Dr. Pepper: Evolving Into a Huge Deal

All advertisements have a specific goal that they need to complete in order for it to be successful. Companies reach out through advertisements, whether their billboards or otherwise, to a specific marketing group that gives them the most feedback. Sometimes companies will participate in what I like to call blind-suicide marketing, which is a marketing strategy that the company does not see a loss of consumers on a simple idea.

Dr. Pepper is a B2C company which means that they follow the guidelines of business to consumer. Their marketing campaigns that are sprinkled all over the world attempt to reach out to different consumers in the marketing grid after they research a cluster (customer profiles based on lifestyle, demographic, or shopping behavior).

Last year, Dr. Pepper marketing Dr. Pepper Ten, a diet coke version that has 10 calories. However, the ad was deemed as "sexist against females" because the audience stated that diet versions are "gross" and "too feminine". Dr. Pepper stated:

"Men, in particular, are dissatisfied with the taste and image of diet drinks. The company wouldn't disclose the formula of Dr Pepper Ten, but said that the drink has 10 calories and 2 grams of sugar, which gives it a sweeter taste. Dr Pepper said there are 23 flavors in its regular soda, (which has 150 calories and 27 grams of sugar per can) and Dr Pepper Ten contains all of them."


So, this is not the first time that Dr. Pepper has been under the gun with advertisement issues. 

Their recent ad, below, has the tagline of "Dr. Pepper: The Evolution of Flavor". Most people might look at this ad as "clever" or "repetitive" as a lot of companies have used the Evolution approach. However, this was not the case. After putting up the ad on their Facebook, Dr. Pepper had 900 comments in just under an hour. Most of the comments were people upset that Dr. Pepper would "force" them to believe in evolution or "God being the Creator" and how false the advertisement was.

Let's look at the advertisement on a graphic design stand point. Dr. Pepper's main colors are white and maroon. They decided to go with a bolder color: red. According to Margaret Walch (Living Colors: A Definitive Guide to Color Palettes Through the Ages, 1995), red can be described as:

If you want to draw attention, use red. It is often where the eye looks first. Red is the color of energy. It's associated with movement and excitement. People surrounded by red find their heart beating a little faster and often report feeling a bit out of breath.

Dr. Pepper was successful in this as they wanted to grab attending to the audience. The other color used is white (and a lighter and darker red, but that gets counted in the above description). White is looked at as purity or perfection. When white is used in an advertisement, the consumer feels as if Dr. Pepper is "good". 

Silhouettes have not been prominently used by a large company since Apple's Silhouette campaign for their release of IPod. The forecast team (a team that predicts how well or poor a campaign will go in the market) stated that Apple would make no more than $400 million dollars in sales. With the use of their Silhouette campaign, however, they made 1.2 billion dollars in sales.

This ad, in marketing terms, is successful in getting the point across. With the faded logo in the background, this ad might even be listed under subliminal marketing. But, with the use of terms across the bottom, it is very specific as to what the company is selling. Also, the use of font is fantastic, bold, and to the point.
 
I am a person who has friends ranging from Pagan to Christian, so this is no way intended to shut down entire religious groups. However, the statements that were published on Facebook, were not the best representations of the ad itself. Dr. Pepper never states any type of anti-religion hate speech in their campaign. In fact, if anything, that is completely the opposite of their campaign.
 

This is just one of the many comments that were scattered across Dr. Pepper's Facebook page. Here's the issue, though.

If the advertisement said, "God created Dr. Pepper on the 7th Day" or "There is no God, we evolved from monkeys and they like Dr. Pepper", then absolutely. That marketing would be deemed offensive. However, the advertisement is simply showing an evolution of the company through minimalistic graphic design.

Finally, I want to take a look into why these comments are not effective in giving Dr. Pepper poor feedback. Pope John Paul II wrote to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the subject of cosmology and how to interpret Genesis:

"Cosmogony and cosmology have always aroused great interest among peoples and religions. The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. The Sacred Book likewise wishes to tell men that the world was not created as the seat of the gods, as was taught by other cosmogonies and cosmologies, but was rather created for the service of man and the glory of God. Any other teaching about the origin and make-up of the universe is alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how heaven was made but how one goes to heaven." (John Paul II, 3 October 1981 to the Pontifical Academy of Science, "Cosmology and Fundamental Physics")

The "Clergy Letter" Project, drafted in 2004, and signed by thousands of Christian clergy supporting evolution and faith, states:

"We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as 'one theory among others' is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator." ("An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science")

From what I can gather, this specifically states that yes, God created the World and created Man. However, it also states that you can believe in evolution as it can co-exist with the story of Adam and Eve. That being said, this ad cannot be deemed as such since it specifically shows that the Evolution stops at the third picture: Man. You can believe in evolution as long as you believe that God is the one who helps it along and you don't deny His existence. This, of course, does not span across all religious sects since the Pope is not prominent in most religions that people have said. When you dig into the comments of that thread, Catholics are very dominant in saying that evolution is a sin and Catholics who believe in it will go to Hell.  

The final comment doesn't even make sense. There are still apes because apes are still evolving. Just because something is extinct, doesn't mean that they didn't have a predecessor in before them that they evolved into. The ad would be less effective if it was an evolution of a fish and the final form of the evolution was a fish drinking Dr. Pepper. Fish don't drink Dr. Pepper. Also, the ad would be entirely less pretty much pointless.

This ad is successful in their marketing campaign, regardless if they didn't think it was going to cause an issue. It hit the correct market clusters and was a beautiful formulated advertisement. I don't personally think that this advertisement should cause issue with evolution and creationism because the idea of both are supported by the Church and Christians.

~Meredith Gerber