Pepsi's Bumbling Response to Sexist iPhone App
By Dan Mitchell
Posted Thursday, October 15, 2009 - 2:42pm
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The embarrassment PepsiCo (PEP) faced this week when it was forced to apologize for a sexist iPhone application aimed at young dopes showed what big companies have to deal with as the worlds of media and advertising become more fragmented.
What marketing executive, after all, either desires or has the time to monitor what's happening 100 levels down, where things like iPhone apps are being developed by (as I imagine them) 22-year-old guys in ballcaps?
The app, if you haven't heard, offers "men," if they can be called that, tips for scoring babes, suggests pickup lines, and offers a bulletin board on which users can brag about the chicks they have bagged.
A promotion for Pepsi's Amp Energy drink, the app is called "Amp Up Before You Score."
Among the many puerile aspects of the app are drawings of the 24 different female types that the developers had divided all women into. Those developers work for R/GA (warning: the all-Flash site might crash your browser), the digital marketing agency owned by Interpublic Group.
How offensive is the app? So offensive that even the New York Post called it "app-alling," and "hokey."
