Dear Brands. Please learn to say I am not sorry.
Oktober 18th, 2009 • Brands, Ideas, Social Business, Strategy
This article is a rant. A classic one.
Lately (I have to admit) I more and more get sick of the keepers of the holy grail of Political Correctness whenever a brand launches some kind of ironical, stereotype-laden communication tool in the social space. But wait, it’s not that simple! Actually I am more hacked off by brands who bow down to these people and beg for forgiveness whenever a group of these people start mocking around on twitter.
Pepsi and the score advisor app
Probably you have heard about the so-called Pepsi AMP fail. Early in October Pepsi has launched an iPhone application for its AMP range of energy drinks. The idea of the app is simple and (more or less) funny. After downloading the tool the user may choose between 24 different stereotypical female characters, ranging from “athlete” to “cougar” to “punk girl”. The app will then support your nightly challenge at the bar with helpful tips, pickup lines and conversation snippets to spice up your ‘pre score’ conversation with the respective woman of your choice.
This is what it looks like:
AMP is just one brand among other Pepsi brands such as Mountain Dew and others. Within hours the hordes of Goodness complained about Pepsi’s sexist approach online. A couple of days later Pepsi reacted on the complaints in a more or less odd way. AMP (as sub brand of Pepsi) published a rather half-hearted statement via its twitter account (not the main Pepsi twitter account), stating…
The really crazy part is the last part of this tweet. A sub brand of Pepsi does not only use, but even invents the hashtag #pepsifail to react on negative user comments. WTF? Especially facing the fact that Pepsi has not proposed to withdraw the app and many comments were pretty positive. What the hell are you doing, guys?
We had that before
Do you remember the Motrin Moms? In November 2008 U.S. pharmaceutical company Motrin came up with a pain killer for young mothers. Its promotional video played with a metaphor staging babies as a fashionable piece to carry around and connected it with the mothers who suffer from headache by doing so.
The video caused many female users to be completely upset for days. By linking the baby sling to a fashion accessory and saying while toting the baby can be tough, it “totally makes me look like an official mom” thousands of moms felt completely offended by Motrin, causing the so-called Motrin Mom Backlash and forcing the company to remove all ads. Take a look at some of the reactions.
My point
Communication happens in a certain cultural environment. I am German and Germans are pretty upfront. It took quite a while to make me understand the different meaning of the same phrase being said by an American and by a German. The word ‘Problem’ in German will be expressed as ‘Problem’ while in the U.S. it is usually a ‘Challenge’. If a German wants to give a negative feedback he would say ‘I don’t like it’, while Americans would rather start with ‘You might also do it this way.’ Fair enough. I really got into the American politeness and I see a lot of advantages over the sometimes plump way to express criticism in German. But no matter if you communicate in a rather caring, polite or in a rather direct way – you simply cannot please everyone if you want take up a stance on something. And please, give humorous approaches a chance. We call it -> 
While we talk about 360° communication over and over again and mainly think about ads and online these days, PR and Digital/Advertising/Whatever obviously isn’t at all well intertwined. Not in the U.S. and even less so in Germany. In many cases PR and digital/ad campaigns will be decided upon in different departments and ideas will be presented by different agencies (most often). Both, Pepsi and Motrin, could have also reacted in a completely different way. They could have anticipated the ‘Rebellion of the Just’ (you could also call them ‘People without humor and too much free time’) and could have prepared an answer which simply must not materialize as a Pepsi brand using the hashtag #pepsifail in a tweet.
A brand has to have a position. And when you come up with edgy stuff but please don’t expect it to be loved by everyone. Guess what? That’s what makes edgy stuff edgy. No doubt, brands need to listen to their customers. But in these two cases we are not talking about exploding laptop batteries. We are talking about communication assets which were put live by brands…brands which should defend the decision they have made and not step back because the same old superbores feel offended. Please, have a backbone. Customer feedback is essential, but it shouldn’t replace brand decisions ex post.
That is my position. I am curious to learn more about yours.
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