Reebok stopped airing ad in US a month ago

Amid growing furor that its TV commercial starring rapper 50 Cent glorifies gun violence, Reebok International Ltd. disclosed yesterday that it had actually stopped airing the ad in the United States nearly a month ago.

A spokesman for the Canton athletic shoe maker did not comment on why Reebok waited so long to acknowledge that the commercial hasn't aired in the United States since March 20. Reebok pulled the same television ad in the United Kingdom last week after complaints from more than 50 viewers.

The Reebok spokesman said the ad was booked to run in the United States for just over two weeks and ran for its full schedule. It is not slated to run again in this country, he said.

''Given all the expense they went to, that seems an unusually short shelf life for an ad," said Kathleen Seiders, an associate professor of marketing at Boston College.

The 50 Cent commercial is part of Reebok's biggest ad campaign in a decade. With a theme of ''i am what i am," the campaign launched in February. The 50 Cent ad outraged some gun violence prevention groups.

Tobe Berkovitz, associate dean and associate professor of communication at Boston University, said that ads starring a high-profile celebrity generally have a longer run.

''The thing with controversial ads is that you either pull them right away, or once you've already taken all the heat, you keep going," he said. ''It was so obvious this ad was going to ping the radar of concerned citizens."

In the ad, a camera pans on 50 Cent as one of his songs serves as the soundtrack: ''Shot nine times in Jamaica Queens . . . Tell me, who you planning to massacre next?"

50 Cent is a former drug dealer with a lengthy rap sheet. He was shot nine times outside is grandmother's home in Queens, N.Y.

The Reebok spokesman declined to elaborate on its strategy of running the ad for only a short period in the United States.

Looking to emerge from the shadow cast by larger archrival Nike Inc., Reebok began signing up rap stars a few years ago to augment its line-up of athletic endorsers. Reebok has also taken to throwing parties for Hollywood types in an attempt to amp up the buzz of its brand.

The strategy may be paying off. Though accounting for only a fraction of Reebok's $3.8 billion in sales, product lines promoted by such rappers as Jay-Z and 50 Cent have grown into a nice business, said Christopher Svezia, an analyst with Susquehanna International Group.

Reebok's ''target customer knows who 50 Cent is," Svezia said. ''Just because an ad is pulled, that doesn't dilute their enthusiasm for him."

In fact, ads that alienate mainstream consumers don't necessarily hurt a company whose best customers are young males, marketing specialists said. That's because the older consumers most likely to be outraged by such ads may not be buying much of the company's product anyway. And an ad generating a lot of publicity, even negative publicity, can grab the attention of young consumers, a group hard to reach through conventional marketing.

Referring to the 50 Cent ad, Berkovitz said, ''If I'm 19, all this media criticism is just giving this ad bona fides."

Chris Reidy can be reached at reidy@globe.com.