Tanya Chen and Katie Notopoulos asked Tide about the “delicious laundry wine” that teens won’t be drinking.
When asked if P&G was aware of the dark futility of the internet, and if they had any concerns, the spokesperson provided BuzzFeed News with the following statement:
“We all know laundry detergent is for cleaning clothes. To be sure people know this is detergent, we put a large picture of our Tide bottle on the side of the box. Whether your Tide comes in a box or a bottle, it should be stored up and away, out of the reach of children.”
It’s funny, and I will be buying one and reviewing the ’18 vintage, but after the whole “eating Tide pods” imbroglio it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that this can’t be an accident. There’s an entire marketing discplipline devoted to avoiding semiotic shelf disasters — avoiding the packaging formats, colors and type design associated with edible goods — and this blithely handwaves through a third of it.