— Dr Pepper/Seven Up was hoping a novel Internet campaign would generate buzz about its new flavoured milk drink, Raging Cow.
Instead, consumers are raging about the company's marketing tactics, labelling the effort "shady" and "immoral." Some are calling for a boycott of the product, just as it is being rolled out to U.S. stores.
How did Dr Pepper/Seven Up's launch go off course? The story of Raging Cow — a product the company hopes to bring to Canada in the next few years — illustrates the risks marketers face when they try to spark positive chatter on the Internet, a borderless medium with its own rules and culture that can't be controlled the way traditional ads on TV or in magazines can.
Dr Pepper/Seven Up's goal was to give Raging Cow credibility with young people, so it hit on the idea of using "bloggers" to talk up the drink on the Internet.
Blogs — short for Web logs — are on-line diaries that have become one of the Web's hottest trends with teens and twentysomethings and are now drawing interest from youth-oriented marketers.
The beverage maker, based in Plano, Tex., flew five of the Web's most popular bloggers and their parents to Dallas for an all-expenses-paid visit. It gave them samples of the drink, T-shirts, hats and Amazon.com gift certificates, then sent them home to start pumping Raging Cow to their friends on the Web — without disclosing that the company had put them up to it.
The bloggers, aged 18 to 24, were also asked to put links on their Web pages to a blog-like site, ragingcow.com which chronicles the adventures of a fictitious cow.
The site was actually set up by Dr Pepper/Seven Up, but that information is well-hidden. Visitors have to click on a tiny copyright symbol tucked away at the bottom left-hand corner of the page, which brings up a "Privacy Statement" from Dr Pepper/Seven Up.
Visitors wasted little time posting messages on the site, complaining that the whole Raging Cow exercise reeked of deception. Some learned in the press of the undercover-style Raging Cow launch and expressed outrage.
"This website is FAKE," wrote one. "When you are advertising under false pretenses and not being up front about what you're doing ... that isn't just wrong, it's immoral and disgusting."
Company defenders shot back with a string of putdowns.
"I'm sure that when your mother told you you were special, it had a LOT to do with the small yellow bus you were riding to school," wrote one Raging Cow sympathizer, whose e-mail address indicated he was one of the bloggers hand-picked by Dr Pepper/Seven Up to promote the drink.
As word of the controversy spread, the British site bloggerheads.com called for other bloggers to boycott Raging Cow, arguing that Dr Pepper/Seven Up and other companies should pay bloggers for their promotional muscle.
"The people who make the cash decisions need to know that charging into our arena expecting it all for nothing is a very bad idea," reads a message on the site. "If people want to reach us, they need to know that it's going to be on our terms, and that we will not be insulted by offers of cheap freebies."
Andrew Springate, director of marketing at Dr Pepper/Seven Up, said the company did not set out to publicize Raging Cow by deliberately generating controversy. But it was aware that a novel campaign such as this "comes with high risk in that ... we don't control the content," he said.
The goal wasn't to deceive anyone, he added. Bloggers are free to express their opinions about Raging Cow — positive or negative — or to say nothing.
"For us the blogging campaign is just an extension of what we consider to be the oldest form of advertising, which is word of mouth," he said.
Rick Broadhead, a Toronto technology analyst and author, said Dr Pepper/Seven Up was smart to try to capitalize on bloggers, who have the "influence and the ability to get the word out" about new products.
Some consumers may resent such campaigns, seeing them as a cynical attempt by corporations to harness a grassroots, largely non-commercial phenomenon. "Other people are going to say this is brilliant," he said. "This is the first strategy of its kind I have seen from a mainstream marketer."
But Max Valiquette, president of Youthography, a Toronto youth marketing firm, said Dr Pepper/Seven Up made at least one crucial error: It wasn't completely up front about the nature of the campaign.
To win the trust of young people, "first and foremost you've got to be honest. ... The mistake that Dr Pepper might have made here is that they've gone into this turf without respecting the rules of the turf."
He said the campaign is part of a larger trend called roach marketing, in which companies try to disguise their come-ons as spontaneous interactions in a bid to give products credibility. But, as Dr Pepper/Seven Up is discovering, such deceptions can backfire.
"The inherent problem is that we're living in such an unbelievably media-savvy age where young people are so incredibly media-literate that eventually they find out," Mr. Valiquette said.
