How 7Up used a commercial to overcome its bland image

Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal

A dark, thin, irrepressibly upbeat young man hits the streets in a shirt with this slogan on the front:

"Make 7."

And on the back:

"Up yours."

Jaded city folks salute him appropriately, with scowls and howls. Undaunted, the 7Up Yours Guy rejoices in the buzz around him. In another spot, he paints the 7Up logo on a basketball court during a game, inciting general untidiness, and snapping no telling how many Achilles' tendons. In another, he may or may not have introduced a dog to rigor mortis.

Is the 7Up Yours guy just too dumb to get it?

No, says, John Clarke, chief advertising officer for Dr. Pepper/7Up. "We wouldn't describe him as 'dumb,' " Clarke says. "We describe him as innocent and naive, having clear direction as to what he wants to accomplish. The fact that he doesn't think the thing all the way through makes the humor.

"His goals are high, but his abilities to get there are low. . . . He's kind of innocent to everything going on around him."

If you are a certain age, you probably get this. If you are any other age, you may be like the guy in the New Yorker magazine cartoon, confused by a TV commercial. His daughter tells him, "Of course you don't get it, Dad. They're not targeting your demographic."

What is the 7Up ads' target demographic? "We set our target audience, for business reasons, among the 12- to 24-year-olds," Clarke says. "They consume a lot of soft drinks. "

Market research brought some unsettling news about 7Up's image among youngsters.

"The answer," Clarke says, "came back to us: We created a little acronym that we called the BOB factor. BOB stood for bland, old and boring. That's how kids looked at 7Up.

"We thought we were innocent, likable, clean, healthy, fresh. But actually we were more of a victim of an image problem of bland, old and boring."

Enter the 7Up Yours ad, which had its debut in November 1999. Two months later, it was too edgy for ABC, which refused to air the spot on the Super Bowl. (7Up substituted the "show us your can" commercial.)

"Sales are obviously what we're all here for at the end of the day," Clarke says. "7Up was losing volume for a while, particularly with that (12-24) group, and we got an instant sales response after a few months of this campaign." This character, Clarke notes, doesn't challenge them (the teen consumers) to believe they're being sold. It's exactly the opposite: It's like you're watching a guy that's seriously trying to sell something that is making a fool of himself."