Dr Pepper crashes Guns N' Roses' album party
A Dr Pepper promotion revolving around Guns N' Roses' new album has gone flat--and the band is getting the misdirected static.
The soda pop maker launched a marketing campaign in March that promised a free soda to "everyone in America" if the rock band released its long-awaited Chinese Democracy album this year. After a 17-year wait, the band finally released the album--and Dr Pepper gave fans 24 hours to go to its Web site to print a coupon for their free soda.
But apparently fans' thirst was greater than Dr Pepper predicted--or prepared for. The crush of visitors to the site crashed the site's servers, leading to a lot of angry fans, some of whom mistakenly blamed the band for their lack of liquid refreshment. Now frontman Axl Rose and his bandmates are ready to pop.
"When you go on the blogs and you read the responses from the fans, they associated Axl with this promotion...and blame him for the fact that they didn't get their free soda," Laurie Soriano, the band's lawyer, told CNN. "We've gone public with the fact that we are not involved but are trying to clean up the mess."
Dr Pepper told CNN that it had "taken great steps" to keep its part of the deal and that it had extended the window for the giveaway from 24 to 42 hours. The drink maker also set up a toll-free line to handle consumer requests for the coupons. All of those measures have since expired.
Despite those measures, the band is still waiting for its apology.
"The door to a lawsuit being filed is always open until the fans are taken care of and Dr Pepper has done the right thing," Soriano told CNN.
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. Before joining CNET News in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers. E-mail Steven.
- Topics:
-
Advertising and marketing
- Tags:
-
Guns N' Roses,
-
Dr Pepper,
-
site crash,
-
coupon
- Share:
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
As far as I'm concerned, American's have a potential class action suit against Dr Pepper for fraudulent advertising. They said they'd give a free soda to every American if GNR brought out their album in 2008, and every other condition is in legalistic small print that virtually no one heard or saw.
Dr Pepper is basically reneging on their bet. I'm not going to be a Pepper anymore.
Wouldn't you like to stop being a Pepper too?
Is this what our great nation has resorted to? Im ashamed.
1. America: where people get trampled for cheap flat panel TVs and threaten lawsuits over a free can of sugar water.
2. Let me get this straight: GnR's lawyer says GnR's fans are stupid? Or is it Axl himself who thinks this? Or are they?
1. Spot on.
2. Im pretty sure its a combination of the following, in order of magnitude greatest to least, Axl himself is stupid, axl thinks his fans are stupid, Soriano thinks Axl is stupid, GNR fans are stupid, people in general are stupid.
End Transmission.
But of course, by going the legal attack route, GNR's "think of the fans" attack on Dr. Pepper may backfire.