While the author of this article about candy cigarettes and fruit drinks for children packaged as liquor bottles is unknown to me, I have found it quite interesting when discussing ethics in marketing.
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Candy cigarettes
When I was a kid, I used to buy candy cigarettes. Little, thin cylinders of chocolate wrapped in paper that looked just like the real thing. My buddies and I had lots of fun inhaling imaginary smoke and blowing invisible smoke rings. In our minds, we were just like sophisticated adults.
I do not know whatever happened to candy cigarettes, and cannot recall who made them. Today, it is difficult to conceive of a product that would prompt children to imitate potentially harmful behaviors.
Nobody knew any better then. Unlike today, when we live in an anti-smoking, cancer-fearing environment that would make marketing candy cigarettes to children a socially unacceptable venture.
But, contrary to popular belief, candy cigarettes are not dead. Their ghost is alive and dressed in new drag. The latest wrinkle in marketing concerns fruit drinks for kids in bottles that look like wine coolers and pint-size liquor flasks.
Fruit drinks packaged as liquor bottles
Parents are angry and they are protesting against this packaging. In fact, CBS News recently ran a piece that showed a number of them loudly confronting a grocery store operator. The story included a sound bite of a spokesperson for a fruit drink company using this new packaging.
He was quoted as saying that ‘a container is a container’ inferring that the company’s choice of packaging was of no importance. Nice try, but taken at face value, this would indicate a huge lack of marketing savvy or just plain silliness or cynicism. Or all of the above.
He went on to say that his company was emphasizing the value of the contents not the bottle. The parents in the CBS news segment saw the bottle shape as a patent marketing ploy designed to pander to kids’ desire to imitate adult behaviors. In this case, drinking booze from a bottle.
All of which raises a key marketing issue that the fruit drink producers apparently forgot or ignored: when it comes to marketing, the perception is the reality. The perception that people have of the overtones of a product disposes their response to the product and the company that markets it.
Products are not marketed in a social vacuum, but in an environment that may be positive and accepting, or neutral, or negative and rejecting. I am sure that it has not been lost on the makers of fruit drinks that there is a lot of buying power out there in MTV-land that they would mightily like to tap.
It is no secret that if kids like their fruit drinks packaged in bottles that look like Bartles and James wine coolers, they will drink tons of the brew and spend millions to do so.
If we were to put into words, what we think some of these fruit drink producers are doing, but not saying, it would go something like this:
‘Parents of America, we have got this great marketing and packaging concept.’
‘We are going to market an innocent fruit drink to your kids, and we are going to put the stuff in a bottle that is as close to the shape of a liquor bottle or wine cooler as we can make it.’
‘Your kids are going to love this packaging, because the container will have the look and feel of a pint bottle of liquor or a wine cooler. And your kids will drink a lot of this stuff, because they can pretend that they are drinking booze, while they drink it. Neat, huh?’
‘What is more, we as marketers of fruit drinks think it is OK for us to prompt your kids to imitate the behaviors of alcohol- drinking adults, and we do not think this matter, because this will get your children to buy our products.’
Putting parental reaction into words, we could say:
‘Thanks for thinking of us fruit drink producers, marketers, but no thanks.’
‘You are prompting our kids to think that drinking something from a wine cooler or pint bottle can be fun and adult. And the last thing they need, or that we want, is that kind of behavior.’
‘And because you are doing this, we are going to kick your butt in the best way we know how. By getting negative exposure for your fruit drink on national television watched by millions, by getting on the case of grocers in our area, and by boycotting your product. Neat, huh?’
Not exactly the ideal scenario for marketing success. But, please do not get me wrong. I am not taking a moral position on the moral pros or cons of drinking alcohol. That is for folks with more ethical expertise than I.
I am saying that American consumers are no dummies and they will take an ethical stance on the products they or their kids buy and the marketing approaches that companies take. And they can do this in one big hurry.
To paraphrase an oft quoted phrase, the business of America is shopping. And Americans do this better than anybody else.
They know that the overtones and relationships a product creates in the minds of their children are as much a part of the product as the packaging. And as influential in the buying process. The fact is, consumer perception is everything. And companies who ignore or discount this reality do so at their own peril.
Perception and ethics in marketing
Perceptions are like weather systems. The trick is to anticipate and prepare for them ahead of time rather than to ignore and deal with them after the fact.
Also, perceptions are dynamisms that are always waiting to occur. They happen fast and emerge from a social and ethical back drop that greatly influences the acceptance of a product or service and the company that introduces it.
Perceptions once formed are often tough, though not impossible, to change. They become guiding beliefs that turn rigid and tend to last.
It does not take long for people to judge that a product is good, bad or ugly. And when somebody makes up his or her mind that a product belongs in one of these categories, that judgment can be incredibly difficult to change.
Professional politicians know better than most how to put a wet finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, to test the beliefs of their constituents before they act. They have incredibly sensitive feelers for the social context in which they operate. They know how to anticipate perceptions. They are pros at asking themselves the all-time thought starters:
- What is this going to look like?
- How will constituents and opinion influencers perceive this?
- And how will their perceptions affect my chances of success?
The fruit drink producers might well take a lesson from the marketing approach the pols use, and take a more accurate pulse of the environment in which they introduce their products. It makes good marketing sense.
