Kill the Peppers
First marketing ruined Usenet. Then marketing ruined e-mail. Then marketing ruined Internet surfing. Now it’s the blogosphere’s turn.
The exploding popularity of Weblogs?diary like personal Web sites, also known as blogs?is often touted as a shining example of untainted expression.
But marketers at Dr Pepper see the movement as the perfect launch point for a ?grass roots? campaign for a new ?milk-based product with an attitude,? Raging Cow. The first step is an in-house blog (ragingcow.com); it tells the fictional backstory of the drink, which rolls out in April in flavors like Chocolate Insanity and Pina Colada Chaos.
Listen, you soulless brain eating automatons, if I want a milk-based product with an attitude, I’ll get it like my father and grandfather before me, from a lactating pregnant woman. In fact, you better hope that she grows an extra nipple for Dr. Pepper products, because that’s the only way any of your swill is getting into my house for the indefinite future. I’m going to pour your drink into the toilet at parties and then announce that it tasted funny and I just threw it up. I’m going to piss on your roadsigns. I’m going to tell everyone I meet that Dr. Pepper is the favorite drink of right-wing assassins and that it not only contains carcinogens, drinking too much of it turns you into a retard. For proof of this statement I will simply point to David Naughton. If my two year old daughter ever asks for a Dr. Pepper I’m going to tell her it’s made from the eyes of kittens boiled alive in giant vats of acid. In fact, I’m going to tell every kid I meet that.
Next comes a blog-related twist on viral marketing?recruiting ?key influence bloggers? to promote Raging Cow by sharing their enthusiasm, linking to the site and distributing special screensavers, banners and skins. Beginning with an initial group of six people in their late teens and early 20s?flown to Dallas with their parents for an induction session?Dr Pepper hopes to develop a ?blogging network? to hype Raging Cow and ?be part of the ?in the know? crowd,? says its brand-marketing honcho Andrew Springate. Those spreading the news via their blogs won?t disclose their flackitude, says Springate, because officially they?re not paid Dr Pepper employees; they only get promo items like hats and T shirts. ?We?re independent and can advertise Raging Cow the way we want,? says Nicole, 18, a Louisiana high-school senior with a popular blog.
Key influence bloggers? What is that, some kind of code for people who are so desperate to whore themselves that they won’t even ask for cash? How excellent for Dr. Pepper. Just in case you were wondering, Nichole, that’s the same rationalization used to give back alley blowjobs to perfect strangers in exchange for a handful of cocktail peanuts, except of course that professional whores aren’t that stupid.
Gosh, how special they must feel.
I wouldn’t disclose my flackiwhore status if I were them either. That would be like begging perfect strangers to bitchslap them 24 hours a day. It’s like announcing the to the varsity football team, in the locker room, that not only are you mentally superior to them in way possible to measure, but that your half-elven warrior monk could kick their ass physically if he were only real. Also that football is a stupid game played by simplistic morons who are sexually attracted to their fathers.
Not that withholding that status does you even one iota of good, you pathetic corporate rectum suckers, as the company whose offal you are so busy swallowing has already outed you as the desperate little scumbuckets that you are.
Introducing the Official Dr. Pepper Corporate Whores of 2003
About A Girl
Pam is such a Dork
BoyMeetsLife
Kelly Rogers
Italian
sparkley
One Weblog guru thinks the campaign might backfire. ?It seems ironic that a company would want to manipulate a phenomenon that?s so generally bent on exposing things,? says alpha blogger Doc Searls. ?In my view blogs are the antidote to viral marketing.?
I hope to God he’s right. The good Doc has mentioned it already, which is unsurprising in that he was interviewed for the story.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go indulge in some apparently much needed public shaming.
Update: Chronotope has done some excellent spadework. Link via Instapundit