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9/15/2011

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The Winklevoss twins may have already raked in a $65 million settlement from their highly publicized lawsuit against Facebook, but now they’re cashing in on their notoriety yet again.

Olympic rowers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, whose storied clash with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was depicted in the 2010 movie “The Social Network,” appear in a new commercial for Wonderful Pistachios in which they poke obvious fun at their legal disputes with the social networking site.

Yes, pistachios.

The Winklevi (as the twins are humorously referred to in “The Social Network”) are shown in the commercial, dressed in the suits and ties that former Harvard University president Larry Summers evidently found so despicable. One of twins cracks open the shell of a pistachio nut, and the other remarks, “Hey, that’s a good idea. Cracking it like that. Could be huge!”

The other twin remarks, “Think someone will steal it?”

Then both men say in unison, “Who would do that?”

The spot is part of the newest slew of ads from Wonderful Pistachios, now in the third year of its so-called Get Crackin’ campaign. Past commercials from the California-based nut company has featured the likes of Snooki of MTV’s “The Jersey Shore,” the YouTube celebrity Keyboard Cat and disgraced Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. ("Obviously, we’re not running that ad anymore," says Marc Seguin, senior director of marketing for Paramount Farms, the growers of the Wonderful brand.)

While the company would not disclose how much the Winklevoss twins were paid for their appearance in the commercial, it spent $30 million on its newest ad campaign, which was rolled out last week at a NASCAR event at Richmond International Raceway. In addition to Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, there are spots featuring the popular Angry Birds video game, Kermit the Frog, and Crystal the Monkey from the movie “The Hangover Part II.”

The company’s first celebrity ads, rolled out two years ago, helped spark a 233 percent increase in sales of the branded nuts, the company says.

“We knew pistachios were quietly enjoyed by everybody, and we really wanted to get them out in front of consumers,” said Seguin. “We look for characters who can really amplify the fun and who have a lot of social value who inspire people to talk about them around the water cooler—and the pistachio bowl, I guess.”

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