Be a woman, take it like a man.

[venta]

A while back I noticed posters advertising a "protein shake" called, I think, Upbeat and made a note to try it. I figured it was a potentially interesting snack-concept for days when I want to go straight from work to, say, a yoga class without keeling over. (Lots of other interesting snack-concepts are also available but hey, I quite like milkshake).

This morning, outside Ealing Broadway station, there were gentlemen in leather jackets handing out free samples of a chocolate "40% higher protein" milkshake called Wing-Co. Obviously protein shakes are the new Thing. Wing-Co has a blocky cartoon of a WWII-era pilot (his moustache dripping chocolate milk) on the bottle, and small planes whizzing past the nutritional information.

It's pretty nice, actually. Chocolate milkshake is very variable and often has a nasty, grainy texture but I enjoyed this one. Whether it can actually make good on its promise to "shoot down hunger, fast" remains to be seen. But I could imagine buying it again.

Except...

As the free-samplers were dishing out the bottles this morning, they said "Man up with Wing-Co!" to everyone they handed one to. According to the info box on the label, "WING-CO IS PROPER MAN FUEL". "DON'T BE A GIRL," it further elaborates, "SHAKE IT UP AND DRINK IT NOW!"

Oh. Good.

The info box is, of course, designed to look like a plate which has been screwed onto the bottle. Because, y'know, screws are very manly (they look like slotted-head countersunk woodscrews to me).

Think I'll try out Upbeat after all. In fact, Wing-Co has inspired me to compare the two, and Upbeat has real fruit in it, and more protein, and is made entirely from British milk.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

"WING-CO IS PROPER MAN FUEL"

Presumably an attempt to counter the notion that diets are somehow girly?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Could be. I'd have thought "protein shake" (which to me already has a bit of an overtone of manly muscle-building) was already fairly non-girly.

The marketing I've seen for these thus far don't seem to be diet-orientated, more aimed at terribly busy people who need to keep going until they can fit their next meal in.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

more aimed at terribly busy people who need to keep going until they can fit their next meal in

Gosh - I haven't heard that one before... that's quite horrifying. :-/

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I really hate companies who do this. Yorkie and some brand of beer whose name I can't remember (and which is irrelevant to me since I don't drink beer anyway) are similar offenders. The beer brand might be John Smith's, actually.

An affronted letter explaining exactly why you won't be buying their product in future, in spite of actually liking the taste, might add at least one small drop to the ocean that will eventually (I dearly hope) sweep this bullshit away. I'd certainly be interested to see their reply.

Actually, a quick look on Twitter for references to 'Wing-Co' shows that quite a few people are vocally complaining about their sexism there already. The manufacturers, Arla Foods, have an account there, so should see any tweets which mention it. Is it OK with you if I link to this post on Twitter and copy them in?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I may be paraphrasing poorly. Upbeat's webpage says:

"...it’s best to have protein as part of every meal and snack…not always easy if you're on the go. Most of us don’t get enough protein early on in the day and it’s not until the evening meal that we tend to get a good amount of high quality protein – generally from meat or fish. We understand that busy lifestyles mean getting a balance of all the right nutrients at each meal or snack isn't always easy."

I hadn't seen it as a diet-related product, but on reflection that might just be because I don't think of diets much.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Still, it really doesn't sound from that blurb like they're aiming for the diet market.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Linking to this post is fine, and you're welcome (though I don't associate my LJ with my own twitter handle).

I couldn't think, myself, of a way of complaining that I felt would make the point. I don't find it offensive, I just find it a bit... well, a bit shit, really. And a bit disappointing. If they're going to go for such a low-rent ad campaign, then I suspect their response would be along the lines of "haha typical girl can't even take a joke".

[venta.livejournal.com]

Several of my colleagues have made a point of popping over to see if my beard's grown since I finished the milkshake :(

[lnr]

That's more or less what McCoys said when I tried complaining to them. Plus ’You're not our target market'. Shame, because I really like their crisps, but won't buy them with their current attitude.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I suspect the same, but if they get enough bad publicity for it they might start rethinking.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I saw a roadside advert for that yesterday as I was driving along and it said "THIS IS PROPER MAN-MILK". Since I drove past it at 30mph in moving traffic I didn't see the rest of the advert so I spent the next mile going "what the fucking fuck? Did I just see an advert for semen? Is that even allowed?"

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Written by somebody who doesn't know about sandwiches, there!

[venta.livejournal.com]

If I were unprepared, I'd probably rather have a milkshake than a bought sandwich... bought sandwiches are usually icky, or very expensive, or occasionally both.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I just ran past a poster on a bus-stop (I mean I was out running, not that the poster scared me) and it had a guy carrying a cow on his shoulders, and the slogan was something like "A milkshake for men, with added man". At a very quick glance, it seemed so completely over-the-top and pisstakey that I actually wouldn't have minded it as part of an ad-campaign. If only the rest of the campaign weren't so rubbish and so lazily thought-up.

[rapperaddict.livejournal.com]

And has it? I hope you at least have managed a handlebar moustache after all that!

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. My face appears to be falling off. Not sure if that's related to the weekend's sunburn, or an incipient beard!

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Yorkie: I remember my reaction to that being "damn you Nestle, I'm already boycotting you, I can't double-boycott you, argh!"

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

That made me think about male lactation, which is rare, but happens.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Protein shakes really are a Thing. Even the BBC wants to tell me about them today (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22753620).

They're pointing out that you can have too much protein, which I guess the marketing blurb for the shakes rather glosses over.

[(Anonymous)]

Think about Arla's record vis a vis its dairy farmer suppliers.

[octalbunny.livejournal.com]

But that could mean that the marketing has worked for them, long-term. People get the brand name in their head, want it, and once the boycott stops they start buying it.

I can't think what the academic "perfect game" strategy would be.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I think you're right that companies which take a stand against sexism probably benefit from a boost in their public profile, even if they were the very ones perpetuating the sexism which they are now standing against in the first place. I think the only strategy we can take as consumers if we want to combat sexism is to buy from companies which reflect our values and not from those which don't (and to say so loudly in both cases on the internet).

Over time, and especially at present when there really do seem to be more and more voices uniting against sexism, I would hope that the economic penalties associated with sexist marketing would become strong enough to mean that companies did not want to incur them just for the sake of the benefits which they could then reap by turning into one of the 'good guys' - i.e. it would be more beneficial just to be one of the good guys in the first place.

But that's an optimistic view, which will only works if there is genuinely an overall economic penalty associated with this kind of marketing. At the moment, the makers of Wing-Co clearly think exactly the opposite.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

At the moment, the makers of Wing-Co clearly think exactly the opposite.

Either that or they just don't think in a way that makes this kind of marketing seem problematic.

We live in our comfortable little filter bubbles online, forgetting what the world is like. If "everyone" agrees on something here, that might only be 10% or even 1% of people out in the real world.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I just stopped buying them. Did they say who their target market were? (And have they told their downstream vendors how small it is?)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Added...man-cow...somebody behind that doesn't want to think about where milk comes from.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Man-milk? Seriously?!

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I AM SO CONFLICTED RIGHT NOW.

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

I picked up a Wing-co being given away free at Old Street station this morning, but I didn't read further than "milk drink" and thus gave it away to a co-worker. I didn't even know it was a protein drink! Mind you, my co-worker is pretty skinny so giving him a protein shake was probably no bad thing!

aiming at a moutached audience

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

winko man-milk

...really?

[shermarama]

(Literal LOL, there.)

[shermarama]

I had a bit of a funny moment when I started in my current job, where everyone refers to cows as 'she' all the time, and I felt myself wanting to challenge their sexist assumptions... And then thought, oh. Yeah. You can actually call all the dairy cows 'she', can't you?

[venta.livejournal.com]

There was the weird case of the cartoon cow that used to advertise Boddington's beer, which was clearly intended to be male but still had udders. Although Wikipedia describes the cow as "a transgender playboy", so maybe I'm being too simplistic.

Re: aiming at a moutached audience

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, that's what I'm reading. The protein shake that dare not speak its name.

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

This is the disadvantage of not seeing any adverts; I miss this sort of thing. Oh well, there are other thick-and-crunchy crisps around these days, so I'll just buy those instead until McCoys sort themselves out.

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

Late to the party, but I'm hopeful that social media will bring power to small voices in situations like this. http://www.missrepresentation.org/not-buying-it/ for example is a great campaign, highlighting the worst offenders and raising awareness all round.