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What Marketers Can Learn From Irradiated Soda and Coffee Infused Donuts

CPG Satire and Critique in Pop Culture (TV/Gaming)

Author

Dylan Labrie
May 07, 2024

Image: Self-created, Dylan Labrie on Midjourney

In This Edition:

Fallout is a Hit

Fallout The Game: Why It Works

What We Can Learn:

Beware of Exaggerated Claims and False Advertising

Immortality: Branding and Marketing Can Outlive the Product

Beware of Excessive Consumerism and Brand Loyalty

Consider Environmental and Social Impact

Creating Fire and Brimstone Evangelical Fans

Adapt to Changing Consumer Needs and Preferences

Photo Credit: JoJo Whilden/Prime Video

Fallout is a Hit

Last month, Amazon launched its eagerly awaited Fallout TV series. If you were not one of the 55 million Fallout video game series players, you may not have been as eager.  That is OK as the new Fallout TV streamer linked up more viewers (65 million) in its first two weeks since it launched on April 11, 2024, versus the Fallout video game series 55 Million copies sold in the twenty-seven years since its 1997 inception. The new Fallout TV series was enough for some fans (me included) to propose a toast of the game's fictional irradiated Nuka-Cola with Slocum's Joe Buzzbites (coffee-infused donuts).

Image: Self-created Midjourney

Fallout the Game: The Origin Story

The genesis of the Fallout TV series is the video game series. The Fallout game series is a role-playing action and adventure game.  In its most recent sequentially numbered incarnation, Fallout 4, you play the role of a person who survives a nuclear war on an alternate universe version of Earth that is a rocket age mashup of our earth’s mid-1950s to the 1960s, but with a twist as if the artificial limitations we place on technology were superseded by reasonably in reach technology advancements like personal robots and cryo-sleep chambers.

Your customized Fallout character survives the apocalypse in a cryo-sleep chamber in an underground vault.  You awaken from the cryo-sleep only to see your infant child snatched away from your dying spouse's hands and you are unable to escape your cryo-pod in time to catch the nascent thieves.  You spend the rest of the game trying to find your kidnapped child in a post-apocalyptic nightmare landscape populated with mutants, nefarious humans, and irradiated CPGs. Your survival depends on your ability to scavenge weapons, and food and build alliances with other surviving factions.  Fortunately for your character, much of the pre-war packaged food was so heavily processed it survived the nuclear war.  However, if you consume the food, that is necessary for healing wounds, there is a good chance you will get radiation poisoning.  If that does not sound like fun, at least give the show a shot as it is well written and directed, but be forewarned it is gory and loaded with 1970s-style Topp's Wacky Packages (Remember those) inspired irradiated CPG products.

Image: Bethesda Game Studios and Topp's Chewing Gum

What makes the Fallout games so intriguing and entertaining to play is their way of balancing the dark backdrop of the post-apocalyptic environment with the satire of the pre-war world.  The landscape is populated with remnants of the pre-war world, much of which manifests itself in satirical forms of advertising from food packaging to billboards to legacy video and digital copies of CPG ads.

Image: Self-Created on Midjourney

The most popular and sought-after CPG brand in the world of Fallout is Nuka-Cola.  Nuka is essentially the Fallout alternate Earth’s Coca-Cola doppelganger, complete with a similar Spencerian script font and a red and white colored brand palette.  The game’s writers even went so far as to create a Nuka-Cola backstory where the Nuka-Cola founder's name, John-Caleb Bradberton is a portmanteau of the inventors of Coca-Cola (John Pemberton), and Pepsi-Cola (Caleb Bradham).  Bradberton is also a mash-up of the Cola founders and Walt Disney.  He even called the organic chemist who helped him develop his number one selling formula, “Beverageers” echoing Disney’s Imagineers and he developed a theme park called Nuka World which is one of the Fallout 4 games' side quests sold as additional downloadable content.  And finally, similar to Coke and Pepsi, Nuka-Cola has inspired its share of recipes from “Mississippi Quantum Pie” to “Poached Roach in Nuka Sauce”.  And yes your in-game character can make all of these given they have scavenged the right ingredients and can find a cooking station to cook it.

Image: Bethesda Game Studios

Nuka-Cola is but one of a rogue’s gallery of CPG products in Fallout from “Cram” to “Instamash”.  Fortunately, the TV series also infused the Fallout universe’s CPG products from seeing a character eating “Yum Yum Deviled Eggs” to multiple appearances of Nuka-Cola ads integrated into the background scenery.

Image: Bethesda Game Studios

The brilliance of Fallout is how its game designers and writers injected into its universe a rich back story of satire and critique around our own world’s love of CPG products.  What makes great open-world role-playing video games like Fallout entertaining, is how well the story is crafted and the world it is crafted.  Without this intriguing world, there would be little incentive for gamers to be motivated to continue to play the game, purchase more downloadable content, and in some cases become such raving evangelical fans that they create YouTube and TikTok videos on recreating the CPG products and recipes of the game.

Victoria Rosenthal

Fallout’s CPG satire and critique is one component the game uses to enable us to rethink our own place in our own time.  The video game is essentially a simulation and it simulates the horrors of a post-apocalyptic future punctuated with the remnants of rampant consumerism gone wrong.

Image: Jones Soda Co./Amazon

There are lessons we can all learn from Fallout and it does not end there.  Fallout is not alone.  CPG satire and critique in video games is a thing and has been for a long time.  In the perennial top-selling Grand Theft Auto (GTA) there is a massive portfolio of CPG products from Pisswasser beer ("made from the urine of Bavarian virgins"?!) to Cluckin’ Bell, a parody of Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Image: GTA Wiki/Rockstar Games

Finally, here are five lessons I have captured from the CPG satire and critique of Fallout that you can use in your everyday work, as you reflect on its implications and broad appeal to the masses you serve.

Beware of Exaggerated Claims and False Advertising: In the Fallout TV series and the games, many pre-war products make over-the-top claims and promises that are misleading or false. For example, the fictional "Nuka-Cola" brand is depicted as promoting its radioactive soda as a health tonic. This serves as a reminder for those of us who are CPG marketers to be truthful and avoid making unrealistic or deceptive claims about our products.

Immortality: Branding and Marketing Can Outlive the Product: Despite the post-apocalyptic setting, the Nuka-Cola brand and its iconic branding and marketing materials are still ubiquitous throughout the game world, long after the actual product has become obsolete. This highlights the power of effective branding and marketing, which can persist in consumer consciousness even when the product itself is no longer available or relevant.

Beware of Excessive Consumerism and Brand Loyalty: The game satirizes the pre-war society's obsession with consumerism and blind brand loyalty, with characters displaying an almost cult-like devotion to brands like Nuka-Cola. This serves as a cautionary tale for CPG marketers, reminding them to promote responsible consumption and avoid fostering unhealthy levels of brand loyalty or consumerism.

Consider Environmental and Social Impact: The Fallout TV series and video game's post-apocalyptic setting serves as a grim reminder of the potential consequences of unchecked corporate greed and disregard for environmental and social impact. CPG marketers should consider their products' and practices' broader implications and strive for sustainability and ethical practices.  This complements what I previously wrote in edition 32, “The Return of “Skippy the Chimp” and how it chronicled how companies need to manage the balance between serving stakeholders and shareholders.

Creating Fire and Brimstone Evangelical Fans: I don't know if it's the fans or greater writers, but video game studios do a great job creating loyal fans. This is particularly evident in how they place CPG products. Video games Fallout to Cyberpunk 2077 have spawned legions of fans creating cookbooks and video recreations of their favorite in-game products. It is something we can all take note of attempt to understand and learn more about and from video game studios. They know more about us than we know ourselves.

Adapt to Changing Consumer Needs and Preferences: While iconic brands like Nuka-Cola persist in the Fallout TV Series and the Fallout game's world, their products have become largely irrelevant or even dangerous in the post-apocalyptic setting. This highlights the importance of CPG brands adapting to changing consumer needs and preferences, rather than clinging to outdated products or marketing strategies.

These are just a few examples of the lessons and critiques we can draw from the satirical and often darkly humorous depiction of consumer culture from TV and gaming pop culture like Fallout and GTA. By reflecting on these elements, we can leverage our roles as marketers and managers of CPG products to strive for more responsible, sustainable, and ethical practices in the CPG industry.

#Fallout #Amazon #GTA

Here is a Fallout CPG brands list, many of which could be scavenged at your local in-game Super Duper Mart.

Abraxo

Wonder Glue

Jell-O cake

Sunset Sasparilla

Image: Bethesda Game Studios

Image: Bethesda Game Studios