When Dr. Pepper launched a 10-calorie soft drink, we blasted the drink itself, but also the advertising touch where the drink was "for men only."
Good news and bad news: the company is spreading the 10-calorie concept to 7-Up, Sunkist, Canada Dry, RC Cola, and A&W Root Beer. The better news is that the advertising won't be as gender-insulting.
10-calorie soft drinks are designed to be neutral, though a difference of 9 calories makes you a diet drink, just one with high-fructose corn syrup. If you like the taste of artificial sweeteners (aspartame, sucralose, ace K), then why would you need to drink 9 more calories? And if you don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners, you wouldn't touch these faux diet drinks anyway.
The 10-calorie soft drinks are like when your family can't decide where to go eat out, and someone suggests Olive Garden as a compromise. Then you realize the Olive Garden suggestion has united everyone into saying that pick is a horrible idea.
That lame compromise theme exudes through the new advertising.
-- sitting in a pick-up truck that is hot pink
-- watching a cooking TV show that is interrupted by a football player barging through the set
-- drinking champagne by the fireplace while grilling a giant T-bone steak
-- a barking cat.
The neanderthal ads for Dr. Pepper 10 took us back to an era where newspaper classified job ads were divided by gender. But that era did exist.
These ads paint the genders in odd stereotypes that never did exist. Women who buy pickup trucks (or cars) aren't buying them in hot pink. Neither gender wants a cooking show invaded by a football player. If you eat meat, regardless of gender, why not have a glass of champagne while you're grilling?
Somehow, the barking cat is the only example that fits what the company is trying to do, and that is least gender-offensive idea yet.
In 2013, we live in a society where men and women are more confident to show elements of their personality that aren't confined to a narrow gender definition. Metrosexual men and women who know how to fix things are growing closer to the norm. if nothing else, these are the examples that might sell some ill-concept diet soft drinks.
Even if the ads were good, they wouldn't make up for a bad product. Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. is confused about the ads and the product (finally, some consistency).
Dr. Pepper poured a lot of advertising and goodwill in telling consumers that the diet version tasted like regular Dr. Pepper. 10-calorie diet drinks taste like < 1-calorie diet drinks, but they don't taste like regular soft drinks.
In that restaurant analogy, you would rather go to a place you didn't want that someone wants than go someplace that nobody wants. Soft drink companies would be better off trying to encourage anyone to drink whatever they want to drink, regardless of gender.
photo credit: Dr. Pepper/Snapple
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