Are Dr. Pepper’s New Ads Too Manly for Women?

Every marketer would encourage catering your message to your target audience, but does Dr. Pepper go too far by possibly alienating women? In its latest ad campaign for a new soda called “Dr Pepper Ten” (a ten calorie drink), Dr Pepper says “it’s not for women” and calls it “10 manly calories”. The target audience for this drink is young men who drink a disproportionate less amount of diet soda’s compared to women and older men.

Furthermore, could this edgy ad campaign turn women off to the entire Dr. Pepper family of sodas or does it just miss the mark?

I think beer advertising has trampled all over this space in the past and I never hear women boycotting beer because of it. It’s just a fact that women drink less beer than men, and that probably will never change, but it is not because of the advertising is overly targeted to men…it’s just the nature of things.

I think the largest obstacle Dr. Pepper faces is that men are not the primary grocery shoppers by a margin of 2-1.  It is mainly women who are going to make that decision about the soda at the point-of-purchase and Dr. Pepper’s message does not resonate with them. They’ve completely lost the valuable women shopper.

Proctor and Gamble’s Old Spice brand realizes the importance of the women shopper while still targeting men with the “Smell like a Man, Man” campaign. Isaiah Mustafa, actor and former pro football player, who, in mock earnestness talks directly to women about the smell of their man. It uses humor to engage the user and the buyer. Old Spice realizes the key to reaching both sexes is leveraging humor that both sexes can relate too. 

In contrast, Dr Pepper misfires on this one not because it is being overly sexist, but because they’ve failed to have a conversation with the buyer-in-chief.