Nice run, bros
What do you do as a company when an Internet meme leads to increased sales and nationwide exposure? If you are Smirnoff, you shut it down.
BrosIcingBros first began popping up on sites like Tumblr and Twitter. With the internet swirling with the ‘rules’ involved in so called ‘icings’ and plenty of pictures of celebrities and athletes Photoshopped to include an “ice,” Smirnoff had a phenomenon on their hands.
Before long, those Photoshopped images were soon replaced by real photos of actual “icings.” Bros across the country kneeling and accepting their punishment for not being more aware. See, all you have to do to “ice” someone is hand them a (preferably warm) Smirnoff Ice. They are then required to drop to one knee, and chug.
With wedding and barbecue season kicking into high gear, brosicingbros.com was a hit. There were T-shirts with slogans like “Don’t Ice Me, Bro!” across the country, and even Mark Zuckerberg was “icing bros.”
Yesterday the brosicingbros.com page was dead, with only the headline “We had a good run bros.” AdAge says Smirnoff parent company Diageo was responsible. In my eyes, it makes total sense that they took down the page – they didn’t want the consumption of their product seen as a punishment for losing a game! But, with all of the recent organic buzz, did they do the right thing by shutting it down? Isn’t there some value to letting this meme run its course, gaining momentum and having them reap the (sales) benefits?
Tags: brosicingbros, Ice, Icings, memes, Smirnoff, Tumblr, twitter
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Neil DuPaul
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Jason Allgire
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kyork20
