A Baffling Dr Pepper Ad Appeals to the Gays by Saying the Soda is Vers
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File this under unconfirmed news or possible hoaxes, but there’s a Dr Pepper print ad circulating on Twitter right now which markets the soda as “A queer drink for diverse drinkers” by showing a Dr Pepper can from the top, bottom and side and declaring the soda as “versatile.” If the Dr Pepper gay ad is real, it’d be one of the most tone-deaf LGBTQ ads of all time because who wants to think about anal sex while drinking a brown, gassy soda?
The ad was posted by a European Twitter user whose handle is @BarmyArny. He posted an image of the ad (below) along with the caption, “I think the fuck not.” His tweet has since been 3,127 times, and he claims the ad is real and that he saw it in a Swedish gay magazine. We have reached out to him for more details.
Most Twitter users seem baffled about the ad, disbelieving its authenticity or voicing distaste over its depiction of gay sex positions as “queer diversity.” Others find the ad humorous and appreciate the recognition of queer consumers.
While the Dr Pepper gay ad is notably focused on sex, lots of non-sexual products use sex as a selling point. Ultimately, it comes off more as poorly thought out, hokey and adolescent rather than aggressively homophobic.
There’s a million ways a Dr Pepper gay ad could acknowledge gay consumers without resorting to jokes about butt sex. They could’ve shown a same-sex couple drinking the soda while being affectionate or shown a guy ordering one at a gay bar.
Cadbury-Schweppes distributes Dr Pepper in Sweden, so perhaps they or their ad agency is behind this odd marketing.
