We all have seen brands ordeal to come off exciting for their consumers by catering to their different needs. There are so many brands, advertisements, and campaigns that have gone on to completely change the face of a product, all because they’re that great with their course of idea module.
However, in the race of standing out, more often than not, brands are left just swinging on the sideways due to all the flak that they receive for their out-of-the-box thinking. We have seen it happen so many times, from advertisements to advertisements and aisle to aisle.
Now, the bosses at Doritos have decided to do something weird, covered in the name of “ground-breaking”, they have decided to make a ‘lady-friendly’ version of their chips. What makes these “lady friendly” version different from the ordinary Doritos chips is that it has a quieter crunch, less messy to eat and it comes in a smaller packet which makes it handbag friendly too.
When asked to Indra Nooyi, Global Chief Executive of PepsiCo, which owns Doritos, about even the existence of this idea, she said, “Although women would love to crunch crisps loudly, lick their fingers and pour crumbs from the bag into their mouth afterward, they prefer not to do this in public. You watch a lot of the young guys eat the chips, they love their Doritos, and they lick their fingers with great glee, and when they reach the bottom of the bag they pour the little-broken pieces into their mouth, because they don’t want to lose that taste of the flavor, and the broken chips in the bottom,” as reported by New York Post.
As much differently as the bosses of Doritos try to market it, they have already started receiving a lot of flak for their supposed product and idea. Some have even called the move as a “tired gender stereotype”, something that has been prevalent in the advertising industry for the longest time now. A spokesman from the Women’s Equality Party said: “Companies that perpetuate these tired gender stereotypes will continue to lose out on the single biggest consumer group: women,” reports The Sun.
What do you think about this idea? Do the women of this world really need something like this that caters to a general idea of how a woman should behave in public, quieter, less messy and smaller in comparison to another chip in the market? Isn’t this a very subtle way of telling women what and how they should be consuming something? Had the brand immediately needed to introduce something like this, couldn’t they do it by keeping the product much gender neutral?
There are so many questions that one would like to ask over here, are you in support of something like this?
Jyotsna Amla