Dr. Pepper's New Marketing Slogan: Sexist or Not?

Intentionally or not, Diet Soda have garnered a reputation as a female drink.  No doubt, Cindy Crawford’s “It’s Beautiful” Diet Pepsi commercial, complete with her high-waisted 90′s jeans, was partly responsible.  In any eventuality, diet soda has been largely the domain of the fairer sex, and I have found that there are few men who prefer diet soda over regular, and most of us would prefer to have a Dos Equis over a soda.  But more on that in a moment.

When Dr. Pepper’s new ad campaign hit Monday Night Football, I saw it, laughed, and then wondered what the backlash would be immediately.

I’m a guy. I drink Dr. Pepper. I remember when soda companies began making a strong play at branding diet versions of their sodas to men in 2007-2008 with Coke Zero.  I was living in South America then, and I remember the  It had a black masculine label, compared to the lighter grey Diet Coke. The ingredients had changed enough to justify calling it a different product. But it was still a diet drink. You ostensibly drank it to lose weight, which has never been something I cared about, never mind the irony of drinking carbonated syrup to lose weight.  Coke Zero was successful, though. I found myself in a few months drinking more Coke Zeroes than all the diet cokes I had consumed in my entire life.  Even though I intentionally ignore diet drinks, I found myself consuming Coke Zero.

Now Dr. Pepper is going after the male demographic as well.  But I think their intention has gone overboard.  In much the same way that too much sugar overwhelms our taste buds and makes us feel a bit ill, their clumsy attempt at masculine branding left its audience slightly uncomfortable.  “It’s not for women,” lacks all subtlety.  It defines itself by excluding.  It doesn’t say what Dr. Pepper Ten is, it only says what it is not.

Here’s why it almost works:

Men are subtly discouraged from early childhood to not be associated with girlie stuff.  Don’t throw like a girl, don’t cry, don’t wear pink, and so on.  It’s a powerful social force, and it’s not fair.  But boys grow into men encouraged to avoid associating their identity with the feminine.  This means they can’t consume feminine drinks.  This standard does not go both ways. Girls are not nearly so discouraged from consuming something masculine. The women who love scotch over coconut flavored rum earn special favor in the company of men. Men who love coconut flavored rum, and choose it over scotch, end up being made fun of by men and women alike.

So Dr. Pepper did something that on the surface rings very true with men. They said, hey guys, this is

The Most Interesting Man In the World

masculine, and you know it’s masculine because it’s not feminine. But, as Shennandoah pointed out, that’s a really ham-handed way of defining a brand. Just look at how effective Dos Equis and Heineken have been at their masculine branding, and how they have done it with the conscious inclusion of women.

Dos Equis and Heineken show you the product of being a man’s man, and then indirectly associate powerful masculine qualities with their brand. They tell the story of calm, focused, cool men living adventurous lives, who also enjoy their beer. There isn’t an overt rejection of anyone other than less manly men, which no one really seems to have a problem with because those men wish they were more manly to begin with. Further, women are celebrated in their own right, and their presence in your life is shown as going hand in hand with exhibiting true masculinity. Both Dos Equis and Heineken are stating that if you’re a real man, living a life you love, women like to be around you. I think that’s true. Women tend to get interested when a man has a real sense of purpose and direction and he knows what he wants.

Dr. Pepper, on the other hand, just says, “This is a Boys only club. Women, get lost.”  This has its appeal. Men and women both need to have their own domains to be themselves. And I think that men are searching for an identity in this culture that they can call their own. The borders around so much territory over which men had sole domain for years has indeed been blurred by inclusiveness, as well as the identities of other parts of our community that have been finding their voices in the last 100 years. Inclusiveness is the order of the day. So it’s damning when Dr. Pepper has an overtly exclusive message.

Let’s acknowledge that men have a deep desire to have a boys-only area.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t have the word “mancave” ubiquitous on HGTV.  This desire can go unacknowledged because it is very risky in this culture for any one group to say, no body else (but our community) is allowed beyond these velvet ropes.  It’s not necessarily allowed, but I don’t think it’s automatically an inappropriate statement to make, on the part of men or women. But I’m not surprised there was a great deal of backlash.  Women will be upset when a man tells them they can’t do something. Especially with suffrage and reproductive choice echoing in the recent memory of American culture. You don’t tell anyone that they don’t have a right to do something. Unless he’s a man, and he’s telling a woman she can’t do something.  You can tell him to not do that.

Never drank a soft drink in his life

Dr. Pepper’s branding misstep was an attempt to appeal to this unspoken desire.  They did really find a deep desire in their audience to appeal to.  But I think it can be argued that it was the wrong desire to focus on, and the resulting ad campaign missed the mark.

The comparison to the subtle branding of Dos Equis and Heineken is illustrative of the real branding lesson. Those brands are more powerful because they define masculinity by saying what it is, and they immediately associate their brands with one of the most epic figures of masculinity in the last 200 years: one of my heroes, Ernest Hemingway. Dr. Pepper limited its message by only defining masculinity by saying what it isn’t, and making a melodramatic association to one-dimensional action heroes. [Aside: It should be expected that the diet version of a soft drink will have weaker branding than the harder stuff.]  It should be expected that the Dr. Pepper action hero marketing campaign comes across as a cheap knockoff of the epic drama of the Most Interesting Man in the World.  Arnold will never ever measure up to Hemingway. Ever. I don’t care how much he weighs, or how big his explosion is, or how big his gun is for that matter.

Keep Conan the Barbarian.

I’ll stick with Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Thanks for reading.  I’ll be curious to hear your thoughts on this one.  How did Dr. Pepper’s  commercial strike you?  What’s your take on this analysis?  Post your feedback in the comments.

Hope this helps.

Be on the lookout for shoppers demanding a discount

[NOTE: This knowledge comes from the retail game, but the concept applies to technology entrepreneurship because the strategies people use when they shop at Best Buy will mirror the strategy they use when they shop for your product or service.]

Let’s say you’re selling your consulting services, and are faced with one Transactional shopper and one Relational customer.  Notice that I am calling one a shopper and the other a customer.

The Relational customer views today’s sale as the first in a long series of transactions.  By taking care of this person’s needs, he will grow to trust you and come back repeatedly.  This is because his greatest fear is making the wrong choice (we’ll compare this to the Transactional fear in a moment), and therefore he is looking for someone with expertise in whom to place his trust. This is why the Relational customer is your best customer.  He assumes you are the expert.  Moreover, he wants to pay you to be the expert, so he doesn’t have to be.  He’d rather pay you to have it off his mind.  Once you establish your expertise (read: your monetary value), Relational customers become repeat customers.

This works because the Relational customer considers time spent comparing prices part of the purchase price. That means he’s not interested in getting the lowest price.  He’s interested in not buying the wrong thing.  He isn’t going to slam you with endless negotiations to lower your rate $10/month because that’s a waste of his time.  He wants to trust you, and pay you what you’re worth.  He’s got better things to do with his time than haggle (Sorry Ramit) for a slight discount.

Transactional shoppers, on the other hand, are thinking about this transaction only.  We all get in Transactional mode from time to time, like comparing the prices of gasoline.  That’s because we know that it’s all basically the same product.  It makes our cars run, and so we’re willing to drive to the station across the street to save five cents a gallon, and we aren’t concerned with developing a relationship with Shell or Texaco.  The Transactional shopper operates this way to buy everything from gas to bulk coffee to your consulting services.  He loves shopping for the lowest price as much as LeBron James likes playing basketball.  And he couldn’t care less about developing a relationship with you.  Remember this distinguishing characteristic and don’t be afraid of “offending someone” and demanding your rates.  The Transactional shopper wants to negotiate below your established rate so he can get a deal.

The biggest fear of the Transactional shopper is paying more than he absolutely has to. Therefore, he will spend his free time to investigate for months in advance.  By the time the Transactional shopper gets to you, he has talked to five competing service providers and is trying to start a bidding war as if you are a car salesman.  Don’t let him.  Securing his business isn’t worth the discount.  The Transactional shopper will remain noisy and troublesome, all the while paying you less money than you are worth.  In terms of the 80/20 Rule, transactional shoppers make up about 80% of your stress, and about 20% of your revenue, because they rarely spend money until they’ve gotten a deal.

Meta-Lessons from this.  Your ideal (Relational) customer doesn’t care about price nearly as much as he cares about buying the right thing.  He knows that he needs your services; he knows that there are risks, and he wants to trust you to do a great job over the long term.  He’s developing a relationship.

The Transactional shopper (less than ideal) is the person who responds only to SALE prices.  He will hound you without remorse for a discount.  A transactional shopper has the potential to take up more of your time only to pay you less money than you’re worth.

The Relational customer knows instinctively that a super low sale price is probably too good to be true.  Since they are afraid of buying the wrong thing, an abnormally low price begs the question, “what’s wrong with this guy that he has to give his stuff away?”

This is good for you.  It means that you can focus your energies, like Ramit keeps saying, on serving the right customers, and let the wrong customers fall by the wayside.  Focusing on cultivating good relationships with clients means that you get to do the work that you’re good at, for an appropriate rate.  Don’t worry about hanging onto the people who never seem to be satisfied.  Just tell them one of your competitors is having a one-time sale that you can’t match.  They’ll be out the door and take their unreasonable demands with them.

I hope this helps.

When I got the results back, they confirmed my nutritionist’s suspicions: my body had developed an allergic reaction to gluten.  That was December 2007.  That month was my last gluten hurrah.  I haven’t eaten most grains, OR beer, since.  But in the 30 days of December I went on to devour all the wheat possible.  I ate a lot of sandwiches.  I drank a lot of beer.  And once that clock hit 12:00a.m., January 1, 2008 I switched from Belgian Ale to Champagne; from crackers and cheese to just cheese.  I switched to the gluten-free lifestyle.

This is the stuff I don't eat anymore

The switch made my life better.  Cutting gluten out of my diet improved the arthritis I was experiencing in my joints.  The dietary changes were worth it almost immediately.  Plus, within a few months I found gluten-free beers from Belgium.  But until this year, I didn’t have the breads and pastry problem resolved. Any of you who have had to experiment with gluten-free baking know that it’s near impossible to get the consistency right without the gluten.  I’ve had marginal success with some recipes, and others were a disaster.  My diet actually moved on from grains.  Me and grains became like those people you see every 6 months or so in the grocery store, and have nothing to talk about anymore.  We drifted apart.

Some light broke through the gluten-free shroud recently.  The e-mail asked me if I wanted to try some new gluten-free products from Houston.  I said hell yes.  Soon after I got one of the best care packages of my life (sorry mom).  It contained 3 different cakes, cookies, and delicious white bread for making toast and sandwiches.

Free food makes gluten-avoidance not suck.

Since this isn’t a cooking blog, I won’t go into all the details.  Here’s the skinny on the gluten-free stuff I got.  The Carrot and Cinnamon Cakes were outstanding.  Moist and rich.  I brought them into the Tech Ranch for lunch and we polished them off in an afternoon.  The Ginger Cake seemed a bit lacking in the ginger department though.  The cookies were fantastic.  You don’t realize how much you miss chocolate chip cookies until you take them warm out of the microwave…

If any of you all are looking for great gluten-free alternatives for you or a family member, check Gluten Free Houston out.  My only regret is that they are in Houston, not Austin.

Hope this helps.

This is where speaking Spanish comes in.  The thing about learning Spanish in college is that you have to “mess” it up a lot before you get any good at it.  And then you (I) may still not be very good at speaking Spanish.

Studying Spanish in Chile helped me bond with Kevin early on.  Now it is helping me be successful in the work I do around here.  My job around the Ranch is to be an entrepreneur who helps other entrepreneurs.  I come into work and have to figure out the best way to help other entrepreneurs who are figuring out the best way to do ______.

To translate: nobody knows what their next move should be, especially not me.

This is because entrepreneurs usually have to do take crucial without ever practicing.  You have to simply start, mess things up, and correct mistakes.  It’s an iterative process that is a lot like speaking a new language.  Only by speaking it badly at first do you learn over time to speak fluently.

Without the fearlessness to do something badly, I surely would have not learned to think as an entrepreneur.  Speaking very bad Spanish for a few semesters in Spanish-speaking nations prepared me to learn by doing.  Kevin echoes this sentiment daily.  He tells me, “Austin, go mess it up.  Don’t ask how, go figure it out.”  Much like speaking Spanish with horrible grammar at first, entrepreneurship starts staggering and sometimes turns into poetry.  It’s not perfect Neruda, but it’s still beautiful.

A photo from my time on Easter Island. Each of thee Moai were put up one at a time, with plenty of mistakes.

This is what I look like on the weekends

I’ve spent my spare time in the past 2 weeks creating the basic content for the Cigar and Spirit iPhone app. It’s fun duplicating what I used to do in humidors into a mobile app.  My goal when you buy the app is to help you to find that perfect balance between your smoke and your drink to arrive at what we’re starting to call a “perfect pair.”

Jei and I are playing around with names for the app, and Perfect Pair is leading the pack.  It’s catchy and a bit euphemistic.  I’ve been buying domains like PerfectPairApp.com and PairingParty.com.  Someone is squatting on PerfectPair.com for obvious reasons.  [Side note that www.Domai.nr is the place to check a domain name's availability.]

You may be asking yourself, why a Pairing Party, Austin?  That doesn’t quite make sense.

Never fear, faithful blog readers.  I always have the answers.

Jei has the hookup with the Lovely and very community-oriented Lady behind Bonita Smokeshop and we received a shipment of premium smokes yesterday.  It makes my day to have the mailman hand me a box containing 16 free cigars for 2 reasons.

1.  That means I get to go home, pour a glass of bourbon and smoke (which I did)
2.  It also means I get to host a bunch of people to smoke cigars (which I will)

Jei had the great idea that we set up “pairing parties” to help drive the user-generated pairings in the app.  Basically, Jei told me that I had the opportunity to combine things that I love (People and Cigars) into the ultimate leisure activity.  In this list I enumerate why Pairing Parties are amazing:

1.  I get to form communities: Make new friends, and create social circles
2.  I get to smoke a bunch of new cigars with my new friends
3.  I get to write about all of the above and then put it in an iPhone app

This is a great opportunity to do some Social Architecting in my spare time.  Who knows the people that will come out to our Pairing Parties!  The plan is to create a community in the area, and then use the app as an excuse for cigar enthusiasts all over the globe to have Pairing Parties.  This is technology at it’s best, providing a way for people to come together and commune over shared interests.

That said, if someone wants a free cigar this Saturday afternoon, send me a Tweet, @austingunter.  I’ll have you fill out an extensive application and tell you where my back porch is located.

See you then.

Patrick Swayze whoops ass with Tai Chi

For example, if I say, “on January 1st, 2010 (Twenty-Ten) I will begin to practice Tai Chi,” I am describing a future reality.  Since the phrase “will begin” sets things in the future, it inherently lacks impact on the present.  It refers to a future that doesn’t exist, and never will exist.  On the other hand, if I simply say, “I am practicing Tai Chi on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday this January,” I have stated a present reality.  It’s a reality that my brain understands and puts into action.  It’s the difference between trying and doing.

That said, I am doing Tai Chi a few days a week, and I signed a membership in January.  I am one of those people who signed into a new program in January.  I make myself feel better about it by calling it something other than a resolution.  It’s a necessity.  With my joint degeneration, I need therapeutic exercise, and the slow movements of Tai Chi are doing some great things with my joint mobility.  I have missed being physically active, and knowing that at the end of the day I am in the Dojo, practicing a martial art, is reassuring.  Even if I am that new guy who probably made a New Year’s Resolution.

Also, Morpheus is using Tai Chi in the famous, “I know Kung Fu” scene from The Matrix.

Merry Christmas Y'all

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

It’s the week after Christmas and the week of New Years.  As we all prepare to soak black-eyed peas for the 1st, what is the plan for 2010?

There are plenty of questions floating around about what happens in 2010, and I’d like to come right out and ask one of the bigger ones so we can get it out of the way now and avoid future awkwardness.

Will we say two thousand and ten or say twenty-ten when we refer to 2010 in conversation?

I know, I know.  Each of you is saying, “Austin, the answer is clearly (insert one or the other)!”  And each of you may believe that he or she is right, but let me remind you how devastating incongruous date-phrasing can be to an otherwise pleasant conversation.  It starts nasty arguments between people who are supposed to like one another, and next thing you know, somebody has called in tactical grammar police to carpet bomb the discussion with pedantery.  If there is one thing we can all resolve to leave in 2009 it should be pedantic lessons on grammar in everyday conversation.  Unless, of course, you are the rare holder of a degree in English.  In that case, your word is the end all and be all of theoretical discussions on rhetoric and even the U.N. supports your right to use grammar carpet bombs with impunity.

And since that is the case, I’ll go ahead and say it here: We’ll say twenty-ten for 2010.  Because it has fewer syllables.  And because I said so.

I hope that helps.

Simplification: Only One Job

First off, I’m really enjoying my new digs.  Owning my own URL makes my day.  I got some great help to set this up from Charles Andretta, who works on many Tech Ranch Austin projects, and also is a founding partner of The Indigo Heron Group.

I’m pleased to announce that I’m working full time at the Tech Ranch now.  Remember that I had been splitting my time between the Tech Ranch and the Enterprise Software Bid Conformity.  My double-duty felt like getting paid to get an MBA.  Both places started out as unpaid apprenticeships, and both (with 24 hours of each other) started paying me.  At that point, I knew I would eventually choose between the two.

Given the variety of creative projects that I get to skin my knees on at Tech Ranch (see the BarnBuildr Program), I decided that I had the most opportunity to grow and to focus on my strengths at Tech Ranch.  I love the DIY atmosphere around the Ranch, and I really love that we house multiple startups at various stages.  I meet someone new on a daily basis.  Although I most surely miss Don Beeson from Conformity, it’s great to be at the Ranch.

Since it’s Friday, and things are casual on Friday, I’m going to share an adorable internet meme with all four of my readers.  @Petesweet showed this bad boy to me.  It’s a little ukulele savant shredding some Jason Mraz.