Lady Doritos are no longer happening, thanks to 24 hours of Twitter backlash PepsiCo received after its female CEO announced the company would be releasing a quieter, cleaner version of the snack.
Indra Nooyi told a Podcast earlier this week that her company was toying with the idea of creating more ladylike snacks. “Although women would love to crunch [chips] loudly, lick their fingers and pour crumbs from the bag into their mouth afterwards, they prefer not to do this in public,” she said.
Naturally, this created major outcry on social media. A barrage of triggered women vowed to crunch chips loudly in an effort to dismantle the patriarchy.
In response to Doritos lady friendly crisps I shall be eating the biggest crisps I can find crunching really loudly burping and carrying a packet of crisps as a handbag
— kate ford (@kateford76) February 5, 2018
But since the proposed product got such an adverse reaction, the idea was quickly canned. A PepsiCo spokeswoman tried to make sense of the media frenzy in an email today.
“The reporting on a specific Doritos product for female consumers is inaccurate,” she said. “We already have Doritos for women – they’re called Doritos, and they’re enjoyed by millions of people every day. At the same time, we know needs and preferences continue to evolve and we’re always looking for new ways to engage and delight our consumers.”
Definitely a far cry from Nooyi’s “We are looking at it, and we’re getting ready to launch a bunch of them soon,” prior statement.
There are only two explanations here. Either this was a total and utter miscommunication, and PepsiCo has spent the last 24 hours fielding phone calls from various PR firms trying to put the out the fire, or this was all a scheme to generate buzz.
You see, we live in an era of pre-planned scandals. Yeah, they might be messy, but they work. As Kim K will tell you, any publicity is good publicity, and the more the general public has your name in its mouth, the fatter your bank account gets.
Am I suggesting that PepsiCo diabolically planted an intentionally tone deaf product — knowing it would trigger feminists everywhere — to spike sales right after a likely post-Super Bowl dip in sales? Perhaps not. Perhaps I’m a paranoid cynic who seeks too much meaning in everything.
But you tell me just how badly you’ve been craving a fresh bag of cool ranch Doritos after hearing about it so much this week. Perhaps I’m a PR genius.
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