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CBS Bans SodaStream Ad
- SeanLuke 14y ago> CBS banned SodaStream’s Super Bowl spot because, apparently, it was too much of a direct hit to two of its biggest sponsors, Coke and Pepsi. An entire article and not a single mention of the fact that SodaStream is controversial because its factory is located in Mishor Adumim? Seriously?
- dotBen 14y agoHad to look that up... apparently Mishor Adumim is a factory area located near Jerusalem in Israel. Um... my guess is that it was not mentioned because it has no bearing or implication as to the reason why the advert was blocked by CBS.
- georgefox 14y ago"In Israel" isn't quite true. > The EU's highest court ruled in 2010 that Sodastream was not entitled to claim a "Made in Israel" exemption from EU customs payments because of the companies' primary manufacturing plant location outside of Israel in the Israeli-occupied territories West Bank settlement of Mishor Adumim.[68][69][70] > Sodastream has been criticized for operating a manufacturing plant on land in the West Bank by the Israeli non-governmental organizations Coalition of Women for Peace[71] and Peace Now,[72] as well as other human rights organizations.[73] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodastream#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodastream#Controversy
- dsr_ 14y agoCBS didn't refuse SodaStream's ad because of their politics. They refused the ad because it makes fun of both Coke and Pepsi.
- patrickgzill 14y agoCBS is majority owned by Sumner Redstone, an ardent Zionist - you knew that, right?
- ucee054 14y agoThe worst part is the article makes out that SodaStream is a "liberal cause". My ass. http://mondoweiss.net/2013/01/advertising-sodastream-arresting.html http://mondoweiss.net/2013/01/advertising-sodastream-arresti... http://mondoweiss.net/2013/01/fantastic-msnbcs-hayes-airs-segment-critical-of-superbowl-advertiser-sodastream-for-working-in-illegal-west-bank-settlement.html http://mondoweiss.net/2013/01/fantastic-msnbcs-hayes-airs-se...
- loudandskittish 14y agoAnd all I can do is be surprised that SodaStream is still around. My parents had one in the 90's but it became harder and harder to get CO2 canisters to refill it with.
- sarah2079 14y agoThey are going through a resurgence, but from what I can tell it is mostly driven by people who want to make healthier carbonated drinks at home (like carbonated water + a bit of juice), not by people wanting to make a cheaper alternative to coke or pepsi at home, who were the main market in the 80s.
- TillE 14y ago> (like carbonated water + a bit of juice) Wouldn't you save a lot of bother by simply buying cheap mineral water and mixing with that? That's what I do. You can get a 1.5L bottle of perfectly nice fizzy water in Germany for about 20 cents if you recycle the bottle and get the deposit back.
- jpdus 14y agoI don't think that cost is the main reason for getting this product. It's just convenient to always have soda water here without having to carry it through the city. I recently bought one for convenience reasons (after i learned about th glass caraves) and am totally happy with it - I guess as more (young) people in the bigger cities don't own a car (and only buy small quantities of food in the supermarket around the corner), more will use products like SodaStream.
- sarah2079 14y agoYes, this is it exactly. I have never even bothered to price it out per liter, even if it cost a bit more it would be worth not having to lug bottles of carbonated water home.
- jmccree 14y ago
- cleverjake 14y agoCompanies regularly do things to keep good relations with their sponsors. Isn't that assumed? I'm not in the ad space in any way, shape or form - and maybe I am jaded - but this seems like something I would expect from a multinational corporation
- mikecane 14y agoImagine is IBM had stopped the Apple 1984 Super Bowl ad...
- dazzla 14y agoReally this is a big deal? I remember soda stream from the 80's in the UK. I'm sure they even eventually had official coke and Pepsi syrups that could be used with them. Didn't kill the market there and I'm sure it won't here. Seams like they've been in business since 1903. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodastream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodastream
- jmccree 14y agoThe whole "being green" thing has contributed a lot to their recent success. Also their flavors (afaik) use actual sugar instead of HFCS and diet flavors have no aspartame. I use mine just to make soda water and love it.
- evolve2k 14y agoAre their green claims just 'greenwash'? Im thinking disposable CO2 canisters can't be that good for the environment either?
- learc83 14y ago>Im thinking disposable CO2 canisters can't be that good for the environment either? Who's disposing of those things, they are much cheaper to swap out.
- dlwh 14y agoThey're not disposable. They reuse them. You get a rather sizable discount (50%) for giving an empty one back when you get a new one.
- tmzt 14y agoI wonder why they don't market that more widely, I was looking for refills around a display and couldn't find them. There was nothing about where or how to get a canister that I could find on the outer packaging.
- jmccree 14y ago
- Kylekramer 14y agoSeems well within CBS's rights. This isn't a "ban". SodaStream could show the ad anywhere they can convince companies with advertisement space to show it. There is not an inalienable right to air any commercial CBS is given and clearly CBS stands to lose much more from damaging their relationship with customers who consistently advertise with them than the one time payoff from SodaStream. I'll save my outrage this time.
- taeric 14y agoWell, I think this is somewhat tricky. If CBS truly decided on their own to not do this, it is within their rights. If there was any coordination between CBS and a competitor of SodaStream, then things get a lot more questionable. Much like the CEO of a company selling all shares right before bad news hits is not necessarily illegal. Is a pretty high sign of insider trading, though. Of course, usually caveats about random internet person possibly being completely confused on some topics apply. (And please, if I am, correct me.)
- recoiledsnake 14y agoI would've sided more with you if CBS were a cable network, but it uses the public airwaves. That isn't to say that it should be forced to show every ad, but I think it raises the bar needed to refuse an ad.
- Kylekramer 14y agoHow does using public airwaves change the bar? I don't see how using tax payer funded spectrum really affects the situation at all. It isn't like it is in the American taxpayers' interest to have an Israeli company's interest put over three American companies' interest.
- pyre 14y agoI don't see how the fact that it's an Israeli company has much to do with it. Sounds like they would have denied the ad it if it were an American company too.
- grannyg00se 14y agoI wish them a joyous Streisand effect.
- watmough 14y agoMaybe because the product in question completely sucks. I'm reasonably sure that it belongs in the same dubious category as that other great 'money saver', the FoodSaver.
- hop 14y agoAd firm makes ad they already know CBS wouldn't allow. Ad gets rejected. The outrage! The controversy! Ad then gets 10x more exposure and they can resell the spot. SodaStream, like Godaddy, Peta, many others before. Pretty smart.
- pyre 14y agoThis wasn't an advertisement that was going to shock value, but crossed the line. This is an advertisement that was 'too competitive' with entrenched interests. CBS saying that its advertisement sales are not a 'free market.' It's less disturbing then the issue with CBS + CNET + CES2013, but it shows a pattern.
- jcromartie 14y agoQueue the Streisand effect... I'd expect this to be even better for Sodastream now than if it had not been banned.
- sopooneo 14y agoI think it comes down to whether the press hit can be as effective as a Super Bowl Ad. And there's a reason Superbowl ads are so expensive.
- jarcoal 14y agoCBS has decided not to do business with another company because it might bother two of their bigger clients. That is an outrage?
- bane 14y agoI got one a few months ago, it's really really nice not having to keep a bunch of bottles/cans/whatever all over the place. The local Target stocks tons of syrups and canisters. It's fantastic that it's cheaper and slightly healthier as well. Plus I've been experimenting with different mixins, juice, instant tea, that sort of thing. They seem like a cool company, I've love for them to get more popular.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoI've cut back a lot on my diet cola, but I really like fizzy drinks. Seeing the Crystal Light (my goto non-caffeinated drink) and others makes me highly intrigued. The 30 day money back guarantee makes it a certainty.
- bane 14y agoHeck, I just dump the regular old Crystal Light powder into the carbonated water and it makes a decent fizzy lemon aid.
- TruthElixirX 14y agoI got one for Christmas. It has been complete shit. I can't get it to operate correctly.
- bane 14y agomine works pretty near flawlessly and takes about 30 seconds to make a liter of whatever, what's the problem you seem to be having?
- TruthElixirX 14y agoI hook the bottle full of water up to the soda stream, press the button to shoot in carbonation, and the carbonation just shoots out because the seal isn't airtight. I've tried pressing it short and quick, long and hard, etc. I just can't seem to get it to carbonate properly. Thoughts?
- Groxx 14y ago>If the SodaStream product is a better “soda idea” than Coke and Pepsi, then shouldn’t it be given a fair shot within any medium it decides to risk its dollars? On a private network? No.
- wpietri 14y agoThey are a private network running on public airwaves. That spends millions on trying to buy legislation, including things like SOPA and PIPA. They are showing the Superbowl, and the NFL has a special antitrust exemption. Given all that, I don't have any particular problem mandating that they run a fair advertising market.
- lostlogin 14y agoI might be misunderstanding you, but what is fair here? If I was Coke spending many millions per year with CBS then in a prime spot an advert was played which made CBS a tiny fraction of what I had spent appeared and made fun of my company, if be calling foul. At a bare minimum I'd be calling for some heavily discounted advertising.
- wpietri 14y agoIn this case I believe a fair market is the fair situation. That is, CBS would sell the advertising without special favor. I agree that people with privilege get all cranky when upstarts challenge them. And so Coke might cry "unfair!" when somebody with 1/100th of their marketing budget outmaneuvers them. To which I say: boo hoo! Marketplaces exist for the benefit of consumers, not producers.
- lostlogin 14y agoPlaying the devils advocate here as I agree with you: What if Coke walks away from CBS - it wouldn't be very fair from the perspective of CBS as they applied the same rules to everyone, and a lost a massive customer. CBS probably doesn't care what consumers think, CBS are effectively dumb pipes, and can charge through the nose for their service.
- doktrin 14y agoThis all feels very hollow. The entire tone of this op-ed strikes me as either impossibly naive or full of manufactured outrage. How a Forbes contributor is somehow oblivious to the nature of entrenched (and lucrative) corporate relationships is beyond me. Not to mention that beneath all the free-market rah-rah chest thumping, he entirely disregards the fact that a private company is quite within their right, laws permitting, to decide with whom they wish to do business.
- bicknergseng 14y agoThe failure to mention SodaStream's higher consumer cost and silly attitude really just made me wonder if the writer had an ulterior motive.
- Osiris 14y agoThere is a break even point after which you do save money, but the up-front costs are fairly steep. This is best for someone that drinks soda on a daily basis. From someone in my family that owns one, some flavors are good while others (fake Dr. Pepper, for example) are horrible.
- lazerwalker 14y agoIt depends on your comparison point. Compared to bottled/canned soda, you're right that there are high up-front costs and an eventual break-even point to using a SodaStream. Compared to the more DIY version of buying a CO2 tank and the proper fittings to carbonate a 1- or 2-liter bottle (all easily found at a homebrewing store), the opposite is true: the initial buy-in of a SodaStream is about half the price of a CO2 tank and dual-gauge regulator, but refill prices for a 5lb tank are pennies on the dollar compared to SodaStream's refill cartridges. SodaStream's ultimately a razor and blades business model.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoIt is possible to hook the Soda Stream up to a more reasonable CO2 tank. The Amazon reviews[1] are actually quite helpful and interesting, especially the top one-star. 1. http://www.amazon.com/Sodastream-Fountain-Soda-Maker-Starter/product-reviews/B001KYT6CS/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 http://www.amazon.com/Sodastream-Fountain-Soda-Maker-Starter...
- prodigal_erik 14y agoSodaStream puts a deliberately incompatible and patented connector on their CO2 bottles just to charge a huge markup on refills. They sort of deserve to face someone else's anticompetitive shady deal.
- Erwin 14y agoI fill up my SodaStream with bottles from AGA here in Denmark (they have a "get the 6th one free" special so the effective refill cost is about 15 USD). There's also this system: http://www.wassermaxx.com/ http://www.wassermaxx.com/ -- again compatible. Perhaps SodaStream etc. is more popular here in Europe as we don't drive quite that much in cars. I'm sure I drink 20-30l of carbonated water per week; I wouldn't want to have to carry that home from the shop every week and return the empty bottles the next week. Except making my water fizzy, AGA's CO2 production is apparently used to extinguish exotic fires. There's a particular type of compressed wood pellets used in heating power plants here, that wood is stored in large silos which apparently can catch fire internally. They spent 2 weeks trying to slowly extinguish this fire using 170 ton of CO2 shipped by trucks from AGA (equivalent to 400,000 SodaStream compatible containers).
- lostlogin 14y agoYou basically need carbonated water on tap! That's a pretty amazing consumption volume. I wouldn't drink much more than half that in a day if you combined all my fluid intake I don't think.
- chaz 14y agoPornHub.com also submitted an offer to buy a Super Bowl ad, but was rejected by CBS. Without a doubt, they knew it would be rejected, and were hoping for the free publicity. Based on the proposed ad, I think they got their money's worth. http://www.businessinsider.com/why-pornhubs-rejected-super-bowl-ad-is-a-bogus-stunt-2013-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-pornhubs-rejected-super-b...
- mistercow 14y ago>SodaStream has a product that could be wildly disruptive to the soda industry, if successful. Not really. Maybe with a different business model, but from the cost analysis I've seen, SodaStream comes in at about $0.40/L, which is a little over half of what Coke and Pepsi cost, but the cost of Coke and Pepsi is about 50% branding anyway. A fair comparison would be generic sodas, which are are closer to $0.50/L. So you're only saving about 20%, even though you've cut out the cost of bottling water, warehousing it, and shipping it around the country (aka, most of the actual cost of soda). Which is to say that the SodaStream is a rip-off. They lock you into buying their proprietary CO2 tanks (which are specially threaded so you can't shop around), so it's sort of a similar business model to printers or razors. Except, of course, that you can actually build a DIY carbonation system for not much more than the cost of the SodaStream fountain itself (and it's not a difficult build; you just have to connect some hoses to some off-the-shelf parts, and you can find plenty of guides on the internet).
- kriro 14y agoTheir early movers target market isn't all that price sensitive. They mostly sell on emotion/cause and the rejection stuff is a perfect fit for that audience. Guess they try to fill the chasm with hipsters so that joe-shmoe can walk right over it.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoIf you really want the Soda Stream, you can get an adapter for a paintball CO2 cartridge. http://palmer-pursuit.com/cart/soda-stream-course-thread-bottle-adapter-p-1102.html?zenid=2c6duq2slvqeft8r0qm6qqod73 http://palmer-pursuit.com/cart/soda-stream-course-thread-bot... for example.
- DanBC 14y agoIs that food-safe? And is it taking Airsoft containers to use for sodastream, or is it taking sodastream containers to use for airsoft? An initial web search shows this, but I have no idea how accurate it is. (http://www.micromatic.com/forum/us-en/trouble-shooting-beer-quality-home/3180-food-grade-co2-vs-regular-co2.html http://www.micromatic.com/forum/us-en/trouble-shooting-beer-...)
- ck2 14y agoThe hilarious part is SodaStream costs as much if not more than brand name soda. Unless you just always pay full price for soda and are too lazy to wait for a sale or think you are above coupons. Maybe they made a deal with CBS to purposely reject the ad, because that seems like a growing trend - to purposely get rejected so you get attention.
- alaskamiller 14y agoThey make it a publicity point when their ads are banned. It creates an aura of forbidden fruit. And by god do people love to feel sanctimonious about their consumer choices as political speech. The genius move to me is the fact that after 100 years of marketing by PepsiCo and Coca-Cola to create a multi billion dollar global market, here comes these guys that just piggy back on all that to sell the same sugar water but delivered in in shiny metal/plastics proprietary gadgets. John Sculley should have jumped on board with these guys instead.
- ebiester 14y agoTo be fair, the sodastream is pretty awesome even without the cola syrup. I usually skip the sugar water (or make my own) and it's still worth while. And you can always hack the CO2 cartridges for DIY refill.
- mistercow 14y agoYes, but for less than the cost of the SodaStream, not even counting the adapter to attach it to arbitrary tanks, you can build your own DIY setup [1] (which involves screwing some parts together) which you can attach a standard tank to and which you can adjust the pressure on. [1] http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2012-06/how-make-your-own-home-carbonation-system http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2012-06/how-make-your-own-...
- niggler 14y agoPriceonomics did an analysis: http://priceonomics.com/soda-makers/sodastream/ http://priceonomics.com/soda-makers/sodastream/
- morganb180 14y ago> I hope it gets a billion hits. 1998 called. They want their web stats back.
- ajays 14y agoI knew I'd heard the name "SodaStream" before. The other day, walking around in the Castro in SF, I came across a bunch of protestors who were calling for a boycott of SodaStream: http://www.codepink4peace.org/section.php?id=470 http://www.codepink4peace.org/section.php?id=470 As a person who hates the throwaway bottle culture of soda (and the HFCS, etc.), but who also supports middle-east peace, I'm torn here. :-/
- ZoFreX 14y agoOn what grounds are you torn? If you don't like the business model of Pepsi / Coca Cola etc, avoid their products. If you don't like what SodaStream does, avoid their products. No one is forcing you to choose?
- corresation 14y agoIs there any confirmation of this at all? Did CBS actually "ban" the ad? This all smells a little like viral marketing, coupled with the "act of defiance" posting of a youtube video, as if that is really a defiance of anything. (on a related sidenote, each year various ad trolls intentionally submit unairable commercials and then post them online claiming that they were censored by the Man. Not only do they get attention, they don't have to pay for the original expensive timeslots either)
- salahxanadu 14y agoBut they did air it.