Controversial Carbonated Beverage Campaign of the Day: Dr Pepper Snapple Group yesterday unveiled a new low-calorie version of its classic soft drink called Dr Pepper Ten.
Unlike the existing diet Dr Pepper drink, the new beverage will be marketed exclusively to men.
How exclusively? It’s tagline is “it’s not for women.”
The drink’s Facebook page is supposedly open to men only, and upcoming TV spots “heavy on the machismo” tell women to ignore the drink and go back to their “romantic comedies and lady drinks.”
Asked if he was concerned that some might find the sexist undertones in poor taste, Dr Pepper VP of marketing Jim Trebilcock (yep) said “women get the joke” and called the campaign a conversation starter.
As the label suggest, Dr Pepper Ten contains 10 calories from 2 grams of sugar (its non-diet sibling packs a whopping 27 grams of sugar per can). The company assures consumers that while the soda is skimpy on the calories, it still contains all of Dr Pepper’s 23 signature flavors.
This is a really interesting advertisement. I feel like its saying only men will drink it because women tend to be on diets and they would only drink zero calorie drinks, but if you really think about it, if this drink was for men that can handle the calories, why not have them drink the regular Dr. Pepper?
ReplyDeleteHere's the accompanying video:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTs-BmLOGWQ&feature=player_embedded
Definitely an interesting marketing scheme though I think it's quite pointless and ineffective - first off, they're excluding an entire group of people. Next, a research "found that men shy away from diet drinks that aren't perceived as "manly" enough" so in response, they try to portray diet as manly. Isn't it kind of sad that a product that gets sold must be associated with guns and violence? That's a pretty low representation of our society, in my humble opinion.