Earlier in the week, craft beer maker BrewDog launched Pink IPA – a version of its flagship Punk IPA released in time for International Women’s Day, which is today.
The beer was supposed to raise further awareness of equal pay and throw humour on many food and drink brands’ unimaginative way of appealing to women. The pink label and the name Pink IPA, BrewDog argued, was a satirisation of lazy marketing techniques – the likes of Bic’s ‘For Her’ range of biros designed specifically for female hands, which surely counts as a low point in needlessly gender-specific advertising.
The team at BrewDog was presumably optimistic that their tongue-in-cheek campaign would be received positively among consumers, grateful that a brand is willing to stand up for something – a lack of equal pay – that clearly isn’t right.
Yet the reaction that greeted Pink IPA was decidedly mixed.
Many consumers derided the Scottish company for their efforts, while others suggested it was a good idea executed extremely poorly.
BrewDog’s attempts – however ill-conceived you may think them – shine a light on an important issue: how difficult it is for brands to target consumers by gender. It isn’t impossible to do correctly, but there are certain definitely-nots.
PepsiCo came under pressure last month when CEO Indra Nooyi revealed it was working on a line of potato chips aimed specifically at women. Nooyi claimed that, even if they wanted to, women were reluctant to lick their fingers or pour the broken remnants of their bag of Doritos into their mouth.
And women were less keen than men on the crunch that potato chips make, added Nooyi – one of very few female chief executives at major food and beverage firms.
Now perhaps I should admit something: I’m not a woman. I’m a man. But even as a man, I’m relatively confident in suspecting that the needs Nooyi predicted of other women weren’t as widely felt as she first thought.
And, even so, why should these be female-specific demands? Even as a man, I’d quite like to get to the bottom of a bag of Cheetos without having a bright orange, cheese-flavoured coating cling to my fingers.
Social media reacted to Nooyi’s comments – made in a podcast series for CEOs – with the usual amount of sarcasm and scorn. Many women sarcastically praised her for pre-empting their ‘lady-like’ needs and making a crisp for ‘feminine mouths’.
Thank you @Doritos for making a crisp that doesn't crunch as you know us ladies don't like it. Hopefully you can make a dip to match my handbag, cause that'd be cute. OH, I hope the bag's pink. I hope I pay more because it's pink too. https://t.co/K9rI29fMk9 — Katie Houghton ? (@KatieDMN) February 5, 2018
Thank you @Doritos for making a crisp that doesn't crunch as you know us ladies don't like it. Hopefully you can make a dip to match my handbag, cause that'd be cute. OH, I hope the bag's pink. I hope I pay more because it's pink too. https://t.co/K9rI29fMk9
— Katie Houghton ? (@KatieDMN) February 5, 2018
ABOVE: Social media was in good form when Indra Nooyi suggested women needed different chips to men. Can’t see this tweet? Click here to view the original on Twitter.
The problem with BrewDog’s attempts at gender-based satire – other than the obvious of course – is that it raises more serious questions. The company’s attempts to highlight gender inequality are admirable, but hardly necessary – campaigns including Time’s Up and #MeToo have built momentum, and there is now an optimism among many people that this could be a turning point in the campaign against institutionalised sexism and a lack of opportunities for women in many industries.
But BrewDog, by launching exactly the kind of product that it was trying to criticise, has done nothing that will leave a lasting impact on women’s rights.
The UK-based company has come clean about its own gender pay gap. At 2.8%, it is lower than the average in the rest of the country and – according to BrewDog-cited research – significantly lower than the gender pay gaps of South Korea (39%), Austria (22%) or Germany (22%).
Yet it will still be embarrassing for a brand that chose to put itself in the firing line and present itself, so controversially, as a leader on gender equality.
It’s hard to predict how many faux pas it will take before the food and beverage industry stops trying to invent new gimmicks with which to advertise to women, or men for that matter. But BrewDog is right about one thing, even if it fell into the same old trap: there’s no place for lazy marketing in the modern world.
What BrewDog said about the reaction to their Pink IPA
In the wake of negative reaction surrounding Pink IPA’s launch, BrewDog released a statement acknowledging the flaws in the campaign and dispelling some suggestions that the move was engineered by a team of men. The company also said that Pink IPA had missed the mark because consumers had misunderstood it. Here’s what it said:
“[On Tuesday] we launched Pink IPA – a satirical joke about products marketed to women using patronising gender stereotypes (such as making things pink or covering them in glitter. Ridiculous things).
“For many of you – well, most of you – it seems we didn’t land the joke. The fact that people so easily believed that we were serious about the name and branding is a stark reminder of the scale of the problem. We should have done more to show that this element of the campaign was tongue-in-cheek.
“Our intention when calling it Pink IPA was to spark conversation around stereotypes and gender inequality. To poke fun at those brands marketing pink things to women. We’re sorry it wasn’t clear enough.
“This a project conceived and developed by a talented team of women at BrewDog, including but not limited to Sarah Warman, our global head of marketing; Tanisha Robinson, CEO of BrewDog USA; and Allison Green, global people director and international commercial director. These women wanted to do something to mark International Women’s Day. And it’s safe to say we marked the hell out of it.
“It’s encouraging to see how many people are passionate about the issues we wanted to highlight. Regardless of the reaction to its packaging, the reaction to Pink IPA definitely proved there is a need for more awareness about the gender pay gap, and a better understanding of what it is.
“So will we stop championing equality? No. Will we stop believing that beer can change the world? Never. Will we try to be funnier next time? Yeah, probably.”
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