Post Punk Kitchen Forum

So the ad didn't say, "you can keep your romantic comedies and lady drinks" and I was just being crazy when he said "Are you having a good time? Of course you're not!" Because women don't like action movies? And the tagline is not "Its not for women"?

Its making jokes about men at the expense of women.

Or...you are wrong. That's just a possibility that I'm tossing out there.

You know, my general philosophy in life is that if someone says they experienced something as sexist/racist/homophobic/discriminatory I'm going to go with their interpretation. Especially if they are members of that marginalized group.

If I didn't experience it as sexist/racist/homophobic/discriminatory and I feel like it would be appropriate I might respond with curiosity, wondering what they felt was sexist/etc about it.

My inclination is not to dismiss someone's experience of marginalization because I didn't experience it that way. It used to be. But then I realized that as a white person I will never experience racism directed at me, and I had men tell me that I was wrong about experiencing something as sexist and that made me question how I could ever tell another person that their experience as a marginalized person was wrong.

With jazz hands?

Juggalo thread? That place is chill. Dr Pepper thread? That's where the shiitake gets real.

Do people believe the makers of Dr Pepper Ten really don't want women to buy the product? Or truly don't believe woman can handle it or enjoy it? Or that they think anything other than, "We want lots and lots of people to buy this"?

I'm mostly offended that whoever thought this idea up was not immediately laughed out of the room.

I'm sure their goals are more specific than this.

They want men to buy it.

I don't like the word "crazy" being used like that, so no, I wouldn't call you that.

Yes, the character in the ad spoke the scripted lines that you're quoting.

But, no, I don't agree with you that those are jokes at the expense of women. No, I don't think those were horrible things to say. I like the example of the Yorkie bar wrapper being brought up because I think that's a much simplified version of the same joke, and I don't think that humor and this use of it in marketing is a horrible and sexist thing. I think the PMS dairy ads were far worse, and a far more accurate example of sexism in advertising.

Yes, generally, I agree with you.

But in this case, I didn't have to express curiosity, ShyMox explained why "I didn't like [x] about [y]" in the very first post of the thread. I watched the video, because the topic interested me, and if I had agreed with ShyMox and felt like I had something original to contribute about that, I would have expressed my agreement. In this case, I did not agree with ShyMox, and nobody had expressed a disagreement (which we'll call [z]), so I expressed mine.

Just because a person is offended by a text doesn't necessarily mean everybody has to agree that the text is a bad thing. There are such things as oppressive texts. But there is also such a thing as people either misinterpreting or misreading or overreacting to a text.


Yep, and if we weren't sure about that, the AdAge article makes that abundantly clear.

Yes, and there is such a thing as silencing marginalized voices by telling them they are overreacting, misinterpreting or misreading. In fact there was a recent thread about exactly this kind of thing.

And of course not everyone is going to agree that a text that people find offensive is a bad thing. That's the way that systemic and endemic oppression exists. If everyone agreed when someone stands up and says "this is oppressive" oppression would quickly disappear.

To echo mel c, I'm less offended by the ad than I am by your continued assertions that people's (specifically women's) reactions to this stupid ad are wrong

I have a feeling they subscribe to the school of thought advocated by this guy where you insult your potential customer as bait.

Omigoodness PPK. What the hell happened while I was not here?


I'm gonna jump in and say that this statement is problematic for me. Offense is not defined by anybody but the person who is offended so I'm not understanding how you are able to tell somebody their reaction is incorrect.

That being said, this really didn't offend me. I pretty much think they did it as a joke. It's terribly unfunny, though, and that offends me. Also, anybody who is offended completely has the right to be.

And when, in the 70s, Toffifay used the tagline, "It's too good for kids," what were they thinking? That kids are horrible, or that—somehow—the ads would move a bunch of people to buy the candy?

If the ad used the line "Women: they're terrible", I wouldn't think it meant that the ad's creators were thinking that woman are terrible. So I guess I don't get where this line of inquiry is going: is it only possible for an ad to be a problem if it was created by misogynists? Is it not possible for a creative team to misstep?

I mean, would the team behind the Willie Horton ad be unhappy about getting black votes? Was their strategy anything other than trying to get as many votes as possible? I don't see how the answers to these questions could indemnify them, so it just seems kind of irrelevant to me.

I was going to be offended, but then I read the rest of the thread and learned that this would be the incorrect reaction. Phew, that was close!

I think we should just drink Mr Pibb instead. Does it come in diet? Not that I drink diet soda anyway

When I was 10, I just used to by Yorkie chocolate bars and wave them in boys faces to irritate them. I felt SOOO cool, like I'd broken the law or something.
They weren't all that awesome actually

If a person's reaction to the ad is based on the assumption that Dr. Pepper is being serious about women not liking action movies, or about only men being capable of drinking Dr. Pepper Ten, or about there being such a thing as "manly calories," or about a guy in a buggy shouting, "CATCHPHRASE!", I can't say I agree with them or with how they interpreted the ad. Maybe every person is entitled to their opinion and maybe every feeling is valid if only so far as it actually is a person's feeling and what they're experiencing at that moment, and maybe there is no such thing as an "incorrect" reaction. And I think discussing whether or not the ad was a good idea or whether or not the joke was funny or whether or not the very concept of marketing by gender is problematic are all good, valid topics.

But the first page of this thread is filled with indignant posts by people who are acting as if Dr. Pepper is actually forbidding women from drinking Dr. Pepper Ten. They are allowed to disagree with me, of course, but I'm pretty sure that's not what's happening with this ad, unless I missed where ad campaigns attempting to be clever are now adhered to as the law of the land.

Some of them might be joking, Mihl, but not all of them. Certainly, not the originator of this thread, the person whose take on the ad on differs from mine, and with whom I've been discussing those differences of opinion.

http://forum.theppk.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=14345

Mat.

You seem to think I'm an idiot who doesn't understand that they were trying to be funny and that they're seriously banning women from drinking Dr Pepper. That wasn't what I ever said at all. I said I was offended at the jokes they are making about women.

I have the intelligence of an normal adult, please stop trying to mansplain the commercial to me.

I'm not offended so much as fed up with jokes about women liking RomComs/girly beverages/low cal food/taking forever to get dressed. Just as much as I'm tired that my mom finds it hilarious that my husband likes shoe shopping. Just as much as I'm tired of People Eating Tasty Animals.

They're outdated, silently reinforcing, and not even funny.

This commercial reminds me of Family Guy and South Park where everyone gets made fun of. I think the commercial is equally sexist toward men and women, which might be why both test markets liked the campaign. Perhaps their testing showed that the Dr. Pepper audience was mainly the Family Guy/South Park crowd?