Image: Dr Pepper Snapple Group
Real men don't drink sissy diet sodas, no siree! So to reach out to these untapped macho population for its new diet drink, Dr. Pepper decided to harness the power of mysogynistic advertisement. Behold, the drink that's not for women:
LinkTo appeal to men, Dr Pepper made its Ten drink 180 degrees different from Diet Dr Pepper. It has calories and sugar, unlike its diet counterpart. Instead of the dainty tan bubbles on the diet can, Ten will be wrapped in gunmetal grey packaging with silver bullets. And while Diet Dr Pepper’s marketing is women-friendly, the ad campaign for Ten goes out of its way to eschew women.
For instance, there’s a Dr Pepper Ten Facebook page for men only. And TV commercials are heavy on the machismo, including one spot that shows muscular men in the jungle battling snakes and bad guys and appear to shoot lasers at each other.
"Hey ladies. Enjoying the film? Of course not. Because this is our movie and this is our soda," a man says as he attempts to pour the soda into a glass during a bumpy ATV ride. "You can keep the romantic comedies and lady drinks. We’re good."
2.) People like to feel like they are special
3.) People like to feel like they belong to a special group
You see this all the time in society and advertisers try to exploit it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom)
One's sense of humor is bound-up in their self-image. IMHO, everything relates back to self-hood, and that is because it is the only possible existence.
Some people who derive a sense of self from identity with a group think it is funny to deride and ridicule others, it boosts their own self-esteem and they laugh doing it.
Others who derive more sense of self-worth from imaginging themselves as righteous, would quite frankly be disturbed by what the others found humorous.
If there was no appeal to self-hood here, then there would be no mention of group-identity; there would be no mention of men or women. Even if the split was between non-human animals and humans, it would still be appealing to one's identity as human.
I'm using the word "special" not to refer to an oddity but to a feeling. One wants to feel "special" i.e. loved over and above others and feel that they belong to a group that is "special" i.e. deserving of love over and above others.
Long time ago Irish Spring soap used to have a commercial where the soap was described by a hot woman as "Manly, yes. But I like it too!" I have no idea what manly soap is.
I'm not a fan of advertising in general but I have to admit this makes me curious about what the stuff tastes like.
No, I don't think I did...
See, I'm talking about the reality beyond our relative conceptualizations and in-fact the reality which informs the construction of concepts like "Man" and "Woman". The ad could have said the drink was a "Humanly" drink, and no-one would be excluded from the category, but this is not it, they are saying it is a "Manly" drink, which whether done to hook men's pride or any other emotion associated with an identity as "Man" is vastly different from "Humanly".
It doesn't work with "Humanly" because humans do not generally identify themselves with totality, they identify themselves with some one aspect of the totality, such as being either male or female. Everyone is a human and everyone is included in that category, so we almost never talk about us all being humans. For our egotistical purposes we find ways of subdividing humanity into discrete categories like "Man" and "Woman" from which we can assume and infer all kinds of differences, which provide a basis for any and all humor, envy, pride or what-not associated with one or the other of the division.
I'm focusing on the very fact of the division, which precludes any discussion depending on the division.
;-D
DING DING DING DING!