Remember a certain soft drink company that decided the best way to peddle their low-calorie sugar water was with an ad campaign that proclaimed “It’s not for women” and “No girls allowed”?

Well reader Katharine, like many people, wrote in to complain, and the auto-response she received from the company was, incredibly, more condescending and patronizing than the original ad. Commenter Nicole noticed this as well back in October.

Company response reprinted in full after the jump.

January 6, 2012 Dear Ms. XXX: Thank you for writing to us about Dr Pepper TEN and allowing us to

respond to your concerns. I am a woman who loves the full flavor of

Dr Pepper TEN and the fact that it’s only 10 calories. When I first

saw the tongue-in-cheek advertising campaign and the tagline, my

reaction was, “I’ll be the judge of that.” In other words, no

one is going to tell me what I can eat or drink. We are disappointed to hear that we could be losing you- I see this as

a fun campaign and a very good product that I personally enjoy. We

hope you, too, will come to see our advertising campaign for what it

is, a humorous take on the many men who are worried about their

waistlines but are too “manly” to drink a diet soda. Sincerely, Consumer Relations

Ah yes, the classic “I’m a woman who’s not offended so you shouldn’t be either” argument. Verrrry effective, I’m told, unless one happens to have that weird genetic tic that causes your personality, thoughts, and feelings to be determined by your brain, not by what some supposedly female Customer Relations talking head tells you to think.

My main problem with this tired ole PR response is that it shows how confused and out of touch the company is. They can’t seem to decide how to defend their company, probably because they won’t admit to themselves that it needs to be defended in the first place. So they downplay its offensiveness as “tongue-in-cheek,” which it may have been intended to be, but don’t acknowledge that they missed the mark or apologize for the offense (nary an apology in sight, in fact). Then, they go on to respond to the legitimate complaint of their customer by condescendingly explaining to her how she should have interpreted the commercial: by excitedly exclaiming “I’ll be the judge of that” while compulsively downing Dr. Pepper 10’s, sticking her fingers in her ears and writing on a chalkboard 500 times “No one can tell me what to do nanny nanny boo boo.”

But seriously. There’s a lesson to be learned from all this. If your company’s sexist ad campaign spurs a wave of outrage and offense, don’t respond by tokenizing some woman from your PR firm and suggesting all women should have the exact same reaction that she did because they’re women too.

H/t Katharine