Eric Stoller's blog

i called too after reading your comments… just to see what kind of response i would get. they sent me the following:

we’re sorry to hear our outgoing message has offended you. our intention with our message system (and all of our points of contact with consumers) is to communicate key information about our products and company in a light-hearted way. with that said, we have taken the negative feedback about the message seriously and have replaced it with a new one.
we welcome your feedback on the new version and hope you will continue to share your thoughts on the company and our products.

i called again the next day and they had already changed the message. i love the stuff and if you read their labels i can see why they called it “light hearted,” …they seem to have a very unique/sarcastic personality all together. i really didn’t think it was offensive… people are doing and saying more important things in the world that i can bitch about. not to mention, they were on top of their shit by changing it so quickly.

The ‘Stats master strikes again!

{grabs popcorn}

dc

So BUUUUUSTED!

As a marketing professional, I believe that’s called ‘spin’.

Eric, I dig the randomness of your blog.

that’s awesome with the stats program revealing “Lauren’s” association!!!

That is awesome that Lauren the Lameass Corporate Dweeb got nailed so quickly. Kudos to you, Eric. And lauren, next time, try to be a little more subtle in your posts. I know you enjoy getting a pat on the head by your corporate masters (“good doggie, lauren. good doggie!”), but you might want to leave out the gushy “i love Glaceau they’re so awesome and not at all racist” crap out the next time you’re looking to suck up to your employer.

Man, that guy Lauren is REALLY lame. It is so lame that it makes me wanna puke. I mean, come on. It’s one thing to point to the fact that Glaceau (what kind of un-American brand name is that anyways?) removed the message within a day; it’s altogether something else to suck your employer’s arse so hard that you have to come up with shameless apologies such as “oooo…they’re so lighthearted and cool…” No, your big boss ain’t no lighthearted and cool. I bet they’re gunners, dorks, losers and big time tools from Ivy League schools who had serious self-esteem issues, who had to diss racial minority to establish their manhood.

Thanks, Eric, for busting this racist, dishonest corporate dork.

Great post and investigative work on the IP…As for “Glaceau’s” corporate mentality—let me see, there is so much hate in this world…why don’t I just ADD to it!!! Why don’t these cowards just “come out” and declare their hatred!? Glaceau is a NY corp….I lived in NY- I know the mentality…be a MAN and say I HATE a certain portion of America and I don’t want to do business with “little yellow people”! Glaceau- get some balls and say that- why are you hiding behind “Lauren”???

Sometimes, I think it may be better and more HONEST if these racists businesses just put a sign out and say “NO Chinese or DOGS allowed” (read history about this famous sign) at least I will know where these sub-humans are coming from…..So how many other corporations REALLY think like this??

Thanks again Eric!

Too bad… I was a Smart Water addict, but I’ll skip all the racism and calories from now on.

Ohhhh, let’s look a moment at what Eric Stoller drinks. “If you see me and I look sleepy, please find a coffee shop and immediately order a 12 oz. white chocolate mocha with soy.”
White chocolate mocha? Hmmm. Now if you ask me, that right there seems to indicate you have issues, man. You’re uncomfortabe with pure, chocolate mocha? You ever hear the expression Black is Beautiful? No, Eric, you gotta water it down with WHITE chocolate. You uncomfortable kissing a black woman? I bet you are. If you were any kind of a non-rascist, you’d be drinkin’ straight black coffee. Black coffee is beautiful. I think you need counseling, man.
And if you see me and I look sleepy, Eric, buy me a bottle of Thunderbird and a pack of Camels. Nuthin’ gits me lit better. And I kiss all the black women down at the strip club I can git my hands on, after my Worker’s Comp check arrives. No wimpy indecisive half-black, half-white cocoa drink for me, brother.
Meantime, I’ll be lookin’ for an amendment to your little introductory profile of yours, to wit: “I drink BLACK coffee,” followed by an apology.

Are you guys serious about being offended by that VM or just sarcastic? I thought it was pretty funny.

Since JT found the voicemail funny, he is, almost by definition, a racist; why not just leave him alone and not bother replying him? BTW – some corporate hack from Glaceau mutilated the wikipedia page again. I went there today morning and the Glaceau racism section was gone. So I put it back.

These people are out of their head. They don’t know who they’re dealing with.

Thanks for your kind words, Eric. I was being rash. The reason I was upset over the wikipedia issue was because this past winter I took a course with Charles Nesson, a pretty famous expert on cyberlaw, and he shared with us his vision of a democratic cyberspace where human individuals, as individual nodes of a larger network, could connect with one another and relate to one another genuinely, the end result being an infrastructure; a “common” for innovation, so to speak.

To that end, I just can’t stand folks (like Glaceau’s lackeys) who try to stifle cyber-elaboration. The moment you sweep things beneath the carpet; the moment you stifle speech, you freeze freedom of the mind with it. I think both liberals and conservatives are with me on this one.

Eric Stoller and all of your ILK:

(I like the word ilk. It has a built-in prejudicial connotation, doesn’t it?)

Grow up. When it comes to humor, NOTHING is sacred. Nothing.
Humor by nature is in bad taste, to someone. Hogan’s Heroes was funny to all but the Germans who were portrayed as being collectively stupid. Oh, but you say, they only made fun of Nazis, and it’s OK to make fun of Nazis. Fine, who elected you to decide what humor is in bad taste and what humor is in good taste? Nobody. Go ahead and spout off on your little website all you want, I will persist in making fun of YOU, because you are not funny.
Look at the movie Pulp Fiction. Hugely popular movie with a cult following. Yet there is a scene in there where a black guy gets shot in the back seat of a car, and then people proceed to argue about whose job it is to clean up “the nigger” in the back seat. Oh, since one of the guys arguing was black, this is OK? My point is, everything that’s funny is going to be offensive to someone. When a comedian acts like a low-IQ individual, such as Steve Martin in The Jerk, we all might laugh at it except the low IQ individual in the theater who realizes Steve is making fun of people who ain’t that bright. Oh, he’ll try to laugh, but he’ll also realize that society often victimizes the mildly mentally retarded as a subject of humor.
So some drink company has a guy doing an attempt to satirize a kung fu movie star type. BIG DEAL !!!! So what? Why are your panties in such of a bunch? If the attempt didn’t hit the nail on the head, maybe some other comedian will do better. Or are take-offs of kung-fu movie types off-limits? Screw you! Sincerely! EVERYTHING IS SUBJECT TO SATIRE, FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE. Go away before I blow my nose in your general direction. Go run for a band-aid for your bruised little hurt feelings. Now you guys want to cram this forever down Glacieu’s throat on Wikipedia? Don’t you have ANYTHING better to do? Jesus fucking Christ! Oh, I offended a Jesus freak. Crawl off and watch The Life of Brian. I’m more popular than Jesus, anyways. Stone Lennon! Burn his albums! Stick it in his Wikipedia page! Over and over and over! Hey, I heard somebody said something offensive to someone in an office in Kansas City today. Four people laughed but the fifth didn’t like the negative image portrayed of women with mustaches. No one should make fun of women so unfortunate as to have dark body hair on their faces. My dog took a shit and I made fun of him while he did it. Canine abuse.
You guys really irritate me. My duck is offended that a white guy dressed up in a duck outfit and cheered the crowd on at a football stadium. Why not get a REAL duck to do it? And who are these American Indians in Illinois so offended by the Fighting Illini fellow cheering on the crowd? They are NOT from the original tribe that lived in Illinois. No, that tribe is extinct, all killed off by forefathers of those American Indians living and protesting today. Isn’t that ironic — the Iroquois fought the Illini tribe to take away their happy hunting gounds, and now that they’re all dead, the Iroquois descendants protest that a cheerleader can’t wear an American Indian outfit and portray the tribe THEY slaughtered. Oh, sure, white people helped kill them off, or they intermarried and no one around nowadays can legitimately lay claim to represent the original tribe. They’re gone, just like your dead grandmother who ain’t smelling too good at the moment.
Now I’m not from Illinois nor do I go to football games, but what is the big fucking problem with a cheerleader dressed as an American Indian? Was he out there acting like a drunk American Indian? I bet not. Was he out there acting like a stupid Indian? Nope. He was proud to portray a strong-willed American Indian willing to fight to the finish to WIN. Ooooooh, what a negative connotation! BULLSHIT.
Every Cub Scout, every little boy, is fascinated by the ornate and beautiful outfits made of feathers and handcrafted beads that American Indians wear. Nothing is cooler to a kid. A lot of grownups love it too. Should I be ashamed of the Aztec type of design in the cloth on my couch? Should I hide away the Indian head nickels I have? Don’t say I don’t get it. I get it. People love American Indian garb, and they love the jewelry, and they liked the fellow who represented the fighting Illini. We want American Indians around, because we love their culture. How many times in the United States today did someone say, “You’re part American Indian? Cool!” Yes, plenty of times. We live in a modern society with refrigerators and cars and computers, but we yearn for the simpler ways of life of the American Indians. We go camping and we love tipis and we love turquois and all things American Indian. We love to go to watch genuine dances put on by tribes that succeed in getting their youth to continue the culture instead of going to rock concerts and smoking Marlboros and pot. That’s the true picture.
Meanwhile, you’re sitting there, your grandparents were Czech or Polish, and you don’t know the language or a single recipe your grandmother brought over from the old country. Instead of protesting about the fellow doing his best to look like a genuine American Indian, maybe you should learn how to make grandma’s cabbage soup, and then teach your children how to make it too.
I believe in American Indian pride. I believe in Black pride. I believe in the pride of every unique culture on the face of the earth. Except maybe those cannibals in the heart of the Amazon jungle. They go a little too far with clinging to the old ways.
OK, I gotta quit here, and I STILL don’t see an apology from Eric Stoller for drinking that WHITE chocolate wimpy cappuchino crap. Black coffee is beautiful, you wussy. Ha!

thank you, eric, for spreading awareness. i am chinese, and i find it highly offensive and not amusing at all. i’ve had enough of yellow peril stereotypes to last a lifetime. give me any more kung fu-related ads or ching chang chong or chinese accents, and i’d beat you unconscious if i could. i want to stop taking all this personally, but i can’t. if people were more educated about asian american history, we would not have crap like this to be joked about. i’ve never heard an answering machine being “light-hearted” about african american culture.

this is doubly interesting because vitamin water did a badminton commercial for us just a little while back [6mths ago ish?]. us badminton kids get super excited whenever we get media coverage so i remember passing around the little youtube url with a lot of anticipation, only to see asian americans exoticized and made foreign again. two of the best usa badminton players, bob and howard, became something like ‘lao and yang’, and went from repping USA to being ‘chinese players’ [as if the chinese badminton team would ever be so desperate as to degrade themselves like that]. the clip has them facing the ‘american team’ which featured david ortiz and brian urlacher [white and black], and then, naturally being overpowered [emasculated] by them. what made me even more angry was that i was the one of the ONLY ones angry, most of my friends just laughed it off and thought the clip was ‘funny’. now i see that evidently vitamin water treats racism as a regular marketing trick, and its not some innocent accidental blunder.

i do not have anything to do with this company unlike lauren.. however i agree with her… if Asian people don’t have a problem with MXC aired on Spike TV then they probably don’t care about this stupid message…ironically it was probably a white person that felt like it was their duty to prove to everyone and themselves that we are not the “bad guys” and while I’m not a rascist by any means I think nowadays white people are the ones makin such a big deal out of shit like this because when it comes down to it we’re just afraid to laugh…we just dont want to look like THE MAN so we create more racist accusations than any race!

I’ve never understood this – why does humor require that someone’s identity be attacked?

In other words, why is racism funny?

I ask this in all seriousness – what is it about racist jokes that we, as individuals, find funny? What is going on inside our heads?

Humor is learned, after all, and not genetic – where (and why) are we learning that racist jokes are “funny”?

I happened to stumble upon your blog while doing an ad campaign for Glaceau as a school project. Thought I’d put my two cents in…

The true evil in this situation lies in the fact that we’ve all been reduced to a society of babies preoccupied with our fear of the “politically incorrect.” A fabricated term designed to conveniently dispose of all the “things we don’t want talked about anymore.” Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it guarantee anyone’s right to not be offended. Glaceau is a privately held company that has every right to be as offensive (if you in fact see it that way) as they want to in their add campaigns. How ironic that a parody of Asian culture is deemed offensive yet no one seems to be offended by the fact that this country is being inundated with defective/dangerous products from the very same point of origin. Eat their toxic foods, give their dangerous/defective toys to our children and make sure you do it in a manner that doesn’t offend anyone.

What a fucking joke.

SarahMC,

I agree with you – but I’d also suggest that the line of text you quoted does not mean what it appears to. Instead, it’s often used as code for something like “Not only do I have a right to offend you, but you don’t have a right to fight back.”

It’s an expression of (often white & male) privilege – and it’s intended to prevent challenges to that privilege.

It’s also a reflection of valuing the rights of private companies and private property over people, which I find disgusting.

please explain to me what’s racist about this message?

Oh, apparently Glaceau, also trading under the Energy Brands label is a subsidiary of Coca- Cola. Another reason to drink Pepsi, if you must drink cola.

BTW, if any of you have friends/family in Asia and are offended by these ads and Glaceau’s tactics, pass on this information. Let’s hit them where it hurts, in their pocketbooks.

What? There are still idiots out there that think stereotyping is funny?

What, should we throw the mud back in all caucasian people’s faces and portray them all as incestuous, mumbling-and-slurring, uneducated hicks? Ha, ha, ha, funny, when the table’s turned, too, right? How’s that for an articulate Asian?

Seriously, who let the idiots have teh internetz?