Strawberries and cream...and rum?

The only tennis tournament I'll make it a point to watch...sometimes. I'm not sure what causes me to take an interest in watching a sport with almost no contact. Perhaps I enjoy the tradition that the tournament hosts. It could that I look for every excuse to eat strawberries and cream with champagne for breakfast. (British tennis fans will consume about 17,000 bottles of champagne during the annual fortnight. By definition, champagne is produced only the Champagne region of France. In case you're unaware, the English don't exactly like the French. Just ask this girl. It would seem that Britain would consider using a different drink to avoid giving so much money to their arch nemesis each year. Alas, I digress.) However, the most likely reason for my interest is simple. Wimbledon's schedulers are geniuses as they know to put beauty ahead of talent.

I would imagine the idea for doing this came at about the time Anna Kournikova became the most popular tennis player in the world despite never winning a single tournament in her illustrious career. It's fairly easy to see why women's tennis would appeal to the male demographic in recent years, but how do they choose which men to schedule at Centre Court? (No, I didn't misspell "center." Blame the silly Brits for not knowing how to spell words in the language named for their own country.)

For years, it was simple. Pete Sampras was the most dominant tennis player in Wimbledon history. Though his chest-fro never did much for me, I had no objections to his wife, Ms. Veronica Vaughn. Problem solved.

Now what does any of this have to do with rum? I'm glad you asked. Bacardi decided to market their Breezers, which I can only assume tastes like watered down cough syrup, with an ad campaign essentially telling women that all they have to do to be attractive is surround themselves with ugly friends. Of course, this got the feminist blogosphere up in arms, and the campaign has since been pulled. Presumably, they were upset at the fact that their pictures were used in the campaign. Either that or women think we still haven't figured that out.

It would seem that Bacardi made a serious error in judgment while choosing their marketing slogan, but I'm not sure that's the case. For one thing, there's no such thing as bad publicity. However, it's bigger than that. Bacardi clearly understood the role that sex plays in tennis, so they decided to play it up themselves to chip away at the stranglehold champagne has on the tournament.