Many food companies do not like their products to be associated, in the public mind, with poison. (Caveat: We are not marketing professionals. We do not claim mastery of high-level marketing techniques) Family annihilation is also, generally, a no-go. “The Suicide Tree”? That’s what all of your best marketers presumably refer to as an “advertising red flag.”
Credit due, then, to the marketing team at Coffee Mate—who’d previously entered into a fun, frivolous partnership with HBO’s The White Lotus to make some creamer flavors based on the show’s new Thailand setting—for quick thinking after that partnership picked up some, let’s call them, “associations” after the show’s recent season finale. You know, the bit where Jason Isaacs’ character tried to murder his whole family with piña coladas? Of the same flavor of coffee creamer you could pick up in stores right now, complete with the show’s logo splashed all over it?
Coffee Mate made headlines on Sunday evening by rolling with the unexpected, uh, “brand opportunity,” issuing a post that read “Well, this is awkward” alongside a picture of the creamer. But, a recent Wall Street Journal article makes clear, nobody at the Nestlé brand knew what was coming on Sunday night, even though, hilariously, the White Lotus team apparently pushed them to include piña colada as one of the flavors for the promotion. “Obviously, the writers keep this [under] lock and key,” explained Nestlé exec Daniel Jhung, “So we didn’t know that piña colada was such a featured part of the last episode. I will say that in hindsight, we were showing the different flavors, and the fact that The White Lotus team was like, ‘Oh, you know, piña colada is a really good idea, you should go in that direction’—it now kind of makes sense.”
We will say that Coffee Mate is handling this better than the last high-profile bit of product association that HBO used to kill one of its beloved characters, i.e., that time Peloton got pretty defensive after one of its exercise bikes gave Sex And The City and And Just Like That…‘s Mr. Big a heart attack. (The company eventually attempted to roll with it with a jokey add featuring Chris Noth—which then got pulled because of sexual assault allegations against the actor. Peloton: Cursed.) Anyway, we can only assume other food brands will now also begin chasing the high of making fun little jokes after getting involved in fictitious attempted murders and other TV bummers; we can’t wait to chow down on the new Oreo: Creeping Technodystopia flavor when it rolls out alongside the new Black Mirror season later this week.
