Scott Green

We have to stop this menace, and we have to stop it now. I’m talking about that new 5-Hour Energy commercial, the one featuring a shaggy-haired college kid in a sideways baseball cap who holds a skateboard while saying things like “tear it up” and “totally kickin’.”

Clearly the company doesn’t understand modern collegians. Where’s the kid’s Nirvana cassette tape or pog collection? But here we have a company that sells energy drinks, a product purchased by every college student I’ve ever known, that is completely out of touch with the market.

If the company really wanted to appeal to college males, for example, they have two options. First, they could have scantily-clad women hold the product at chest level. Second, the women could be completely naked.

For female students, you’d need something more subtle, such as promises the product helps lose weight and grow a larger bust and generally make one into the sort of person who could appear in commercials for guys.

But my point is, the sideways cap and skateboard are not the way to tap into college students’ wallets. Look at how Red Bull cornered the market. They researched the habits of undergrads, created a product that met the need of increased wakefulness, then ran advertisements in which poorly drawn cartoon characters could fly.

Somehow this worked. Somehow people saw the commercials and said, “If that cartoon character can literally grow wings from Red Bull, then I will get an ‘A’ on this organic chemistry test.” Instead of flunking out of school and becoming homeless, these go-getters were able to flunk out of school and become homeless while juiced on energy drinks.

So Red Bull never caricatured its target audience as a bunch of slack-jawed hipsters, and today the company has so much money it can easily afford to send me a few thousand dollars for not saying anything too mean about it in a college newspaper.

5-Hour Energy has also completely missed the other reason for energy drinks’ collegiate popularity. On its Web site, the company lambastes “Popular Canned Energy Drink” for being eight ounces with the message, “Hope you’re thirsty! This is going to take a while.”

Granted, it can be a real labor to drink eight whole ounces. I remember nights when the prospect of drinking a full can of Red Bull – what with the tens of seconds of sipping it and the refreshed feeling I knew it would give me – brought me to tears. Though not every college student agrees with me on this point. Many even make their energy drinks more voluminous by adding alcohol.

Not that I am advocating combining these beverages with booze. There could be serious side effects, such as heart problems or social acceptance and popularity. But 5-Hour Energy, which is a two ounce energy “shot,” can’t be used for this purpose.

There’s plenty more 5-Hour Energy needs to learn about the college market, but I don’t have time to get into all that. I need to finish this cold pizza so I can skateboard to the anti-war protest. It’s at the pog store.