Dr Pepper Mans Up? Talk about malpractice…

In truth, I really don’t have much of an idea what Dr Pepper tastes like, but on my mind’s tongue it’s a ghastly combination of liquid shoe polish, sicky-sweet something or other, and Moxie, New England’s own original hair-on-your-chest, disgusting tasting “soda”.  I suspect, however, that, given the popularity of Dr Pepper, the operative attribute of the three that I imagine is sicky-sweet.

But the promotion for the new Dr Pepper 10 is decidedly of the hair-on-your-chest variety. Dr Pepper 10 positioning? “It’s not for women.”

…the soda comes in a gunmetal can decorated with bullets; its advertisements include snake wrestlers and laser guns; and on its Facebook page you can visit a digital shooting gallery where you take aim at female products—lipstick, high heels, etc. (Source: The Daily Beast.)

Shooting gallery? Taking aim at female products?

I’m fine with marketing a product aimed (ahem) men, but do they really need to encourage their target (ahem) demographic, which I presume is teen-aged boys and “failure to launch” twenty-somethings who’ve never been on a date, to shoot at things associated with women?

There are plenty of male-ish things that wouldn’t involve shooting proxies for the female of the species. Think cars, trucks, motor cycles, cigarette boats, football, lumberjacks, boxing, stags, and garbage men. And that’s just for starters.

Wouldn’t it be kinder, and gentler, to take the Irish Spring approach.

You remember: “Manly, yes, but I like it, too.”

Admittedly, Dr Pepper is doing some clever marketing around Dr Pepper 10, given that this sort of campaign is quite naturally going to stir up some controversy and, thus, that most potent of marketing lures: going viral, which we used to call free publicity.

Some Moses in their advertising agency apparently went up the mountain and was handed down the tablets containing Dr Pepper’s Ten Man’Ments for using social media.

1 – THOU SHALT NOT OMG
If it’s not exploding, it’s not exciting.

2 – THOU SHALT NOT PUCKER UP
Kissy faces are never manly.

3 – THOU SHALT NOT POST PICS OF YOUR OUTFIT
Unless it’s battle armour and you have a gigantic sword and/or small bazooka.

4 – THOU SHALT NOT POST FURRY ANIMAL VIDEOS
Exceptions made for beasts fighting to the death and bears destroying idyllic picnic scenes.

5 – THOU SHALT NOT MAKE A ‘MAN-GAGEMENT’ ALBUM
That is all.

6 – THOUGH SHALT NOT SHARE YOUR HOROSCOPE
Daily.

7 – THOU SHALT NOT INSTAGRAM YOUR LUNCH
Real men eat lunch, not tweet it.

8 – THOU SHALT NOT UNTAG UNFLATTERING PICS
We know you were there.

9 – THOU SHALT NOT END A COMMENT WITH A =)
(Oops…I do that all the time!)

10 –  THOU SHALT NOT MAKE A FACEBOOK PROFILE FOR YOUR PET,
baby and/or imaginary friend.

Not the wittiest thing I’ve ever come across. And certainlyl pandering to the old stereotypes. (Am I the only one who can hear someone in the target demographic calling his buddy a ‘fag’ for sharing his horoscope.’ But a notch above Hee-Haw. I guess.

By the way, I found these on a blog called American Soda, tag line: “The Real Taste of America in Europe.” Wow! Talk about carving out a niche for your blogging self. I’m not 100% certain, but I believe that the unbolded words are American Soda’s commentary, not Dr Pepper’s.

Anyway, I had to borrow the Man’Ments from a secondary source because  access to the ur source – Dr Pepper on Facebook – required my “liking it.” LOL, as they say. I am so completely unwilling to “like” this, lest someone visiting my underused, don’t give it a second thought FB entry might think that I actually liked Dr Pepper, and had gotten sucked into their nefarious going viral marketing scheme. Which I so definitely have not!

Okay, who am I to talk? I’m blogging about it. But isn’t it amazing that 10-million plus and counting Facebook-ers have Liked Dr Pepper. And that hundreds are commenting pro and con on their wall. Citizen marketers, indeed.

You got your bread, you got your circus, and now you got your Dr Pepper Facebook wall where you can posit your own personal everlasting thumbs up or thumbs down. And the road to total immersion citizen-as-consumer continues apace.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see if the good Dr sells much 10, or this ends up being another Coke Classic.

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A clink of a Moxie bottle to my sister Kath for pointing this story out to me.