces involved, you can be sure that some loud ads will get through. The FCC encourages viewers to report any rogue ads to 1-888-TELL-FCC (1-888-225-5322).

More information:

• FCC Q&A on the CALM Act

Times are a-changing, and so is who is changing the diapers. Advertisers have finally woken up and started to retool their messaging to match this big social trend.

For instance, a recent Huggies ad showed dads carrying their babies in Bjorn-like front carriers and putting their babies' diapers to a "bouncy stress test." For the first time ever in 66 years, Tide Detergent featured not a mom, but a dad, doing the laundry in its commercial. Dads also anchored recent commercials for Clorox and Swiffer.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows men reporting doing 16 minutes of housework a day in 2011. That's an eight-minute increase from 2003, when they reported doing only three minutes. The trend has been accelerating for decades, with men doing 50 percent more housework today than they did in 1965.

The advertising messages spotlighting dads doing housework reflect a huge shift in cultural perceptions of gender roles. But just because you see it on TV doesn't mean that it's entirely true, or that the literal message is the one the advertiser is really trying to get across.

Donny Deutsch, chairman of advertising company Deutsch Inc., told TODAY this morning that in these ads, "You're seeing an idealized version of a trend. They're not as much marketing to men as marketing to women an idealized version of men. They're still targeting women in the ad.

"You see the dad in the ad serving Cheerios. He's still not the primary buyer of those Cheerios," said Deutsch. "Two-thirds of the time it's still women."

Related: Pastel pens, pink cars: Why products 'for her' annoy instead of entice

Torsten Blackwood / AFP - Getty Images

A shopper passes a store offering up to 50 percent discounts during a sale.

Can a truthful advertising claim be misleading? The latest research into ads that use the “up to” claim indicates it is possible. 

Companies like to advertise the best case scenarios. They’d be silly not to. That’s why the “up to” claim is such a popular advertising technique. These two little words are very big during the holiday shopping season. 

An ad that says “Save up to 60 percent on all sweaters in stock!” is simple and straightforward. It would seem hard to misunderstand. There’s no hidden disclosure or fine print. The ad says every sweater in the store is on sale and some are 60 percent off. 

But that’s not how a lot of shoppers would interpret this claim. They believe the ad says all or most of the sweaters are discounted 60 percent. 

Why the confusion? 

Manoj Hastak, a professor of marketing at American University, has done extensive research on how we process ads. He believes a lot of people simply gloss over the “up to” language. The actual words don’t seem to mean as much as the overall impression we get from the ad. 

“Even if there are very clear statements or very clear disclosures in an ad, people process the ad as a whole,” Hastak said. “They don’t necessarily read everything in great detail. They don’t necessarily parse it completely.” 

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants to understand how people interpret “up to” claims so it can determine when the phrase is misleading.  The FTC commissioned a study comparing the energy-saving claim for replacement home windows in similar print ads. 

Ad No. 1 had the typical “up to” claim: “PROVEN TO SAVE UP TO 47% ON YOUR HEATING AND COOLING BILLS!” (The critical words were underlined in the test ad). 

Ad No. 2 had the unqualified claim: “PROVEN TO SAVE 47% ON YOUR HEATING AND COOLING BILLS!” 

Both ads made almost the same impression on the test subjects. With Ad No. 2, more than half the subjects (58 percent) said they would save “47 percent” if they bought the new windows. But surprisingly, nearly half (46 percent) believed Ad No. 1 said the new windows would save them “47 percent.” Only 26 percent of the subjects noted the “up to” qualifier. 

When asked how many windows would deliver the promised results – few, some, most or all – a majority of the subjects (70 percent) said they’d expect most, all or almost all of the windows to provide that savings. Of course, the ad never claimed that.

“In this study, people didn’t think the words ‘up to’ qualified the claim at all,” noted the FTC’s Serena Viswanathan. “People look at the number that’s in the ad and that’s what they expect to get.” 

Many times the words “up to” are in small letters and the savings is in big, bold type. But for this test, conducted by Hastak at American University, the entire claim was made in the same size and style font.

“I don’t think the issue is that people didn’t see the ‘up to’ claim,” he told me. “More likely, they are so jaded in seeing these claims all the time that they don’t see it as a qualifier.” 

This research has important implications for both consumers and government regulators. 

The Federal Trade Commission now takes the position that “up to” claims can sometimes be misleading. This summer, the commission notified window manufacturers of this and what they needed to do to avoid deceiving people. 

“This study appears to support the notion that sellers should not be allowed to use “up to” claims,” said consumer advocate Edgar Dworsky, founder of ConsumerWorld.org. 

He points out that Massachusetts prohibits “up to” advertising claims. The law there requires an advertiser to give both the smallest and largest discount available in equal size type, such as “Save 10 to 50%.” And at least 10-percent of the items on sale must be offered at the biggest discount advertised. 

“That’s not a bad model for the other 49 states to follow,” Dworsky said. 

The bottom line
Be careful when you see sale ads, especially as you race through the stores looking for super bargains. Look for the words “up to” and realize what it means: most items are not going to be discount that much. As always, it’s the walk-out-the door price and not the promised savings that counts.

Herb Weisbaum is The ConsumerMan. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter or visit The ConsumerMan website.

Snip snip snip. What's that sound? The sound of over 558,000 scissors at the ready.

If Macy's doesn't cut its ties to Donald Trump, over half-a-million signers of an online petition will be urged to cut up their Macy's store credit card, the creator of the petition, Angelo Carusone, told TODAY this morning.

Carusone, 30, said he started the petition on October 24th because he was a fan of the retailer and Trump's brand "doesn't reflect the magic of Macy's." He said Trump's brand was built on "consequence-free bullying," noting the birtherism controversy, and Trump's history of misogynistic comments.

After the petition started, things kicked up a notch when Trump tweeted calls for "revolution," following President Obama's re-election, and Macy's released a new ad featuring Trump. The new Macy's ad mixed in footage from "Miracle on 34th Street" with cameos from several of the faces behind Macy's celebrity brands. There's Justin Bieber, Martha Stewart, Taylor Swift, and then there's Donald Trump, skeptical that the old man in the stocking cap and suit is really Santa and tugging on his beard. Macy's sells a line of Trump-branded ties and fragrances. Stuart Elliot,  the New York Times' advertising columnist, remarked that the ad was a "clever twist" on Trump's notoriety for casting doubt on whether President Obama's birth certificate and college transcript were real.

But to Carusone, director of online strategy for the media watchdog group Media Matters, the ad struck him as a cynical "embracing" of Trump's brand.

Cher mocks  Donald Trump's hairpiece, he disses her plastic surgery 

His petition urging the retailer to break up with Trump has been steadily gaining traction through social media channels and media pickup. In the past Carusone, working independently, spearheaded online efforts to get Glen Beck ousted from Fox News.

The ad also featured an appearance by Martha Stewart, who served time after being convicted for insider trading. But Carusone isn't going after her because that was "a one-time thing," he said. "Macy's isn't building a business on top of her insider trading."

The Donald appeared unfazed by the growing online uproar. Trump spokesman Michael Cohen told TODAY, "The Trump Organization values its long standing relationship with Macy's and looks forward to many more years of continued success." 

Macy's so far is not changing course. Reached for comment, Macy's senior vice-president of corporate communications told TODAY: 

"Macy’s marketing and merchandise offerings are not representative of any political position. Many of the individuals associated with products sold at Macy's – or at any retailer, for that matter – express personal opinions that are not related to the merchandise we sell or to the philosophies of our company. In our merchandise assortment, we strive to meet our customers' expectations for unique and interesting products across a broad array of styles, categories and brands. This allows our customers to choose what they prefer.  A longtime focus of Macy's holiday advertising has been to celebrate the season's spirit of generosity and goodwill through our ongoing "Believe" campaign, and that is the sole message of our holiday television commercials."

By Thanksgiving, Carusone said he planned on delivering the final petition to Macy's in-person.

Meanwhile he has already started building a sub-list of the petition signers who hold Macy's store credit cards, and if there's no action from the retailer, he will encourage them to start cutting up those cards. He got the idea after people started tweeting him pictures of themselves cutting up their cards.

It'll be just in time for Black Friday, one of the year's biggest shopping days.

Carusone said he emailed Macy's CEO, along with his executive personal assistant, repeatedly before beginning the campaign and throughout it and got "zero response."

"Next week is Macy's last chance," said Carusone.

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Richard Neill almost certainly thought he was the wittier one.

Last week, he took to Facebook to rant sarcastically that a British feminine hygiene company had lied to him with all those commercials implying that getting one’s period is just an excuse for a series of joyful adventures.

Bodyform, the British company that makes the panty liners in question, showed him that they could not only take the criticism, they could do him one better.

On Tuesday, Bodyform posted a parody video of its own on YouTube and Facebook. In it, the company’s fake CEO apologized and fessed up about all those joyful feminine hygiene commercials.

“What you’ve seen in our advertisements so far isn’t a factual representation of events. You’re right. The flagrant use of visualizations such as sky diving, roller blading and mountain biking  - you forgot horse riding Richard – are actually metaphors. They’re not real,” the faux CEO, who they dubbed Caroline Williams, intones somberly. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but there’s no such thing as a happy period.”

The post came a few days after Neill’s rant went viral, prompting more than 84,000 Facebook “likes” and thousands of comments along the lines of “love this.”

In it, Neill opines that he grew up being jealous of all these women who got to spend their periods bike riding, dancing, parachuting and the like. Then, he said, he was faced with the reality of that time of the month when he “got a girlfriend.”

“There was no joy, no extreme sports, no blue water spilling over wings and no rocking soundtrack oh no no no,” he wrote.

Bodyform responded: “If Facebook had a ‘love’ button, we'd have clicked it. But it doesn't. So we've made Richard a video instead.”

Tim Calkins, a clinical professor marketing at Northwestern University, said the parody video response is exactly the type of marketing more companies need to be doing. He lauded the company for taking the risk of being funny and a bit edgy.

“The reason it works is it just feels very sort of real in that the company is listening and they’re responding and they have a sense of humor, but they also stick up for themselves,” Calkins said.

He noted that it’s also a world away from traditional marketing, in which companies may spend months carefully crafting messages and coming up with advertising campaigns.

“This, though, is an example of a company that’s building its brand but doing so in a way that is timely and authentic and funny,” he said.

Bodyform, which is based in the United Kingdom, was not able to comment as of press time. You can watch the full video on YouTube.

Imeh Akpanudosen / Getty Images file

Traffic-challenged Lindsay Lohan

In a wry gesture, Goodyear last week sent letters offering free driving lessons to traffic-challenged celebrities Lindsay Lohan and Amanda Bynes. But is such snarky newsjacking a smart move for this iconic brand?

Bynes skipped her suspended license hearing this week and has a court appearance slated for Thursday for two hit and run incidents. Meanwhile, Lohan said she's planning on suing a cook for slander for claiming last week she clipped him with her Porsche SUV and claiming that she was “slurring” and “smelled like alcohol.”

The nearly identical letters Goodyear sent the two actresses say they're “sorry to hear” about the latest “driving mishap,” and that they “understand” that “driving can be a real challenge, particularly trying to navigate all of the stop-and-go-traffic in LA and New York City.”

Echoing sentiments felt no doubt by many Americans, Goodyear continued, saying, “we are concerned for you...We're concerned for your safety.”

The letter offered to fly the actresses out to the company's headquarters in Akron, Ohio for private lessons with their professional drivers, “no paparazzi allowed.” These trainers could show the “do's and don'ts of driving safely.” After a few spins around the test track, “you'll even be able to show Herbie the Lovebug a thing or two,” quipped the letter to Lohan.

It's all pretty light as far as celebrity digs go, but it feels a little weird coming from Goodyear. This is the tire brand of trust and value. It's been around since 1898. It represents solid Midwestern values, and is a stalwart of American manufacturing.

Until now, one of its most recognizable marketing campaigns has been the Goodyear blimp: a giant rubber-coated dirigible that idles over large mainstream sporting events. It's slow. It's massive. It's authorized. Its main goal is to get Goodyear's big yellow logo beamed out over broadcast television.

It's pretty much the opposite of the Lohan and Bynes zings. They were geared to appeal to celebrity news sites and blogs and those who read them. They were created and executed quickly in response to a piece of celebrity news. The playful tone and the use of a source document primed them for social media viral uplift.

Twitter? Perezhilton? TMZ? Not exactly what you associate with a venerable American tire brand.

Opportunistic PR
“It's opportunistic PR,” Chris Curran, Goodyear's Vice President of Communications Public Relations, told NBC News. His signature appears at the bottom of both letters. Curran said that a piece of public relations material has to do one of three things: educate, entertain or inform. “This does all three,” he said. “It educates who Goodyear is, informs that there's an offer, and it also entertains.”

He disagreed that the move was out of the norm for the tire company, noting that several years ago they convinced Detroit Pistons guard Richard Hamilton to style his hair so that it looked like Goodyear's new TripleTred tire.

“Something that is fun and quirky gets across in a better way,” said Curran. “Obviously, we do normal PR and communications initiatives to promote our products, but sometimes it's 'fun' to do something a little outside the box that gets people talking.” A lot of people inside the company have said that the letters “were kind of cool,” too, he noted.

Goodyear isn't the first big brand to try to ride the buzz off a piece of news. Last year, Abercrombie & Fitch offered members of the Jersey Shore cast cash to not wear their clothes. Two years ago, when Obama made an offhand remark about holding a “Slurpee Summit” with Republicans, 7-11 made an official offer to the White House to supply them with red, white, and blue colored Slurpees.

Tim Nudd, editor of Adweek's blog AdFreak, is not a fan of the Goodyear initiative. “It's definitely a cheap publicity grab, and if you're a generally well respected brand -- which Goodyear is -- engaging these kinds of marketing gimmicks will only cheapen your brand accordingly,” he wrote by email. For Goodyear, your “absolute No. 1 brand attribute is trust. Why align yourself in any way with people who are reckless?” he said. “It's transparent celebrity-baiting.”

But what do the people think? Judging by the comments about the campaign on Twitter and blogs, they mostly think, “LOL,” “Hilarious” and “Brilliant.” So, success?

If there's one guy who can sort it out, it's Alex Bogusky, formerly one of the main creative engines behind advertising agency Crispin Porter and Bogusky. Among others, they're the ones responsible for all those unnerving “Wake up with the King!” Burger King ads. He should know a good counterintuitive campaign from a bad one.

And guess what? He likes it.

“I love this kind of thing. It's a good way to inject tires (which are boring) into the public conversation,” Bogusky wrote by email. “And it seems to me that Goodyear knows a bit about driving and is doing us all a favor in trying to teach this woman how to drive.”

His enthusiasm wasn't unabashed, however, pointing out two little bits of logical misfires, “1. Can you really teach someone how to drive while impaired? I don't think so,” and, “2. What does it say about Goodyear's expertise when she crashes AFTER their lessons? Which she invariably will.”

Luckily, there's probably little chance of either of the two actresses taking time out from their busy schedules to take Goodyear up on their offer. Goodyear says it hasn't gotten a response from either Lohan or Bynes.

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Dr Pepper

This ad has created an online uproar.

Dr Pepper marched directly into controversy a week ago when it launched its “March of Progress” ad campaign. And the uproar has not abated. 

On Sept. 13, the soft drink maker posted to its Facebook wall an ad using the classic “March of Progress” image tweaked to promote the “evolution of flavor.” The whimsical ad showed a chimpanzee dragging his knuckles, followed by a semi-erect hominid reaching for a Dr Pepper, followed by a fully upright man walking and gulping a Dr Pepper. The images are captioned “Pre-Pepper,” “Pepper Discovery,” and “Post-Pepper” respectively. 

Sounds harmless. Even banal. But about 7,000 comment and nearly 33,000 likes later, the ad is still provoking reaction by creationists who say it promotes the theory of evolution. Some are even threatening to boycott Dr Pepper. That in turn has stoked evolutionists to make counter comments. Then there's folks jumping on the pig pile just for laughs. 

After all, we are talking about a soda pop ad, right? 

At first, most of the comments on Facebook were lighthearted jokes about the image. A few comments from disappointed Christians began to crop up. Soon an evolution vs. creationism debate dominated the conversation, along with heaps of jeers at anyone taking the issue seriously. 

“No we didn't come from apes,” wrote one user. “Lord Jesus pep can be blinded. If we came from apes why is there still apes [sic]” 

“This is showing the theory of men evolving from apes I have lost all respect for Dr Pepper,” wrote another, who threatened to use his connections with various colleges to get them to pull Dr Pepper from their schools. 

Comments like these prompted cries of “get over it!”, “really?” and, “The day your faith is shaken by a Dr Pepper ad is the day you should probably start reconsidering your faith.” 

The debate also blew up on popular link-sharing site Reddit, whose users flooded the thread to mock the outrage and post parody comment, further inflaming the debate and spreading the conversation to their friend's Facebook newsfeeds. 

“Frankly I'm surprised at how quickly it escalated and how big the thread became,” Reddit user undercoverrocker, who first posted the image to Reddit, told NBC News. The Redditer requested to remain anonymous to protect his privacy. Within a couple of hours any semblance of a real debate had evaporated, undercoverrocker said, becoming “trolls trolling trolls.” The term “trolls” and “trolling” refers to comments posted online where the person doesn't so much believe their substance as delight in the angry comments they provoke from others. 

Adfreak nailed it, writing, "Once again, though, it goes to show how protests can spread like wildfire in social media, where outrage — and counteroutrage — are just a click away." 

Dr Pepper has posted over 450 images to its Facebook wall since 2009. Previous images have asked for followers to identify their favorite Dr Pepper flavor, to identify which time of the day is best for drinking Dr Pepper, and asking if they liked their Dr Pepper fizzy or not. Most garnered a few hundred comments. Messages left with Dr Pepper Snapple Group seeking comment were not returned.

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At the brink of historic financial losses, the United States Postal Service launches a new TV advertising campaign designed encourage the use of snail mail. Msnbc's Alex Witt talks with reporter Ed O'Keefe.