Here’s something that might end up a boon for your sales – of both
Coke and cleaning products! Remember that great Internet video from
those two nerdy, Devo-looking guys from EepyBird.com, the one where
they drop Mentos into Diet Coke and create a display that mimics the
fountains at the Bellagio hotel in Vegas?
Turns out that after Coke ham-handedly tried to distance itself from
the video’s good, clean fun early on, despite the fact that even the ghost
of Robert Woodruff could have told them they had a minor pop-culture
sensation on their hands, they finally managed to do what Coke does best:
co-opt good clean fun for corporate ends.
Check out the latest EepyBird video on YouTube.com, and you’ll see the
same two nerdy dudes exploding an even bigger Mento-and-Diet-Coke
sodascape – only then, they dare viewers to conduct a Coke experiment of
their own via the “Poetry in Motion” video challenge.
Meanwhile, go to the EepyBird home page and you’ll see a link to the
ever-corporate Coca-Cola Co. Web site, as well as a big, fat thank you to
Coke and Mentos.
So if you see a spike in case sales of 2 L Cokes – followed by a spike in
Ajax and mops, you’ll know the reason. Meanwhile, why not conduct an
experiment of your own? See if Enviga really works. Then let us know….
7-ELEVEN TO
FRANCHISEES: NO
DEALING COCAINE
As predicted, Cocaine is already
feeling some pain. The negative press
campaign against the non-narcotic
energy drink – manufactured by Las
Vegas-based Redux Beverages – continued
strongly throughout the fall,
while retailers remained skeptical.
One major blow against the supercaffeinated
(nearly 300 mg) beverage
came from the West Coast, where
negative calls to
convenience giant
7-Eleven Inc.’s corporate
offices over
the decision by a
single San Josearea
franchisee to
stock the product
resulted in a company-
wide advisory
against carrying it.
BY GEORGE, LET’S GIVE
KILLIAN’S A FACE-LIFT!
Coors is taking another shot with its oft-befuddled Killian’s Irish
Red. The brand, a kind of Irish-derived mainstream super-premium
along the lines of Michelob, has seen sales drop and excitement ebb
since its heyday in the mid-1990s.
Things have gotten so bad, according to Coors representatives,
that the company plans to “reintroduce” beer drinks to the brand,
which, despite its Irish orientation, is produced largely in the Coors
factory in Golden, Colo.
Killian’s, which still receives a fair amount of advertising support,
has been caught in a slipstream between increasing craft and import
consumption – a place it once occupied before getting crowded out
by a more refined market – and declining returns for almost all massproduced
domestic beer brands.
But one idea, according to an
interview Coors Spokeswoman
Aimee Valdez had with the Denver
Post, is to sharpen the brand’s
image as a lighter but still prestigious
trade-up.
May we suggest calling it a
“Wild Irish Rosè?”
DON’T DEW IT ANY MORE
Get ready for a new marketing push from stalwart citrus CSD Mountain
Dew.
After 13 years, “Do the Dew,” a central theme to ads that featured biking,
skiing, and more extreme sports, is being given its walking papers,
reports Brandweek. The new plan will focus on “fueling the core.”
With energy drinks and other products moving into the extreme space
once held by Mountain Dew – still one of the few CSD’s to show continued
sales growth in what are tough times for top brands all around
– parent company PepsiCo is turning to its ad agencies to come up with
a new answer.
It also looks like the fizz is leaving the energy soda business. PepsiCo has
decided to move the emphasis on its Mountain Dew offshoot MDX
to market it as a CSD infused with energy, rather
than as an energy soda. The company plans
to run ads with a tag line of “Stay Sharp.”
Which is not, we believe, a reference to
the distinctions the company is drawing
with regard to these particular
marketing approaches.
HOLIDAY READING
The time has come again… for those employees you’ve ignored for
so long, the ones who won’t get a Christmas bonus, or just for those
who you’re pretty sure actually read stuff…or for those bosses for
whom you don’t want to get anything more expensive than a book…
we’ve got the answer.
• Amibitious Brew: The Story of American Beer
By Maureen Ogle
$25.00
This is the story of the growth of the giant companies on the American
beer landscape – as well as the families that grew them, families like the
Busch and Schlitz clans. It’s also the story of how immigrant Germans
began to succeed in America by moving the country’s taste from Englishstyle
brews to the bitter British pilsner. Most of all, though, it’s a story
about beer, and that makes for a delicious read.
• Brewing up a Business
Sam Calagione
$16.95
Subtitled Adventures in Entrepreneurship from the Founder of Dogfish Head
Craft Brewery, this is more than just the story of the highly-regarded craft
beer, and the crazy adventures of Calagione, who gets himself into more
than one dangerous situation in the wilds of Delaware and Philadelphia,
it’s also an apocryphal field manual on how good ideas can be turned
into money-making businesses through hard work and creative thinking.
Which is what we’d all like to do.
And for the ones who can’t make it through a whole book…
• CocktailSmarts
$24.95
Edited by Charles Hardwick, a veteran New York City bartender, CocktailSmarts
is a board game that features question and answer cards, coasters
with recipes, a cocktail tips guide and a score sheet for competitive cocktail
lovers. Competitors can pick a card and discover: What’s Triple Sec? What
country did gin come from? What’s in a White Lady? What’s the primary
alcohol in a Bronx Cocktail?
CocktailSmarts is created by SmartsCo, a San Francisco-based publisher
that is also the creator of the top-selling WineSmarts, which star chef Mario
Batali called “the greatest game ever!”