Protest Pepsi’s ‘Men’s Pain Is Funny’ Super Bowl Ad
The Super Bowl ads in general were pretty fair to men this year, but there was one major exception–Pepsi’s “Magnetic Attraction” commercial. According to the MySpace Super Bowl ads description:
“The Pepsi Stuff promo shows Justin Timberlake being drawn toward a woman and somehow pulled through space, off the ground, by some magnetic force. He crashes and gets beat up by his strange experience being pulled through space and having close and sometimes painful encounters with immovable objects and experiencing near misses with death.”
I understand slapstick humor but this was way over the line–Timberlake is in severe pain in the ad, and gets painfully whacked in the nuts on three separate occasions. All because some pretty girl is sucking him in by drinking her Pepsi (pictured). To watch the ad, click here.
The two people to contact at Pepsi regarding the ad are:
PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi. A very high profile individual, she was #1 on Fortune’s list of the 50 most powerful women in business in both 2006 and 2007. She can be reached at indra.nooyi@pepsico.com, headquarters phone: 914 253-2000, headquarters fax: 914 253-2070
Pepsi CMO Cie Nicholson. She is the Pepsi executive with the most direct responsibility for the ad. She can be reached at cie.nicholson@pepsi.com, or headquarters phone: 914 253-2000. Her personal fax is 914 249-8361
To email them both, click here.
The ad was designed by BBDO, a prominent advertising agency with a track record of making commercials which denigrate men and fathers. To view some of them, click here.
To contact their corporate offices, see the contact information below:
Andrew Robertson, BBDO CEO, andrew.robertson@bbdo.com, Phone: 212 459-5000, Fax: 212 459-6645
Bill Bruce, BBDO-NY Chief Creative Officer (The BBDO executive with the most direct responsibility for the ad), bill.bruce@bbdo.com, Phone: 212 459-5000, Fax: 212 459-5280
To email them both, click here.
Thanks to advertising guru Richard Smaglick of www.fathersandhusbands.org .
To be fair, while BBDO does have a track record of anti-male commercials, they also produced the fine AT&T ad “Monkey,” which can be seen here.
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Stumble It!
February 5th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
The thing to remember is that, not only does this ad and countless others promote violence against men, but men are overwhelmingly victims of violence in this culture. So by promoting violence against men, these ads do the opposite of what this culture should do – raise awareness of and try to reduce violence against men.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:20 am
I sent this to Pepsi:
As the founder and director of Shattered Men, a ministry for men who have suffered domestic violence I want to point out that neither I nor most of the members of Shattered Men were the least bit amused at your Super Bowl ad for Pepsi this year. Many other ad agencies have shown it is possible to produce “super” ads without belittling either men or women.
As a pastor, I especially found it offensive for you to include what has become normal in ads, and that is for men to get hit in the groin. You did it not once but three times to make sure everyone got it. I suppose this is what your ad agency thinks men deserve?
On a personally basis, I have always preferred Pepsi over Coke but this many change if we do not see more positive ads from Pepsi instead of the “politically correct” Misandry as seen in the ad you authorized for Super bowl.
I will also suggest the men and women in Shattered Men to follow suit and PLEASE inform you ad agency that there are tens of thousands of men and women who are not going to tolerate the put down of men OR women in commercials! If need be, we will take our business to those who show they value ALL our people!
Pastor Kenneth Deemer
Director Shattered Men
P.O. BOX 166
MARION INDIANA 46952-0166
shatteredmen@earthlink.net
JUNE is Domestic Violence Against Men Awareness Month
Web site: http://www.shatterdmen.com