The idea for the Snapple “Real Facts” was born in early 2002 and the first 109 Real Facts were circulated on Snapple caps later that spring.
“We were thinking of a way to entertain our customers, and thought, ‘The real estate under the cap is unused real estate now'”, recalls Maura Mottolese, Snapple’s VP of Marketing. “We were looking for something out of the ordinary that they wouldn’t know and wouldn’t even know they’d want to know,” says Marke Rubenstein, Executive VP of Snapple’s ad agency, Deutsch Inc.
Within weeks, the Deutsch offices in Chicago and Los Angeles generated a list of 300 trivia facts, which they then whittled down to the 109 that appeared on Snapple caps in 2002. “They [had] to fit within the Snapple brand persona,” says Mottolese, who was responsible for making the final call on which facts were printed under the caps.
According to Rubenstein, the following facts were among those rejected:
- The sixth most common phobia is that of vomiting.
- Baby polar bears often hum as they nurse on their mother’s milk.
- Brad Pitt was once a driver for strippers.
At this time, Snapple caps were colored based on the category of beverage. The caps of regular teas were blue, diet teas were white, lemonades were yellow, and juices were green. These colors were also used when the caps were blank in between the 2001 “Flip Your Lid” promotion and the 2002 “Real Fact” promotion.
References
Trivia cap-sules: Lots of nickel knowledge under those Snapple closures. Houston Chronicle. July 17, 2003. By Peter Carlson.