There’s just enough of the sixties left in me to have a big response to one of the gutsiest marketing campaigns ever to hit the cafe table. I’m speaking about the sugar substitute Equal’s protest rally in a dish. Have you seen them? Hard to miss. Each blue packet looks like a mini protest sign. “Do Your Drink Justice” says the one in purple print. “Trust Your Tastebuds” is in green. And “Fight Bland With Blue” is in orange. While sipping iced tea in Napa, I was overwhelmed with the desire to glue them to a toothpick and parade them around the table.
All this is to say, however, that I’m not sure I like them. Nostalgia is a difficult card for a marketer to play. Those of us who were a part of protesting the Viet Nam War remember vividly when we took marker to poster board to bring attention to serious issues like body counts and invasions of a growing list of countries. While we may still respond to the protest genre, the irony of having those emotions revisited in service of our own self-gratification (“Exercise Your Equal Right to Flavor”) cuts a little too close for comfort.
Boomers are already accused by some of having cared only because the draft affected us directly. In any case, the wounds from that era are re-opened nightly, as we witness the U.S. playing an old tune with new variations in Iran. Some of us now feel guilty that we’re not doing more to protest; many of us are wondering why our children on college campuses are so slow to flexing their protest muscles. From a marketing point of view, I’m not sure I want to grapple with both inner and external conflict when all I really wanted to do was sip a glass of iced tea.
That said, I guess the final word is in my purse. All the blue packets that weren’t already recruited for my drink—you’ll find them there.
Carol Orsborn