Chattem, Inc. announced today that it has hired talented and follicularly-challenged train wreck/musician Amy Winehouse as its spokesperson for its Selsun Blue line of shampoo products. The endorsement deal is set to begin when Hell freezes over; the company’s R&D division estimates that this phenomenon will occur next Tuesday. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, though Internet rumors are rampant that Winehouse will partly be paid in “dangerous and illicit materials.”

Chattem, Inc. officials admit that pegging the troubled chanteuse as its spokesperson marks a dramatic shift in the company’s advertising strategy. According to company liaison Phillip Enwasher, the company wants to take its Selsun Blue products in a bold new direction, and Winehouse fits that mold.

“For too many years we’ve had commercials featuring perfectly proportioned men and women wearing black turtlenecks and mild cases of dandruff,” Enwasher commented. “In the span of 30 seconds, the man’s dandruff would be cured. He’d stroll confidently into the office, and you just knew he was gonna nail his big presentation or the floor secretary. That type of advertising was safe, predictable, reliable, and incredibly profitable. That type of approach is now totally out of touch in the 21st century.”

Although some industry experts are skeptical of the agreement and feel that Winehouse’s mind-boggling bird’s nest hair cannot be tamed and will in turn tarnish both Selsun Blue’s reputation and revenues, Enwasher will not be dissuaded. “We plan to initially feature Amy in commercials for our Medicated, Moisturizing, and Daily Use lines. The commercials will take a chronological approach as we track Amy’s journey from coiffured disaster so Selsun Blue mega-babe. Every day for 34 weeks, and twice daily when it’s raining in Seattle, she’ll be pampered with hourly rinses, lathers, and repeats.

“Then, once we’ve nearly tamed the beast and it's breathing its last gasps, we’re gonna drop our new Ragged Scalp Blaster X product on her,” Enwasher stated. “Designed specifically for unpredictable, irrational, and near-epic-disaster singers, Amy’s hair will be cleaner than a post-colonic colon.”

Although the details of the contract have not yet been released, Enwasher did acknowledge that the company has also secured the rights to anything discovered in Winehouse’s hair. “Even if our attempts to sanitize that primordial monster fail miserably, I’m confident that humanity can advance greatly from what we unearth. Cures for various diseases, the lost colony of Roanoke, the answer to how the filling gets inside the Twinkie, several peach trees, and various extinct species of birds are likely residing somewhere in the deep regions of that hair. And most importantly, I personally have reason to believe that Joss Stone and her career have taken residence there.”

According to her publicist, Winehouse was busy “reading to orphaned street urchins, and most definitely not on a mad bender” and was therefore unavailable for comment.