Taking A Snooze
Many years ago, in the Summer of 1993, I embarked on a crazy bicycle odyssey with the first wife. We rode a tandem bicycle in the Race Across America, a 2900-mile nonstop race from Los Angeles to Savannah Georgia. With a crew of seven, all we had to do was pedal.
And stay awake, because the clock was ticking, you know.
So we did, finishing the race in 11 days, nine hours, 20 minutes. Along the way, we slept a whopping 20 hours, scattered here and there on the side of the road, on picnic tables, in whatever motel the crew could find at ungodly hours. It took me a solid two weeks afterward to get a decent night’s sleep, because I kept waking up thinking I had to get back on the damn bike.
During our preparations and training, we studied human sleep so we could have a better idea of how it works. Humans typically sleep in 90-minute cycles, from light to deep and back to light sleep. This means that if someone is watching your eyelids twitch, they can know exactly when to wake you up, because you won’t be in a deep fog. If they can keep you from going into REM sleep, you can wake up ready to fight again.
And so we focused on those 90-minute sleeps, with an occasional 180-minute if we or the crew felt we really needed it. We trained on a diet of short sleeps just to simulate race conditions, and to know what it feels like to go down for a quick snooze in the middle of the night, only to wake up 90 minutes later and go for a pre-dawn ride.
It’s all craziness to me now, and although I have no regrets, I will never do that again. Ever since then, I have developed the ability to fall asleep quickly, but I still wake up multiple times during the night, and more times than not on a multiple of 90. I am not much different from other people my age in that regard, but probably more pronounced because of my insane racing days. I often take a melatonin pill at bedtime to help me stay asleep.
In the US, the sleep aid industry is a $1 billion dollar business, and that is just the OTC products. Sleep, it turns out, is not over-rated, and is indeed fleeting for many, not just people who put their bodies through hell.
Which may help explain why Pepsi Cola is introducing a new sleep aid beverage later this year. Driftwell will come in handy 7.5-ounce cans and contain a mix of herbs and amino acids to “promote relaxation and to help ease stress,” the company says.
It’s an interesting mash-up of two product categories for Pepsi, which finds itself, along with Coca Cola, somewhat adrift in a sea of colas and other soft drinks that have been going flat in recent years as consumers shift interests to healthier beverages. Waters alone constitute a $215 billion market, but despite perhaps one of the better brand names introduced lately, I have my doubts it will be able to get out of bed, much less hop on a bike and ride across the country.
For starters, I already know what consumers are going to be getting up to do in the middle of the night. Anyone who drinks fluids before bedtime is just asking for a wake-up call.
And where are supermarkets going to place this item? In the pharmacy area alongside other sleep aid products? Or in the beverage aisle with all the other bottled waters? I’m thinking of frozen pet treats right now, because it is a major disconnect to think of dog food being stocked in the bunkers alongside your box of Bubba Burgers, or in the freezer section next to your half-gallon tub of ice cream. The case for Driftwell may not be as extreme, but there could be a lot of grocer and consumer confusion on this aspect alone.
Since it is a liquid, it does not travel well, especially on an airplane. A little pill bottle of melatonin works much better in these cases. I wouldn’t want to have to tote a 12-pack or more of this with me on road trips either. It may also not survive well at home, especially in the fridge where kids may grab the sleek mini-can thinking it is one of their child-sized beverages. In other words, you would need to keep this tucked away in master bath area.
Technically, Driftwell falls into an emerging category called “functional drinks,” which is code for new-agey and scientifically unproven. Marketers don’t always let that detail deter them, though, especially not if there’s money to be made, and Pepsi is no different.
In spite of Pepsi’s best efforts on Driftwell, I’m calling this one a yawner. I won’t be needing any of this fancy water to try to get to sleep. If anything, Pepsi has launched its entrant in the Stupid Marketing Tricks race to death. And in this race, the sleeping went on long before the pistol goes off.
Dr “Snooze Ya Lose“ Gerlich
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