Have you read the back of a can of Coke’s Mother energy drink? It’s quite worrying. Mother is an ordinary large-serve energy drink. It has no inherent gender bias. It tastes like anything else full of caffeine, sodium, taurine and guarana, i.e. bloody awful. The back of the can advises that it should not be drunk by “kids, up the duff women or the weak who just can’t tolerate it”. It also adds “When your mate turns up with a wussy-sized can, you can raise your Mother up and proudly say, did yours come with a man bag?”. Finally, it states “Best Drunk Freeze Your Nuts Off Cold!”
Do you think, maybe, it’s intended to be only drunk by boys? Scared little boys who wish they were gruff and manly?
The TV campaign, aimed at the usual 15-24 C4-watching market, has a commitment-phobic young man on the run from a multitude of brides, bizarrely referencing the 1925 Buster Keaton film Seven Chances. For some reason the simpering women find the utterly nondescript Gen Y bloke irresistible, and in one very, very brief shot as the castrative domesticating doxies close in, he is wearing a wedding dress. After viewing this undeniably clever marketing campaign, and keeping in mind that this is a drink, I only have one question – what the fuck is going on?
