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The manliest manly-man soda known to man

Caperton

Have you ever hit “pause” on your romantic comedy, set your Diet Dr. Pepper down on the coffee table (cautiously, so as not to smudge your nail polish), and said to your vacuous, tittering girlfriends, “This diet drink isn’t doing it for me. I think I need a Dr. Pepper TEN”? And then a guy on a four-wheeler busts through the wall and slaps the Dr. Pepper TEN can out of your hand, because that drink is for men? Probably not, because the very can containing a Dr. Pepper TEN is so overtly manly that your hand would tremble too much to pick it up. It’s a man’s drink. For men. Who are manly. And not women.

And what does this magical elixir of manliness have in it? Battery acid, certainly. Bear sweat. Live scorpions. Just a hint of teargas.

Alternately: Ten calories.


Hey, that’s ten manly calories. (Transcript below the jump.)

So yeah, the ad is over-the-top macho and misogynistic, such that analysis will have to follow in a future post because a) the ad is so very self-aware, and b) I wouldn’t freaking know where to start. But here’s one place: This is your manly super-dude beverage, Dr. Pepper TEN, now with ten calories. As opposed to your girly-girl Diet Dr. Pepper, which has no calories. Same formula, same “23 flavors.” Just… ten calories. Instead of no calories. And a gunmetal-gray can. So the difference between romantic-comedy wussy girl drinks and mountain-man alligator-wrassler drinks is… ten calories.

Which I guess explains all the chest hair I’ve been growing. Thanks a ton, regular, 150-calorie Dr. Pepper.

Also: The competitors in the Dr. Pepper Tuition Throw at today’s SEC championship game? Two women. What’s next, the 2011 Aflac Pedicure-off? Good lord.

[A dudely-type action-movie dude-guy runs through the forest, dodging lasers, jumping in a tricked-out jungle jeep, and looking heroically mussed and dirt-smudged.]

MANLY DUDE. Hey, ladies. Enjoying the film? Of course not. Because this is our movie! And Dr. Pepper TEN is our soda. It’s only ten manly calories, but with all 23 flavors of Dr. Pepper. It’s what guys want. Like this! Catchphrase! So you can keep the romantic comedies and lady drinks. We’re good.

Dr. Pepper TEN. It’s not for women!

46 thoughts on The manliest manly-man soda known to man

  3. Honestly, I don’t understand why certain products are specifically advertised to men (or, alternatively, advertised only to women, unless it’s for bodily reasons, like not advertising sanitary pads to men or, I don’t know, jockey straps to women.) Dr.Pepper has just deliberately excluded half the population from its consumer list. Who’s stupid enough to do that? Wouldn’t you want the entire population to want to/be able to have your drink, instead of just half? It just seems stupid, they could have gone so many other routes that included everyone. The head of advertising should be fired, not only for misogyny, but just outright stupidness.
    ANYWAYS, I was thinking we girls should all take pictures of our badass selves having one of those OHMYGOSHSOMANLY Dr. Pepper drinks to prove them wrong, but then I realized that would be supporting them. Which isn’t good. BAH.

  4. That commercial’s ridiculous. Everyone knows that real manly men drink beer. No fancy crap, either. But nothing “lite,” because men don’t care about calories. So…Budweiser. Real men drink Budweiser. Sure, it sucks, but that’s the price you pay for manhood.

  5. MANLY DUDE. Hey, ladies. Enjoying the film? Of course not. Because this is our movie! And Dr. Pepper TEN is our soda. It’s only ten manly calories, but with all 23 flavors of Dr. Pepper. It’s what guys want. Like this! Catchphrase! So you can keep the romantic comedies and lady drinks. We’re good.

    Man, the next time I get stuck contemplating the nature of my gender identity, I’ll just take a shortcut and think about my movie preferences instead!

    What, what gender is associated with cheesy 80s classics, Korean horror films, and German expressionism again?

  6. Jadey:

    What, what gender is associated with cheesy 80s classics, Korean horror films, and German expressionism again?

    Well… obviously they are foreign films. So women /sarcasm.

  7. The commercial is horrible for its complete disregard for women (or men who don’t feel the need to “act” macho). But also horrible from a marketing perspective because it completely undercuts the main Diet Dr. Pepper slogan of “tastes just like regular Dr. Pepper.” If Diet Dr. Pepper tastes just like regular Dr. pepper then what is Dr. Pepper 10 taste like?

  8. Anxious masculinity is so fascinating. Pepsi had a dude ad for their low-cal version of Pepsi (NOT diet! don’t call it diet ’cause that’s for chicks!) that had guys suffering painful injuries through bizarre happenings, all the while drinking low-cal Pepsi. Because that made a lot of sense, as well. Dr. Pepper takes it a step further, blatantly saying that their drink is for MEN, NOT LADIES OK? Um, ok? Fine, I guess I won’t buy Dr. Pepper then. Chill out.

    Really, I think Dr. Pepper has completely missed the mark here, mostly because they’re trying to satirize Coke and Pepsi’s foray into dudely drinks that are low-cal but not diet ’cause that’s for ladies, yet they can’t fully commit because, well, they want dudes to buy Dr. Pepper 10. This is another example of Satire is Hard, clause 7, paragraph 3: you can’t do satire if you’re trying to play both sides.

  10. I was wondering whether you guys or Pandagon would get to this first.

    One of the biggest obstacles in marketing diet or lite anything to men is that they think it’s girly. That’s why the original ads for Miller Lite constituted one of the most spectacularly successful campaigns in advertising history. They brought in an endless succession of tough, macho jocks and other celebs to convince beer drinkers that tough guys drink light beer too.

    This Dr Pepper thing is like somebody who didn’t graduate from the top of his class in marketing school got handed this account and all he could think of was the Miller Lite case study. This idiotic ad was his lunkheaded attempt to put that principle into practice. I’m just amazed there wasn’t some grownup, either at the ad agency or Dr Pepper Snapple, to nip this monstrosity in the bud.

  11. Seth Eag: Can’t we just have something of our own?

    Yeah, and we’ll call it pretty much all of public life for the last 10,000 years. Or is the name not catchy enough?

  12. Honestly, I don’t understand why certain products are specifically advertised to men (or, alternatively, advertised only to women, unless it’s for bodily reasons, like not advertising sanitary pads to men or, I don’t know, jockey straps to women.) Dr.Pepper has just deliberately excluded half the population from its consumer list. Who’s stupid enough to do that? Wouldn’t you want the entire population to want to/be able to have your drink, instead of just half? It just seems stupid, they could have gone so many other routes that included everyone. The head of advertising should be fired, not only for misogyny, but just outright stupidness.

    Misogynist, absolutely. Stupid, no. Researchers have found that this kind of marketing can increases sales. Gender roles are so deeply ingrained in us that they impact our shopping behavior, and marketers have been using this knowledge to manipulate us for a century.

    Let’s really dissect this campaign to see how this happens. Even if you don’t buy Dr. Pepper Ten, chances are you’ll buy Diet Coke because that product is the market leader for sugar-free drinks. In fact, consumers are almost twice as likely to buy a Diet Coke as a Diet Pepsi. And that plays right into the marketers’ plans. Why? Because Dr. Pepper isn’t one company — it’s apart of the Coca-Cola Company. So, overall, the MNC still makes money from this campaign. IIRC, the technical phrase for this strategy is “market segmentation and diversification within a multinational corporation (MNC).”

  13. Seth Eag:
    Can’twejusthavesomethingofourown?

    Well, even if the ladyfolk take away Dr. Pepper, at least we’ll always have My little Pony: Friendship is Magic…

  14. Caisara: Even if you don’t buy Dr. Pepper Ten, chances are you’ll buy Diet Coke because that product is the market leader for sugar-free drinks. In fact, consumers are almost twice as likely to buy a Diet Coke as a Diet Pepsi. And that plays right into the marketers’ plans. Why? Because Dr. Pepper isn’t one company — it’s apart of the Coca-Cola Company. So, overall, the MNC still makes money from this campaign. IIRC, the technical phrase for this strategy is “market segmentation and diversification within a multinational corporation (MNC).”

    Doesn’t that make it not stupid cus it works?

  15. Caisara wrote: Misogynist,absolutely.Stupid,no.

    Indeed. Segmenting can in fact increase the sales of both products; lots of consumers like to feel they are members of a club and that something is “especially for them”, not just a generic product.

    Interesting post, btw. I wasn’t aware of the “dudes who want to eat healthy but do not want to be seen eating girly food” segment. Makes a certain kind of sense, though, in a society the pointlessly genders just about everything and where misogynist language appeals to a frighteningly large fraction of the male population. (The segmenting makes sense, that is – the way we think and talk about gender in our society, not so much)

  16. EG:
    That commercial’s ridiculous. Everyone knows that real manly men drink beer. […] Budweiser.

    Since when is Budweiser a beer?

  17. AnonCoward23: Since when is Budweiser a beer?

    Depends. Are you speaking of Anhauser-Busch’s Budweiser, or of Czech Budweiser Budvar? The latter is a pretty neat golden lager, made with flavorous hops, a bit sweeter than those used in pilsners. The former is just proof marketing and advertisement suck.

  18. Oh, and I bounced on the tangent about beer because the advertizement this post is about drips so much stupidity that I’d be afraid it would contaminate me if I commented directly about it.

  19. A modest proposal from Ninjanurse– save your money and skip the soda altogether. The cans and bottles are bad for the environment, soda at best has zero nutritional value (diet) and at worst (regular) is a contributor to obesity and diabetes. I have talked to many people who drank a lot of regular soda and later found out their blood sugar had been too high for a long time.
    CokePepsiCornSweetenerCo will brew up something better if we stop buying junk.

  20. Well, I think soda has its place, though not, in my opinion, as an everyday beverage. But I have always used Coca-Cola for medicinal purposes. In my experience, it is the best thing out there for quelling nausea or motion sickness, works to get rid of migraines that have lasted for many, many hours and resisted every other kind of over the counter treatment, and is also good for when I’ve forgotten to eat often enough and my blood sugar is crashing horrendously.

    And my dissertation advises uses it to clean the…something something that has to do with her car. Sparks and plugs? Sparks and points? Spark plug points? Something like that. Apparently it eats away the rust or calcification build-up or whatever happens to things like that. She can’t bring herself to drink it, having it seen it do that, but it does have its uses.

  21. Heh, EG: I once bought a bottle of otc anti-nausea med at my local pharmacy. Some time later, I bothered to look at the ingredient list: glucose and phosphoric acid. Which you will of course recognize as the same as sweetened sodapop. My little 8 oz bottle ran me a few dollars, whereas a bottle of coke would’ve been way cheaper — and fizzier!

  22. Fizziness is always more fun! Also, I read somewhere that cola syrup is/was an old home remedy for nausea, so there’s that. But I read it before the Interwebs, so I can’t remember where.

  23. EG:
    Thatcommercial’sridiculous.Everyoneknowsthatrealmanlymendrinkbeer.Nofancycrap,either.Butnothing“lite,”becausemendon’tcareaboutcalories.So…Budweiser.RealmendrinkBudweiser.Sure,itsucks,butthat’sthepriceyoupayformanhood.

    I love the Bud light “man card”/manliness commercials, because Bud….light. Because real men don’t play tackle football, they play flag.

  24. This ad is also trying to capitalize on self-referential exaggeration-based Internet-style humor, like the Dos Equis “Mos Interesting Man” and Old Spice “I’m On a Horse” commercials have. It’s very trendy right now in advertising, since by and large they’re behind the curve in humor.

  25. saurus:
    Thisadisalsotryingtocapitalizeonself-referentialexaggeration-basedInternet-stylehumor,liketheDosEquis“MosInterestingMan”andOldSpice“I’mOnaHorse”commercialshave.It’sverytrendyrightnowinadvertising,sincebyandlargethey’rebehindthecurveinhumor.

    I was going to say…Powerthirst!

    Wonder how many women who don’t see themselves as “girly girls” (whatever that means) and who “don’t really get along with girls because they just, like, get along better with guys, I don’t know why” will jump on this bandwagon in a continued effort to prove the ways in which they relate to men and internalize the importance of male approval. (I bet that wasn’t the market segment the advertisers were going for, but there are always side effects to these kinds of campaigns.)

  26. Dr. Pepper isn’t one company — it’s apart of the Coca-Cola Company.

    Dr. Pepper is not a part of Coke.

    Coke Zero was also supposed to be a manly beverage (because dudes won’t drink Diet Coke because zomg! lady cooties!). Turns out that women make up about half of the Coke Zero drinkers, so they switched their marketing strategy.

  28. I drink Coke Zero because it tastes better than Diet Coke. I don’t drink Dr. Pepper 10, because it doesn’t taste as good as Diet Dr. Pepper. Diet Pepsi is foul. No marketing campaign can change those facts for me.

    And it doesn’t matter what the movie is, just who it has in it.

  29. EG: Also, I read somewhere that cola syrup is/was an old home remedy for nausea, so there’s that. But I read it before the Interwebs, so I can’t remember where.

    If you find the kind of dusty pharmacy that has stuff like liniment, you should be able to find Coca-Cola syrup. Yes, it is used for nausea; my mom gave it to us all the time.

    Angelia Sparrow: I drink Coke Zero because it tastes better than Diet Coke.

    They use a different sweetener, and yes, Coke Zero tastes more like regular Coke than Diet Coke does. Of course, Mexican Coke (or kosher for Passover Coke) tastes like Coke used to taste before the whole “New Coke” debacle, which I maintain was done as a means of misdirection to hide the fact that they were switching from sugar to corn syrup and they couldn’t disguise the way that altered the flavor. So: announce a change to the formula, saturate the market with this “new” product, then when everyone decides they hate the new one, but has forgotten exactly how the old one tasted and there’s not enough leftover old product left to compare, introduce the “classic” version, which is similar to but not quite the old product, with a much cheaper sweetener and higher profit margins.

  30. It’s a great marinade for ham. 🙂

    Also as a glaze for roast pork, especially root beer.

    Ginger ale and Dr Pepper are the only two soft drinks I like. Haven’t bought any Dr Pepper since I heard about this ad a few weeks ago, but then I’ve never been a big pop fan to begin with so I doubt they’ve missed my patronage. Iced green tea for me all the way–healthier, and I can control how much (real, not HFCS) sugar I’m getting.

  31. I think Dr. Pepper has completely missed the mark here, mostly because they’re trying to satirize Coke and Pepsi’s foray into dudely drinks that are low-cal but not diet ’cause that’s for ladies, yet they can’t fully commit because, well, they want dudes to buy Dr. Pepper 10.

    This is the first thing I’ve read that’s made any sense to me about that campaign. It’s just as appealing/appalling to all sides as Clintonian triangulation was.

  32. In addition to everything else that’s wrong about this, I’m confused as to why a company would take on the expense of formulating a different diet soda, just to appeal to men, rather than repackaging their regular diet soda and marketing it accordingly. As the OP points out, it’s absurd to think that 10 calories somehow makes a difference. So why bother? I just don’t get it.

    Then again, maybe someone actually thought that men and women would want different sodas, and not just purely on the basis of marketing, but no one could think of what that difference might be — thus, 10 calories. But how silly would management need to be go down that road? Again, I just don’t get it.

  34. EG: The nausea remedies vary by family: I have a friend whose clan swears by Coke, but my family always used 7-up. And in non-drinking applications, we’ve employed a plumber who uses Coke instead of Drano.
    Also, Mexican coke and soda for the win.

  36. Colin Day: According to this, caffeine has some effect on migraines.

    This is why Excedrine is the best headache medicine… lots of sweet, sweet caffeine.

    As for Dr Pepper… Sigh… As Capteron said, where to begin?

    Personally, Diet Dr Pepper is the only diet Soda I can drink. The rest are way too salty. I haven’t tried Dr Pepper 10, and am not likely to, not with this stupid campaign.

    The idea of gendered food is ridiculous, but real. I love Special K and yogurt, but people always assume I am buying them for my wife, because they are exclusively marketed as women’s foods. Can’t we just eat our rice flakes, infected milk and sugarwater in peace and without gender baggage??

  37. EG: Fizziness is always more fun! Also, I read somewhere that cola syrup is/was an old home remedy for nausea, so there’s that. But I read it before the Interwebs, so I can’t remember where.

    Fun fact: Coca-Cola was actually invented by a Columbus, Georgia, pharmacist and marketed as a tonic for nerves and stomach problems and whatnot. It was in Atlanta that they added the carbonated water, but it was invented in Columbus, so suck it, World of Coca-Cola.

  38. FashionablyEvil: Dr. Pepper is not a part of Coke.

    My bad. I’ve been out of the U.S. for a while, so I was going by what I remember from the European bottles, which have the Coca-Cola trademark.

    But I think the underlying point about market segmentation and diversification — and the opacity of MNC ownership and product licensing — is still valid.

  39. Chase: In addition to everything else that’s wrong about this, I’m confused as to why a company would take on the expense of formulating a different diet soda, just to appeal to men, rather than repackaging their regular diet soda and marketing it accordingly. As the OP points out, it’s absurd to think that 10 calories somehow makes a difference. So why bother? I just don’t get it.

    IIRC, it’s also to appeal to “supertasters” who are more likely to avoid Diets because of the bitter aftertaste. They’re also less carbonated, at least in my region.

  41. Caisara: IIRC, it’s also to appeal to “supertasters” who are more likely to avoid Diets because of the bitter aftertaste. They’re also less carbonated, at least in my region.

    Aaaah, so that’s what’s wrong with me!! Good to know! I’ve always hated diet soda or fake-low-sugar-anything with an intensity that baffles anyone I’ve ever met. Well, learn something new every day!

  42. Valerie: Wonder how many women who don’t see themselves as “girly girls” (whatever that means) and who “don’t really get along with girls because they just, like, get along better with guys, I don’t know why” will jump on this bandwagon in a continued effort to prove the ways in which they relate to men and internalize the importance of male approval. (I bet that wasn’t the market segment the advertisers were going for, but there are always side effects to these kinds of campaigns.)

    This is pretty much *exactly* what they are doing with their corporate response letter:

    “Thank you for writing to us about Dr Pepper TEN and allowing us to respond to your concerns. I am a woman who loves the full flavor of Dr Pepper TEN and the fact that it’s only 10 calories. When I first saw the tongue-in-cheek advertising campaign and the tagline, my reaction was, “I’ll be the judge of that.” In other words, no one is going to tell me what I can eat or drink. We are disappointed to hear that we could be losing you-I see this as a fun campaign and a very good product that I personally enjoy. We hope you, too, will come to see our advertising campaign for what it is, a humorous take on the many men who are worried about their waistlines but are too “manly” to drink a diet soda.”

  44. LeftSidePositive: Aaaah, so that’s what’s wrong with me!! Good to know! I’ve always hated diet soda or fake-low-sugar-anything with an intensity that baffles anyone I’ve ever met.

    Thats me, too… I perceive it as salty, but yeah, awful.

    My diet is incredibly bland (to other people). The spiciest thing I can stand is nacho flavored Doritos. Regular black, in the little packets by the salt pepper is almost too much.

  45. There are two things that hit me as wrong in this add. First- it is simply telling all “women” that they need to drink calorie free soda. Which is not true, if you like the real thing it is not that big of a deal. No one should force us to watch our calories. This ad does not only send this message to women, it portrays a description of what every “man” must love and act like. It reminds me of beer commercials. In many beer ads it tells men how to be men. Isn’t that the same thing we feminists are complaining about? How the media is telling us who to be? I think it goes both ways and that it would be good for us to remember it.

  46. Pingback: Lesson four – Emotional eating. | The Fat Nutritionist

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