I was watching TV recently and saw a commercial for Dr. Pepper 10. The premise was that this new low-cal drink was for men only.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iuG1OpnHP8
A few things stood out to me. First, it was interesting that Dr. Pepper decided to market this cross between the regular and diet option to men. Women are thought to be more calorie conscious and aware of body image so a new drink like this would probably appeal to those women. Immediately, the company caters this drink to men in hope that men will purchase the drink and not worry about feeling too girly drinking a beverage that is stereotypically for women. The commercial also reminded me of the car commercials we watched earlier in the semester. Just like that one, there was a video response for this commercial too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D805_b_a70&feature=watch_response
I also came across an article: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/story/2011-10-10/dr-pepper-for-men/50717788/1
What do y'all think about this? Is it possible for a drink to be feminine? Was it merely intended to be a funny commercial that is now being overanalyzed? Will this form of marketing work? What do commercials like this being released mean for the feminist movement?
I do think its possible for a drink to be considered feminine (such as cosmos), but I feel like this commercial, while intending to be funny, does cross the line. While it is somewhat humorous, it does alienate the feminine group and basically tells them "sorry, you're not good enough for this drink," essentially discriminating against an entire class of people. I also feel that this kind of marketing, for something like a soft drink won't work, especially since it's trying to compete with diet dr pepper in the same market, which is delicious as it is. I do not feel like this poses a threat to the feminist movement, as mostly everyone who watches it thinks "wow, this is a dumb commercial" and immediately dismiss what it says.
ReplyDelete1. When I saw this commercial, I immediately imagined what it would be like if they made a commercial that said "Dr. Pepper, it's not for black people." Or, Dr. Pepper, its not for gay people. etc, etc. This proves that our society condones this kind of "ism." It's acceptable for an advertisement to be blatantly sexist, but we would all be outraged if it was blatantly racist or heterosexist. This is indicative of our failure, as a culture, to acknowledge sexism for what it truly is.
ReplyDelete2. This is just one of a host of advertisements that market to men by demeaning women. Look at the Mike's Hard Lemonade ads where the catch phrase is "man-up." There's another beer commercial where the man drinking the light beer is wearing women's pants or something like that. It speaks to socialization of gender--what are men? everything that women are not. if it's female, it's bad.
3. I think it's interesting that Matt thinks people would dismiss it as a dumb commercial. I definitely think that's probably what my parents would do too. But isn't that part of the problem though? If we keep dismissing things as dumb then how do we ever challenged institutionalized inequalities?
I saw someone buying a thing of Dr. Pepper 10 at Kroger the other day and couldn't help but think of that commercial. And then I thought about Axe body wash and the terrible Dodge commercial and the cover of the magazine right in front of me and realized that it's really not that strange. Like Keyana noted, we fail to acknowledge the sexism all around us. We're the fish in the bowl of objectification (forgive me, I'm writing a paper on Mackinnon), and it has become so normal to us that we don't notice. It's funny that when it's presented in such an overt way, like the Dr. Pepper 10 commercial, it seems dumb or outrageous, but we absorb without comment so much of the rest of what we see and hear that is sexist, heterosexist, racist, etc. There was a Tide commercial a little while ago with a mom being so sad that her daughter isn't girly. There was some commentary, but there was SO MUCH going on in that commercial that we see all the time. Anyway, I'm not sure what to say about Dr. Pepper 10 commercial. It seems like it's just an exaggerated example of what we see all the time. At least with that one, people call the advertiser out.
ReplyDeletehttp://jezebel.com/5829421/mom-laments-daughters-tomboy-style-in-tide-ad