Amp up - Before you score iPhone app - (2009) :30 (USA)

Amp up has created the before you score iphone app - it features "feeds, lines and more to help you talk to to 24 different kinds of ladies." You even get help scoring that mess of a girl with her mascara running carrying a tub of ice-cream, yes it's rebound girl. And here I thought the Puma index was low.

By the way @AMPwhatsnext says they're sorry on twitter:

Our app tried 2 show the humorous lengths guys go 2 pick up women. We apologize if it’s in bad taste & appreciate your feedback. #pepsifail

Too late guys! Jezebel already hates your guts.

Update Tuesday I think was was too busy trying to find my jaw on the floor when I posted this yesterday to make a good post on why this is bad™. all over.

Sure sure, the Amp app is much like the previously released Lynx (Axe) Weapons of mass seduction where the phone-widgets aim to help score with the ladies. One part of the Lynx effort had the fit finder, which is s a sonar-type noise to add to your pickup-line repertoire. But the Pepsi Amp App went a bit further, where you tweet your conquests, as if your collecting baseball cards. Don't even get me started on the fact that one of the 24 stereotypical women is Married, now The (crazy) American Family Association has another reason for their boycott of Pepsi co. Sorority girl is easy to score, the app thinks, much to the chagrin of sorority girls everywhere. We don't actually live in Pornywood USA people.
The image of man stereotypically only driven by sex is harmful to men, if you fancy you can pick up a book or two about it starting with the will to change which talks about this issue specifically. You know where I stand, as I laid it all out in boys, girls this is not a competition sexist ads are bad for everyone. Pepsi Amp should have learned already back when the Dante's inferno booth babe hunt caused a backlash that ideas like these just don't fly.

Why are these ideas bad? It's not just the "treehugger", "rebound girl" & "cougars" that are stuck in little boxes by ideas like these. They effectively box all testerone carrying men into the box of "douchebag driven by their dicks only" and encourage a dude culture where women are the guardians of the magic pot of vagina, and men are only out to collect as many of them as possible. Remember the cutting and collecting of underwear tags as a scoring system in high school across the land? Do you still want to live in that culture? You guys are way more faceted than that and as a card carrying feminist, I want you to be allowed to be all that you can be.

The only apology that Pepsi has released so far is the one on twitter. The one that kinda reads "We're so sorry that you did not get our funny joke". "We apologize If it's in bad taste" It is! There are no if's! That's not an apology, Pepsi. You can do better.

And Apple; don't think you haven't been tainted by this. Your App store has only vetted apps, where you once stopped NIN from having an app there due to 'objectionable content', and you booted the baby shaker app because that was bad taste. Well guess what, that makes you the gatekeeper of what is in the app store and making you partly responsible for what is in there, including this advertising drek, so welcome to the sharing the blame camp, I hope you brought marshmallows.

Update Wednesday - Some people are reporting that the app has been pulled. nope, it's still available in the iTunes shoppe, so there. Adage reports that The Pepsi Amp apology just fanned the flames and the comments in the metafilter thread about this are making me LOL, worth a gander if you wish to find out what many people (men and women) think about jokey ideas like these.

Client: PepsiCo
Ad agency: Interpublic Group digital agency R/GA