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Why I don’t like Snapple ads: Opinion by moderator

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Snapple hazing ad is here

Snapple and Deutsch: Paddling Backwards


( Advertising copy from Snapple website: “My college buddies and I used to play a game that looked a lot like this. It’s nice to see youngsters carrying on some of our traditions.”)Black, Latino and NIC fraternities/sororities have fought inch by inch and year by year to stop the practice of paddling where it exists in Greek life and to even question if paddles are appropriate when placed on sale in campus bookstores.

Now, out-for-the-bucks Snapple and their not-so-creative agency Deutsch have a print and billboard poster called “FRAT” depicting two bottles with hair and Delta Omega Delta ball caps looking smug over a prostrate pledge. A broken paddle sits nearby and other paddles, all with Greek letters, fill out the picture. The campaign is aimed at teens, and that worries me.

This is precisely the audience most susceptible to thinking that paddling and enduring paddling are cool things to do. What better way to justify their immature actions then to have Snapple characters portray as harmless an activity that is criminal in many of the 43 states with hazing laws?

So what’s next from good old Deutsch? How about two Snapple bottles dressed in tuxes and duct-tape stovepipe hats thrown through a car windshield after the Junior Prom? No, that isn’t funny, and I’m just making a point. Nor are all the bleeding kidneys or lacerated buttocks that get reported each year because a handful of Greeks are as brainless as Snapple’s ad team, who, we bet, never pledged a fraternity.

Here all these years we thought the advertising industry was getting serious when it talked about having an ethical code. How about showing good faith, Snapple and Deutsch, to remove the ad on your own.

A friend of mine in Wisconsin said this about the Snapple video and movies portraying Greeks as barbaric thugs: “The general public has a stereotypical image of fraternities. This is so reinforcing to that image. That commercial sends many messages to the subconscious memory. We are very visual people. And it is being sent to the kids. Are those the values that fraternities want as part of their membership? Because the message is–this is what [Greeks] are about.”

I for one encourage all of you to call Snapple (800.Snapple. 9a-4:30p M-F EST/EDT).with a request to halt the “FRAT” segment of the ad campaign. Or write: Ernest J. Cavallo, President/CEO, Ken Gilbert, VP Marketing, and Whit Beebe, Director of Advertising, Snapple Bottling Group, Inc., 709 Westchester Ave, White Plains, NY 10604, 800.964.7842 or 914.397.9200, fax 914.397.9220, www.snapple.com . Advertising Agency: Kelly Donovan, Director, Deutsch Inc, 111 Eighth Ave, New York, NY 10011. 212.981.7600, fax 212.981.7525.

By Hank Nuwer

Journalist Hank Nuwer is the Alaska author of Hazing: Destroying Young Lives; Broken Pledges: The Deadly Rite of Hazing, High School Hazing, Wrongs of Passage and The Hazing Reader. He has written articles or columns on hazing for the Sunday Times of India, Toronto Globe & Mail, Harper's Magazine, Orlando Sentinel, The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. His current book is Hazing: Destroying Young Lives from Indiana University Press. He is married to Malgorzata Wroblewska Nuwer of Warsaw, Poland and Fairbanks, Alaska. Nuwer is a former columnist for the Greenville (Ohio)Early Bird and former managing editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in Alaska.
Nuwer was named the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists columnist of the year in 2021 for his “After Darke” column in the Early Bird. He also won third place for the column in 2022 from the Indiana chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He and his wife Gosia, recently of Union City, Ind., have owned 20 acres in Alaska for many years. “The move is a sort-of coming home for us,” said Nuwer. As a journalist, he’s written about the Alaskan Iditarod sled-dog race and other Alaska topics. Read his musings in his blog at Real Alaska Daily--http://realalaskadaily.com and in his weekly column "Far from Randolph" in the Winchester Star-Gazette of Randolph County, Indiana.

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