Mountain Dew "racist" Tyler ad
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They had to pull this add because it's racist? One white guy int he line up would have made it better? How about that fact that it shows a beat up women being threatened to keep her mouth shut! By a goat voiced by Tyler who saw he's going to "Dew her up". WOW. I know corporations are kind of idiots (who smartly con us out of our money) but this is bad. There was actually a meeting where some suits OK'd this commercial because they wanted to be down with Tyler. The fact that the product name was used as slang to kill a women who was already beaten didn't raise any flags? I expect this from Tyler, but the suits are total idiots to air something like this. I hope they at least donate a few mill to women's shelters to apologize for being morons.
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Assholes.
This kind of stuff seems to happen so often that I cannot tell if ad executives are really this boneheaded or if they sometimes like to pull shit like this to get a rise out of individuals just for the hell of it while keeping the brand name in people's mouths: "You mean the big tilted swastika that we printed on these millions of t-shirts ISN'T a good luck symbol? Whoa, our bad!"
These guys have "Kill Them All" in there band name and their main focus is smoking weed and the kidnap/rape of women. We have got to break into that market!
If you haven't seen this it's actually pretty funny. I'm sure similar to the Mountain Dew meeting. But I guess MD didn't care about things being so "rapey"
http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/5b7x
They got a crazy ad.
Four people have asked me about it today. Gawker wrote a story about it. SS started this thread. For Mountain Dew.
Mission: Accomplished.
Simpsons nailed it: JUST DON'T LOOK.
They were forced to pull the commercial and everyone is saying MD are a bunch of idiots. I don't think that's what they wanted. If the whole any publicity is good thing were true then every commercial would be like this. What MD wanted was for everyone to go "oh wow, that commercial was so funny. MD must be cool if Tyler likes them, I'm going to go buy a MD right now" Instead they got people saying "that wasn't even funny and it was totally offensive, I don't really want a MD right now". No major company wants this kind of negative attention.
Also, the just don't look thing was that you don't have to buy something just because you liked the ad. This doesn't not apply to this situation. There is a major difference between silly ad that made me hungry for cheap food and a beat up women being threatened by her assailant who is turning the products name into slang for killing said women. You really think PepsiCo's plan was to get criminals to start saying "Dew it up" when they hurt somebody as some form of word of mouth campaign?
"MD is shocked, SHOCKED! that any one would make this ad. No one at MD supports this ad. If you don't believe us watch it on the web and drink a Mountain Dew."
Bad publicity Tyler, harmed party MD.
I understand the general rule of at least there is attention. I'm saying you cannot ignore the horrible subject matter of this commercial and how any company executive signed off on it. I'm pretty sure it's because the soda market is falling and they are desperate. It's one thing to be "edgy" it's another thing to make light of a women being beaten. Do you really think there plan was "this is so bad we'll have to pull it day of and people will talk about it for weeks. Awesome!!" ? I think PepsiCo thought they were going to show how hip they were and didn't know who they were dealing with.
The whole "at least they are talking" is just marketing people marketing their horrible decisions.
Bill Hicks;
By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing ??? kill yourself.
No, no, no it???s just a little thought. I???m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they???ll take root - I don???t know. You try, you do what you can.
Kill yourself.
Seriously though, if you are, do.
Aaah, no really, there???s no rationalization for what you do and you are Satan???s little helpers.
Okay - kill yourself - seriously.
You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously.
No this is not a joke, you???re going, ???there???s going to be a joke coming,??? there???s no fucking joke coming.
You are Satan???s spawn filling the world with bile and garbage.
You are fucked and you are fucking us.
Kill yourself.
It???s the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself.
Planting seeds.
I know all the marketing people are going, ???he???s doing a joke?????? there???s no joke here whatsoever.
Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend - I don???t care how you do it.
Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. Machi??? Whatever, you know what I mean.
I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, ???Oh, you know what Bill???s doing, he???s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That???s a good market, he???s very smart.???
Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags!
???Ooh, you know what Bill???s doing now, he???s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That???s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We???ve done research - huge market. He???s doing a good thing.???
Goddammit, I???m not doing that, you scum-bags!
Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
???Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill???s very bright to do that.???
God, I???m just caught in a fucking web.
???Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar??????
How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don???t you?
Yea, I hadn't seen any of them so I wasn't sure it they were released all at once or what. Here's a summary of the 3 from an NPR article. I can't believe they also thought "DewUI" was funny. Let's make a pun with drunk driving. Pure genius. Like I said, soda sales are down so this smells like desperation.
"The first ad finds Felicia the Goat, an actual goat voiced by Tyler, in a restaurant that has run out of Mountain Dew. The goat then proceeds to assault the female waitress who delivered the bad news. In the second spot, Felicia, once again voiced by Tyler, flees from a police officer after being pulled over for "DewUI," a play on words which also incorporates the company's popular "Do the Dew" slogan.
"For the third spot, Felicia the Goat (once again voiced by Tyler) appears in a police lineup in the middle of five black men, one of whom is played by Odd Future's Left Brain. The goat intimidates the battered waitress, blurting out a number of phrases including 'better not snitch on a player' and 'snitches get stiches' before she shrieks and flees from the police station."
Not really, since a lineup should normally be of suspects that fit a description (although these guys all look very different). It's a crappy add though, that's for sure.
Great point! One writer actually said so you're comparing us to animals having us in the same line up.
If the line up was all goats and the women wasn't so beat up and being threatened it might have been fine. Dumb, but fine. I'm pretty sure Tyler had a lot of input and tried to make it grimy as well as put his friends in which came off a racist. I'm pretty sure the line up is all black because it's Tylers friends and fellow rappers. Could have been actual racist marketing people picking the line up, who knows.
Stride Gum had a goat hitting people but it was fine because he just made you spit your gum out and left.
meanwhile, i'm pretty sure black, white, whatever teenagers are laughing their asses off about Tyler's new ads on tumblr. and the indignation of grown-ups only adds to the allure.
do you think Mountain Dew is investing in old people or 17 year olds? everyone fell in line exactly as the marketing agency mapped it out.
"And they went for it..!"
This. Those older folks getting hot under the collar are certainly not in the MD target demographic and, yeah, adult indignation is pretty much all you need to sell a product to kids. It's an ad aimed at 16-17 years old and I'm guessing it's probably working out just fine for MD and their agency.
Not at all. I'm saying they don't care. They did the ad they wanted to do, and any negative feedback is of negligible consequence. For example, it getting posted on this site, and then a bunch of people looking at it to see how terrible it is, still counts as a bunch of hits.
If something is found offensive enough for a group of people to watch it, but not offensive enough for them to stage any kind of organized mass protest or boycott of the product, or something that could actually affect sales (which random negative web comments won't typically do), the producer of the product isn't going to give a shit. Either the product sells or it doesn't, and nothing else matters.
You can see negative publicity causing 'positive' results in other areas of media as well. For example, that's pretty much exactly how Howard Stern got famous.
There IS such thing as bad publicity. This may not be the best example of it, but it does happen.
bingo
the shit isn't even really about the brand, hits are kind of a goal in and of themselves
realest clicks in the game, etc
This is kind of apropos;
"What idiots like me and my colleagues write for beer money on various websites has WAY LESS to do with an artist???s success than whether or not we actually write about them. If I have an opinion on something, the people behind that thing have succeeded, even if I hate it. If I hate it, I listened to it and there was enough of a groundswell behind it that I felt a need to say I hate it. That???s a marketing victory.
Or, as TI put it on ???Why U Mad At Me???: THEY AINT HATIN? START WORRYIN.
We still act like criticism happens at the public level, like a positive review can make or break an artist. That???s still an important part of the cycle, but the bottom line is if something is big enough to get high profile coverage, it???s already successful enough to survive some writer shitting all over it. Guy Fieri will be fine no matter what The New York Times says about him, as will Justin Timberlake. Macklemore will be rich off rapping way longer than I will be actually writing for cash."
I think you can apply these points to soft drinks sold by rappers as much as you can music sold by rappers.
Any good?
I thought it was pretty weird and creepy, but a generation of kids who've grown up on Adult Swim or The Mighty Boosh might feel differently. It's certainly a peculiar way to sell soft drinks.
I'm looking forward to Earl Sweatshirt's new album though. After all he's the son of the South African poet the Last Poets got their name from, how bad can he be? Also love the fact he's collaborating with Flying Lotus.