Drink your underwear.

In November of last year, the number three USA soft drink company kicked off a brand new campaign and brand new slogan for one of its beverages.

Well, the slogan wasn't exactly "new"... it was in use that very same year by a heavily marketed underwear line.

You'd think that this would have caused the number three soft drink company to go number one and two in its collective tighty whities, but after all this time and a bit of searching on the net, it looks as if nobody even noticed - a most curious quiet considering the ubiquity of the two brands. ("Continue..." for more)

Here's a frame from a Hanes commercial in 2001 using the tag, "be you".

Here's a frame from a Dr Pepper commercial that aired in November 2001 using the tag "BE YOU".

And here's a frame from a Hanes commercial in 2002 using their new tag, "Hanes comfort. It's a beautiful thing."

This brings up a few questions...

Is it a good idea to have a slogan that works equally well (or bad) for underwear and soda pop?

Does it work better for a soda pop than a pair of grunders?

Did Dr Pepper/Seven Up Inc. influence Hanes (a company of Sara Lee) into changing their slogan?

Since nobody seemed to have publicly noticed the shift, could this be due to an excellent marketing/PR effort, or is it just evidence of a forgettable tag?

Or, did the upper- and lower-case difference in the slogans' typographies make all the difference?

And here's the big questions... Why does we feel the need to slap a slogan onto pretty much every brand we advertise? Is it because they work, or is it because that's the way it's always been? Do they make our ads twice as memorable, or instead, twice as easy to forget?

So what do y'all think? If a slogan calls out in the woods and nobody's listening, does it make a sound?