Classica(ally Bad) TV Commercials: Crystal Pepsi, The Other New Coke
Go to any marketing or business school and they’ll tell you the introduction of New Coke in 1985 was one of the biggest, if not the biggest business gaffes in the history of America. Yet in 1993, Pepsi did damn near the same thing with a colorless, caffeine-less, and honestly tasteless product called Crystal Pepsi. With sales not exactly going through the roof, PepsiCo decided to drag down Pizza Hut too with this not-so-complimentary cross-promotion.
The discussion of how bad Crystal Pepsi actually was can be saved for another day, so let’s talk about this equally awful commercial. The sharp-eyed viewer can tell from the very beginning of this commercial that Crystal Pepsi wasn’t selling too well. I mean, how many bottles of this crap can the poor phone operator at Pizza Hut be surrounded by? I know Pizza Hut and Pepsi were owned by the same company and cross-promotion between the two products was (and still is) quite common, but this poor woman could get seriously hurt if one of the towers of Crystal Pepsi should fall to the ground! But wait… the insanity is just about to begin.
I don’t know which is worse– the impression that everyone calling Pizza Hut actually wants Crystal Pepsi, or that PepsiCo could find a group of even worse actors representing Domino’s. I know they’re trying to make the competition look goofy, but the first actress who answers the phone for Domino’s lays on the valley girl act a little too thick. Then you have a doofus woman, followed by a clueless Asian, and then a guy who looks like he’s 42 and delivering pizzas. Did we get all of the racial and gender stereotypes covered in one swoop or did we leave one out?
After the pitch (2 medium, one-topping pizzas for $11.99… and a bottle of the crap we can’t give away!) the reality of the Crystal Pepsi epidemic sets in as the young man answering the phone somewhat sighs, “Oh yes… we have Crystal Pepsi.” The camera pans to an army of Crystal Pepsi bottles ready for deployment. Consider it a cry for help from corporate America to the general public in a day and age when people would by stupid things like the Flowbee or Zubaz pants.
After the wacky guy with the talking pizza box gleefully tells the person at the other end of the line there’s no Crystal Pepsi in this here Domino’s, we see another Pizza Hut phone rep honestly and shamefully admitting that, “yes we do!” have a ton of these bottles full of zero-taste carbonated garbage and we’re ready to send them with your cheesy pizza! Then we close with the pitch just one more time. Just in case you didn’t get the idea that Pizza Hut had this stuff coming out of their ears and they couldn’t wait to just hand it out to you if you bought two of their greasy pies. Not coincidentally, Domino’s earnings in 1993 picked up after two years of losses.
Amazingly Crystal Pepsi still lives in the hearts and minds of people who really need to expand their horizons as they offer on-line petition websites and tribute websites to “the forgotten cola”. Further proof that anything will sell on E-Bay can be confirmed by typing “Crystal Pepsi” into the search box. When I typed this, an unopened six-pack of the stuff was going for $112!
But for real fun walk away from the computer and call your nearest Pizza Hut store and ask if they have Crystal Pepsi! Something tells me the responses now are a little different than they were 15 years ago.
