Bacardi products.
Yesterday I blogged about my hypothetical blog cocktail: a cucumber-and-vodka concoction by Kingsley Amis that I would probably never drink, and a mint- and citrus-enhanced version by Martha Stewart that I’m quite less unlikely to drink. The comments revealed a unanimous preference for gin, a preference I of course share.
I wanted to clarify, however, that while the only gin in my house is a more-or-less full bottle of Rear Admiral Joseph’s from Trader Joe’s, I never drink Bombay Sapphire, despite its charming bottle. (So maybe, for all my pretensions about literary aesthetics, my tastes are really leaden.) I’m also not keen on vodka, so I certainly never got sucked into the Grey Goose hype among people claiming discriminating palates of princess-and-the-pea precision. (Numerous taste tests have revealed that most people cannot pick “their” vodka out of a lineup.)
Both Bombay Sapphire and Grey Goose are owned by Bacardi, which has manufactured for them a heritage that they don’t possess: Bombay Sapphire, for instance, originated in 1987, when Victoria, Empress of India, who figures prominently on the label, had been dead for the better part of a century. The advertising folks at Bacardi are geniuses. I mean, it’s as if they walked straight out of Mad Men, only really from the early 60s. Here’s why:
This is from an ad campaign recently launched in Israel. And there’s much, much more where that came from. Well, actually that’s not true: the promotional site has been pulled down, presumably because of the outcry.
As one might imagine, the campaign is getting lots of coverage. I first read about it on Copyranter, which pictures the other “ugly girlfriends.” There’s also a typically long and pointless thread about it on Jezebel, and Michelle Koenig-Schwartz has done a set of parodies.
Still, I’ve got to wonder: Who drinks Bacardi Breezers? Are they the same people who used to drink Zima? Is this stuff being marketed to women? Really? And why did these women—whom I consider attractive—consent to be pictured thus? Did they consent? If so, whyyyyy?
So many questions. No wonder I need more coffee.
Posted by Moria on June 23, 2009 at 7:33 pm
I’ll tell you who drinks them: the undergraduate women at my home institution, BFU (in this instance, “Bah, Fuck U” though the acronym does have other significances), otherwise known as “The Party Ivy.” (There’s a party ivy! Who knew.) And yes, they consent. And it’s because they are either utterly vapid or so profoundly insecure that they are convinced they must appear to be utterly vapid in order to get ahead. They belong to sororities, and wear hotpants with Greek letters on the ass. The carry bling-encrusted PDAs. They take bachelor’s degrees in business (which, I am now convinced, having spent some time among the attendees of the allegedly best business school in the country is an option that exists solely for those too stupid to major in economics).
And business school, evidently, teaches them nothing in the way of taking a critical stance toward advertising, branding, marketing, or any of the rest.
And then I step in their puke.
… And now I need more coffee.
Posted by Lucky Jane on June 23, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Yikes. Thanks for the clarification. I’m certain I didn’t attend BFU, but I remember the type vividly. By and large JPU doesn’t serve this population.
See, I was scratching my head over this ad because, in the US, I believe middle-class women 21-40 (i.e., you and I) are the target demographic for such crappyfruityalcopoppy rum mixers. By contrast (as you probably know), this particular line is associated with “chav” girls in the UK. I haven’t been to Israel since 2003, but I can’t imagine folks there have changed so much that this campaign would succeed with any demographic. So I guess I was really confused by the ad being not only misogynistic, but also unlikely to succeed because, well, confusing.
I’m not at all glad to know that there is a segment of legally drinking women to whom these ads would appeal. And you know what? I’ll bet these are precisely the women who think they don’t need feminism.
Posted by Moria on June 24, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Illegally drinking, I think, is a key piece of the puzzle. High drinking age encourages self-hatred-driven product choices. Good topic for a quantitative study. Dissertation, anyone?
Posted by Lucky Jane on June 24, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Yeah, I suspect an unacknowledgeable market for this advert is indeed underage—or “underage”—drinkers, an audience of mean girls who’ve been socialized to despise other girls and women, but who haven’t yet been socialized to keep their meanness effectively hidden. Then the alcopop removes what inhibitions they have.
I’m not so sure, however, if it’s the prohibition that encourages self-hatred, so much as it is the ways in which girls are socialized at the point such pitches would appeal. Therefore, yes: good topic for a dissertation.
Posted by Flavia on June 24, 2009 at 1:24 am
Rats. I do, in fact, drink Bombay Sapphire. Probably originally because of the pretty bottles, though I’m of the belief that I like the taste, too. Perhaps I should go back to Tanqueray.
I do not, however, like anything fruity, and I don’t particularly like rum. And the people I knew who drank Zima (and who drink Mike’s Hard Lemonade and other things of that ilk) are all men.
(And vodka is for people who don’t like to taste their alcohol. I only drink vodka it when it’s the only thing in the house, and I only drink it on the rocks.)
Posted by Lucky Jane on June 24, 2009 at 6:30 am
The only reason I don’t drink Sapphire is accidental: in college I was at a bar where I was offered the range of top-shelf gins for my first martini, and, when I went “ooh pretty” on sight of the Sapphire bottle, the friend I was with laughed and said that it was introduced in the seventies (it was actually 1987! I’ve corrected the post). I drank Plymouth that evening.
I don’t like rum, either, for exactly the reasons you cited. Same goes for vodka.
I do, however, keep a bottle of Mount Gay around for soaking raisins and other fruit, but mostly raisins, for baking. Every winter I say I’m going to make a Trinidad Black Cake, but by the time rolls around that I remember the fruit has to have been soaking in alcohol for months, I throw up my hands in indifference.
The reason I thought Zima was that I suspected the real target audience was douchy guys. I can picture the facial hair and everything. Not too difficult, that.
Posted by Flavia on June 24, 2009 at 11:13 am
That’s funny. I’m pretty sure that the first martini I had in college, ordered under the direction of my then-boyfriend, involved Bombay Sapphire. Said BF was a rabid Anglophile (as only an ethnic white from Staten Island at an Ivy can be), and it amuses me to think he may have bought the marketers’ faux-Victoriana.
Now he’s a scruffy wanna-be hipster and probably drinks PBR.
(And I actually didn’t understand the ads until I clicked through — I thought they were explicitly aimed at men rather than at women: you, dude, will look hotter if you’re dating an ugly woman. That seemed jerky, but also inept as a marketing strategy. The real message is so much worse and more misogynistic.)
Posted by Lucky Jane on June 24, 2009 at 5:55 pm
As to your parenthetical observations: sorry, the way I presented the ad is confusing, but then it reflects my own confusion. I, too, thought at first that the ad was aimed at guys—and I’m not sure it isn’t. It’s only that the ersatz self-help magazine format smacks of Cosmo and its ilk. From what I’ve seen of them, Maxim and Esquire don’t make such claims on their covers. The ad just doesn’t make sense, especially if its real target is—as Moria points out—an absurdly narrow segment of self-hating, underage drinkers.
According to their website, the design firm responsible for the Breezers’ campaign seems to be staffed by surprisingly menschy-looking guys, along with at least one finalist from a Dick Cheney lookalike competition (click on the dinosaur).
It’s WTF? moments like these that make me (almost) wish I taught composition. I would so assign this.
Posted by Sisyphus on June 24, 2009 at 10:45 pm
What a bizarre ad! I don’t get why I need an ugly girlfriend —- is it because I want to make sure the hot guy’s wingman actually has something to do, or just to make me look hotter, or is she an ironic accessory like a little dog in a handbag or the black friends that stuffwhitepeoplelike.com says I need? So strange.
It’s making me (even more) ashamed of liking daquiries and rum and cokes — for I am one of those people who, as Flavia points out, does not want to taste any alcohol in whatever I’m having. I am queen of the foofy cocktail. I’ll also cop to drinking Mike’s and (back when I was underage) those Seagram’s wine coolers, although I never sank so low as Zima.
The good news is that one of my friends who is moving has to clear out her booze stash and as a result I have a couple cases of their homebrew, which I hope will redeem me, or at least move me from Skanky Mean Girl into more hippie territory.
Posted by Lucky Jane on June 25, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Naw, there’s no shame in foofy drinks! Or foofy coffee or foofy baked goods, for that matter. I would never presume to speak for Flavia, but I don’t think there was any judgment intended one way or the other. Only preferences. Were I Queen of the World, everything would taste like kettle-cooked potato chips, or garlic, or sriracha, or late-summer tomatoes. Everything! De gustibus non disputandum est and all that. Yeah, I think we’re all relieved I’m not queen of anything.
I was just ranting on Bacardi, which had never crossed my consciousness until this bit of stupidity. It was purely by accident that I have never in possession of any Bacardi products.
Anyway, there’s no reason whatsoever, imo, to be “redeemed” by beer. I seriously doubt anyone would confuse you with a skanky mean girl. Still, I hope your friend has serious brewing skills, and that you’re in for a treat.
And next time you make daiquiris, tell people you’re making grog, the beverage that kept the mighty British Navy scurvy free so that they could take over the world. It’s the same drink. If I’m not mistaken, “daiquiri” is a Taino word—before Columbus swung through Cuba and got them all exterminated—does that make it girly?
That said, it’s disturbing how taste is gendered (sweet = feminine/effeminate; bitter or spicy/hot or otherwise unpleasant = manly), and onward to the slippery slope whereby one is distinctly valued over the other. The valuation is culturally dependent, of course. One of my favorite Japanese products is Men’s Chocolate Pocky: pretzel sticks covered in dark chocolate, made for men because the bitterness is just too strong for women. Yet in the West, dark chocolate is The Food of Women. Almost makes me want to dig up Bourdieu and ask him what he thinks.
Posted by flash on July 7, 2009 at 11:57 am
Gut!
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Posted by Trick on July 19, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Great idea, but will this work over the long run?