Not for girls
And speaking of sex-segregated branding, a friend on Facebook alerted me to the story of the Yorkie chocolate bar.
YORKIE – IT’S NOT FOR GIRLS!
In case we don’t understand the words or don’t know how to read, there’s also a stick figure with a skirt and a purse, with a line through her forbidden self. NO GIRLS.
Brilliant marketing, isn’t it, telling half your market NOT FOR YOU.
The Yorkie bar is famous in the UK for its former tag line: “It’s not for girls.” Nestlé first launched the slogans “Don’t feed the birds,” “Not available in pink,” and “King size not queen size” in 2002, but the bar has always been targeted at men ever since its inception.
Ahahaha – don’t you love the quirky British sense of humor? So sophisticated, so ironic, so hilarious.
It’s odd, though, that they didn’t think to say it’s only for WHITES. Wouldn’t that have been even more sophisticated and ironic?
No, I’m just pretending to think that. Of course they didn’t think to say that, because it would have been outrageous. But to say it about women? That’s just quirky laddish humor.
The other kind would be White chocolate? Organically grown in Spitsbergen.
Nestlé has a somewhat un-lilywhite reputation for their decades of scamming African mothers out of breast feeding just to sell their substitute powder, which is so expensive they dilute it with unsafe water. Not quite sure they have stopped selling that, but I have stopped buying anything with any Nestlé brand if I can help it.
I know. That formula campaign was truly disgusting – the Nestlé campaign, I mean, not the boycott, which I too observed and observe.
These ad campaigns get loads of complaints. I’m amazed they have been allowed to get away with it for so long.
Never heard this campaign — then again, I’m not the target audience. (I wonder where they site those ads?)
Makes me want to run out and buy one, even though I can’t even remember the last time I bought a candy bar. The only thing that prevents me from doing that is that maybe this is reverse psychology, and they really *want* women to buy Yorkie bars…
Me, I’d be tempted to run away girlishly screaming from any man eating one. Isn’t the “no women” stick figure supposed to mean it actually repels us?
I think this is one of those things I used to fall for back in the day–‘I may be female, but I’m not a GIRL. Everyone knows GIRLS are icky and shallow and stupid. I’m one of the guys, and men accept me as an actual person–they can see I’m not a GIRL, because I eat Yorkies.’
Mary Ellen – I don’t know where they advertise now but it used to appear in mainstream advertising such as TV and billboards in the UK.
Samantha – It means “Keep away girls, you’re not allowed this.” Obviously the subtext is, “This is a manly product for manly men and by buying it you’re asserting your macho masculinity.”
Maybe they’re warning the intended buyers that they left out the Rohypnol?
Apparently men and women have different palates…? But if we are going to go down that road, I thought women were the ones stereotyped as lovers as chocolate. Perhaps the advertisers see this as a sort of affirmative action then, boldly striving to make chocolate available to us poor disenfranchised, chocolate starved men. Thanks, Nesle!
Of course, they did actually put out a limited edition pink wrapper version…