Perhaps you’ve seen the ads for Dr. Pepper TEN*? Apparently they think my wife is too weak to handle a ten-calorie drink. It’s just got so much flavor potential that the fairer sex just can’t take it. They only want men- REAL MEN- drinking this soda because it’s too dangerous for anyone else. I shake my head at the the weak-man advertising for fabric softeners, cereals, and other household products, so I’d be a hypocrite to not do the same with this ad.
My wife and I wrote a complaint to the company. They sent this response:
Ah! I see the light now, Ms. Relations! I didn’t realize that when you were ostensibly insulting women, you were actually being ironic and insulting “manly” men. I see now that you were merely baiting women into buying your product with masterful reverse psychology. Genius!
Maybe when I open my auto parts store, being the manly man I am, I’ll hang a shingle that says “Chessic’s Auto Repair - It’s not for blacks.” and then I’ll be swamped with customers of all races, each going “I’ll be the judge of that”! What could go wrong? I’ll just sit in the back, watching the money come in, sipping my Dr. Pepper Ten and trying not to let anyone see me worrying about my waistline.
Fuck you, Dr. Pepper. I hope all your commercials get replaced with the Tide detergent commercials with the laundry-folding, ponytail-tying father. “Hewwingboune”- hehe, so cute.
I do think you missed the point. They’re not saying women can’t handle it - indeed, they’re trying to win over men who think diet drinks can’t be “manly”. What the tagline “It’s not for women!” really means is “It’s not just for women!”
Okay. You have to market diet soda in an oversaturated market for the stuff. About the only place for any real growth in diet soda drinkers )as opposed to poaching the drinkers of other diet sodas) is among men,
For decades these sodas were primarily marketed to women and consequently they carried a reputation (even stigma) of being a woman’s drink.
So, if you want to really move product, what do you do? Basically what Dr. Pepper just did. And even those like you who find the approach mildly offensive are responding to the ad - which is more than one can say about most ads that get lost in the noise.
Win for Dr. Pepper and their ad agency. This kind of stuff wins awards - and moves a lot of soda.
Well, I guess I’ll be the shrill harpy: after I heard about this weeks ago (and read a bit about it), I decided that I wont be buying Dr. Pepper anymore. At least until they pull this buffoonery and apologize for it.
And it’s funny that they’re saying that this is just some sort of reverse psychology ploy to get women to want their drink. If that’s so, then why do they have a Facebook page that is coded to block all female users? If it’s reverse psychology and they want us to drink it, you’d think they’d want us to people to “like” their product and share our fondness. :rolleyes:
The cynic within me thinks it’s all a ploy. Think about it: with TV on the Internet and TiVo, no one has to watch ads anymore. So how do the mad men get us to watch them? Making sure we’ll be really pissy about whatever ads they do show so they’ll email their friends or tweet about them. And once people are angry enough they can apologize and look good again…for a while anyway.
I don’t think so. First of all, any man who is afraid to drink diet soda because of the “image” has issues. What year is this again? If some knuckle-dragger really believes that only girlie-men drink diet, then what is his pea-brain going to think about this 10-calorie wanna-be-manly soda? He’s going to think that the guy drinking “Ten” wants to look like a man but probably has panties and stockings on underneath his rugged Wrangler jeans.
And second, Diet Dr. Pepper’s ads have centered on tasting like the original for years now and I don’t recall them being only marketed to women. Why would a 10-calorie version make any sort of difference unless it gives you an instant boner.
I bet the stuff is off the market in a few months.
If I refused to buy products with ads I found offensive or insulting, I’d be living in a cardboard box and eating grass.
The manliness theme is one we are going to have to get used to. It must be a backlash, decades in coming, against the canonical Dopey Daddy or Retarded Husband characters in commercials. One I hate is the commercial that says it’s unmanly to drink light beers that don’t taste good. The funny thing is that the “chump” in the commercial is the only person in the whole commercial who has any sense.
BTW, there’s a Dr. Pepper TEN ad on the bottom of this page as I type. You can’t escape.
I agree with you, and for similar reasons I can’t fathom being upset, or wanting to boycott the soda, or especially wanting an apology. This silly, tongue-in-cheek plea for guys to start drinking diet soda has so offended your sensibilities? Really?
As our ad clearly states, Dr. Pepper Ten is only for men. You are clearly not fit to drink our product as evidenced by your letter which makes you sound like a pussy.
It may interest you to know that an alternative use for Dr. Pepper Ten is to pour it over your crotch in order to wash the sand out of your vagina. Our market research shows that while it does burn, it is well within the “hurts so good” range. Keep on truckin’
Sorry, my reaction is, it’s a commercial, who gives a shit? I’m male, not a fan of Dr. Pepper, so I won’t be buying their product anyway. That said, I will happily imbibe Diet Coke all day and night, and never thought of it as a non-manly drink. I thought diet drinks were mainstream enough these days that everybody drinks them.
I once got a nasty PM from a Mod chastising me for not warning that I was linking to Youtube, i.e. audio and video. My only thought was “You opened it at work without checking the URL, your volume settings, and the location of your boss, didn’t you?”
I could have said “Warning: video and audio”, but I think idiots should suffer from their own stupidity, and so I compromise and just post “read the URL”. I barely refrain from putting “duh” at the end of the warning.
No, not really upset or offended. I’m actually planning to try it just to see if it’s any different than Diet Dr. Pepper. I doubt it is and I will continue to drink my pussified Dr. Pepper. I just think it’s cheap marketing for a product that really isn’t needed except for those with small wieners. My response was directed to the notion that this is “a win” for Dr. Pepper and that it’s some sort of award winning marketing, which it isn’t.