Cheap, derivative, lazy, headline grabbing rubbish.

In case you’re wondering, that’s pretty much my verdict on the ‘new’ Dr Pepper 10 ad that’s doing the rounds. With a few choice expletives deleted (because my mother reads this blog too).

Right, I’ll keep this short and simple.

Lazy “creative” makes my blood boil. Derivative “creative” gives me a bad, bad headache. So bad that I want to smack my head repeatedly into the offending item until it goes away. And I can’t bloody stand rip off work.

Take this:

Compare this:

Not for women. Not for girls. See any correlation here?

What’s even more “interesting” is that this rip doesn’t appear on the product’s section on the Dr Pepper website – or even on the bottle itself. It’s not until you head to their video page that it makes itself known.

What’s really weird – and I mean dead on, all out freaky weird, is that the video I embedded above was uploaded to Youtube on 13 March 2011. Yet the story hasn’t broken until today by all accounts.

There’s not a lot in their Twitter stream about it from what I can see (odd) but their Facebook Group has exploded in the last few hours with people engaging positively or negatively with the campaign.

But the campaign’s been around for 7 months.

All this makes me wonder if Dr Pepper have pulled a blinder.

Is this campaign actually a real campaign, or have they released something guaranteed to get people talking? Did they originally slide it out, hoping for some traction, didn’t get any so went of the offensive (pun intended) in the last day?

Check out this quick grab from Google (search dr pepper women – no “ “ or other search parameters):

The top 20 results are pretty much all talking about the campaign. Look at some of the news sources carrying the story.

That’s great visibility for any product. Especially one that’s probably been advertised for seven months (thus getting over the market-entry hype hump).

Hell, it even lured me into ranting about it for the first half of this post.

I didn’t even know that the company had a 10 calorie drink.

I do now.

So perhaps the strategy worked. Visibility has been gained.

If this is a tactic to get more eyeballs, great, it’s worked. It’s nothing new, but it’s worked. People are engaging, loudly. Subconsciously, some of the audience will now buy the product because the awareness has been cemented into their heads.

If, however, this is a real campaign dreamed up by people in turtle neck sweaters who thought that it was a really good modern and daring idea, it’s lazy, derivative crap. That took seven months to actually get people talking about it. It’s hardly worth it now, is it?

Your views?