Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/18/still-fuck-pepsi.html
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Did anybody believe them?
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The hell you say.
I’m going to boycott them anyway, just because.
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I’m boycotting them right now.
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I was stuck on the advertising agency conundrum in this case:
One, obviously, must never believe such scum; but one must also never forget that they are enthusiastically working to stoop lower than you would believe.
Those rules aren’t normally in contradiction; but when an agency claims that they will achieve a petty nadir for humanity in the service of some energy drink they are: you can’t believe their claim that they’ll do it; because lying is in their nature; but you cannot disbelieve it because it’s exactly the sort of thing that…people…of such mercenary degeneracy would dream of doing.
It’s tricky.
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Oh I wouldn’t put it past them, but the blowback would be legendary. Corporations don’t like blowback.
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Back in highschool in the 80’s in Germany we this joke:
NASA has shocking news. The USSR just landed on the moon and painted it completely red to make a point.
A white-house official got back to NASA with the question if they have white paint. After a positive replay, the white-house asked NASA on their next mission to write “CocaCola” in big letters …
yes, I know …
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The reason is simple: it’s cheaper to get publicity by announcing then cancelling the project, than it is to follow through on the project (which isn’t even guaranteed to work).
Their scheme worked, too: I wouldn’t have learned about Pepsi’s new energy drink if Cory hadn’t posted about the space billboard.
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Me too. As a Coke fan I think Pepsi Sucks™.
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Alas.
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Yeah, we disbelieve them not because they wouldn’t do it, but because (right now) they couldn’t do it (in a way that would economically viable). But that last part can - and will - change. So we remain vigilant for the time when the PR stunt is not them threatening to do it, but actually doing it. At which point a boycott wouldn’t be a sufficient response - burning down their fucking headquarters would be.
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This isn’t so far from real life. The grounds surrounding the Palace of Culture and Science, Stalin’s gift to the people of Poland, are festooned with capitalist logos – and the building itself is now home to a multiplex cinema
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What is this “Pepsi” you speak of?
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This is why we can’t have even worse things than what we already got!
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I’m going to go out and buy several litres of their toxic gack, so that I can continue to not drinking the tooth-decaying poison in solidarity with your boycott! That’ll show 'em! #idliketoteachtheworldtorogerthat
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They sometimes seem to court controversy deliberately(it’s unlikely that there is truly no such thing as bad publicity; but not all publicity that looks like it should be bad actually is).
There’s also the wildcard factor built into the fact that they don’t always seem to know what will provoke blowback of the actually-bad sort among people who aren’t C-level corporate decison makers or advertising agency abhumans; which means that a desire to avoid blowback doesn’t always stop them provoking it.
I suspect that even they knew this is pushing it; but wouldn’t have bet too much money on that definitely being true.
