Pepsi's Bumbling Response to Sexist iPhone App

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."

It's possible that the people at PepsiCo charged with protecting and developing the corporate brand image didn't even know anybody's name at R/GA, much less that they knew what the chuckleheads there were up to.

PepsiCo, it should be noted, is run by a woman, Indra K. Nooyi. She doesn't seem to fit into any of the 24 types, which include "sorority girl," "treehugger," "rebound girl," and "aspiring actress," the latter depicted as a waitress. Actually, strike that: Nooyi might, for the boys at R/GA, fit into the angry-looking type called "Trouble."

How does PepsiCo allow such a ridiculous and embarrassing campaign to happen? "Looking at a 30-second spot is easy" for marketing executives, Nate Elliot of Forrester Research told National Public Radio. "Reviewing and understanding every last possible interaction with an interactive application is a lot harder."

Sadly, though, even when the complaints started pouring in, Pepsi was unable to contain the fallout. The people who run the Twitter feed for Amp apologized, all right, but in doing so, they used the tag "#pepsifail." That not only spread the story far and wide, it also helped make the company as a whole,  not just Amp, the main target.

And then the people who run the Twitter feeds for PepsiCo and for the Pepsi and Mountain Dew brands also decided it would be a good idea to apologize there (they might be the same people, I have no idea). "The Amp brand Twitter feed has only 1,000 followers," noted Advertising Age, "compared to about 15,000 for Pepsi, almost 18,000 for Mountain Dew and nearly 5,000 for PepsiCo."

Since "Pepsi, Mountain Dew and Pepsi corporate have attached themselves to the debacle, the problem appears much larger, as those brands and, indeed, the entire company may appear insensitive to women," wrote Ad Age's Natalie Zmuda.

But Pepsi has perhaps finally gotten a handle on things. There hasn't been a tweet on the Amp feed for three days. On the other hand, Pepsi hasn't yet pulled the app, "making the mea culpa look a bit hollow," Zmuda notes. Incredibly, a PepsiCo spokesman told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that the company is still "evaluating its options."

Further, some of the apologies were a bit backhanded. Amp's final tweet was: "Our app tried 2 show the humorous lengths guys go 2 pick up women. We apologize if it’s in bad taste & appreciate your feedback."

In adultspeak, that would be: "Some people just don't get it, but to them we grudgingly apologize."