Eric Stoller's Blog

A week ago I blogged about Glacéau’s racist voicemail message. Upon publishing the post, which included an audio recording of the voicemail, I received an interesting comment from Lauren.

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.

When I read Lauren’s comment, I was a little confused. Her comment didn’t make sense. The timeline that she details in her comment did not match up with my post. Plus, her defense of the racist voicemail message seemed to be a little too “PR’ish.”

My regular readers know that I am a web statistics addict. I’m constantly checking browser resolutions, IP addresses, keyword phrases, unique visits, page views, etc.

Since Lauren’s comment seemed a little suspect, I check my site stats and found an interesting IP address. A visitor from 63.138.199.66 in Whitestone, New York had visited my site at the same time that Lauren’s comment came in to my comment queue. It turns out that Lauren’s IP Address (WordPress delivers IP information in its moderation emails) matched the IP Address from Whitestone, New York. Interestingly, the ISP for that IP is Energy Brands.

Here is my response to Lauren:

Your IP Address: 63.138.199.66 (information that WordPress sends me when people post comments…) matches an IP Address that showed up in my web statistics program:

63.138.199.66
Region New York
City Whitestone
ISP Energy Brands

I looked up “Energy Brands” via the great Google.

Energy Brands is proud of its liquid assets. Doing business as Glacèau, the company makes waves with its line of enhanced waters.

I just want to clarify, when you say that the voicemail message was “not offensive,” are you saying that as an employee of Glaceau? Because it would seem a little disingenuous if you are defending a company that you work for on a comment on my site. Especially when your comment makes it seem like you’re not affiliated with Glaceau.

I emailed Lauren and asked her if she was an employee of Glaceau/Energy Brands. I’m still waiting for a response…

The Glacéau + Racist Voicemail Message post has made its way to Wikipedia:

In February of 2007, it came to light that Glacéau’s voice mail system was “narrated by some dude with a horribly fake Asian accent, doing kung fu schtick.” [2] While Glacéau changed the recording shortly after the story broke, the original Blog that broke the story received a post that said, in part, “i really didn’t think it was offensive… people are doing and saying more important things in the world that i can bitch about.” The IP address of the poster was later tracked to Glacèau’s parent company, Energy Brands. As a result, the main story became not the racist content of the original Voice Mail system, but the clumsy and blatant cover up attempt.

Thanks to Angry Asian Man, Bloogs Blowing By and Sean for linking to the original post. Also, I appreciated everyone’s comments

Related posts:

1. Glacéau + Racist Voicemail Message
2. Comments in moderation
3. Pat Buchanan = blatantly racist
4. Web Stats Addict (WSA)
5. How To Tell People They Sound Racist