Four Loko Launches Brand Campaign It Rejected Last Year

"No pants day; batting, owling and planking; people thinking they are vampires and zombies; the world's gone crazy ... No! The world's gone Four Loko!"

So begins the press release for Phusion Products' new Four Loko beverage campaign, the brand's latest in an ongoing effort to clean up its image by mocking its image in the media.

In a true bit of irony, the brand is now doing almost exactly what it told us a year ago it "made a conscious effort to reject."

"Four Loko is launching an 'Everything's Gone Four Loko' News 4 Station and website, which will serve as the platform for the broader campaign content" reads Phusion's latest release.

The launch consists of its DrinkFour.com site reworked to feature a local news station broadcasting Four Loko stories. One of those is an admittedly funny stick in the eye of media outrage video produced in partnership with web humorists Funny or Die (which seems to be finding booze brand-partnering a lucrative side business.)

Part of Four Loko's campaign goal is to create user-generated buzz, with the brand encouraging drinkers "to contribute their own voices to the news cycle." In the section "Share Your News," DrinkFour.com posts mild photos of models and drinkers enjoying the beverage more or less responsibly.

Oddly enough, the new Share Your News section of the site looks identical to the "Four Shots" gallery the brand scrubbed off its site one year ago as it faced public outcry over its connection to the death of several youth. Also, a year after telling us they don't do social marketing and "There is no company-sponsored 'Four Loko' Facebook page," behold: an official Facebook page for Four Loko, featuring the new "Everything's Gone Four Loko" campaign and almost 77,000 "likes."

After agreeing with the FTC to reformulate its products to remove caffeine, the brand has committed to relabel its cans (the new label is below) to more accurately represent the amount of alcohol contained.

Appearing more than a little humbled, Four Loko is also introducing a new resealable can as well as a "Poco Loko" version with about half the alcohol by volume as its "big Papi."

Will the new campaign do anything for the brand? Unlikely. Another irony of course is that Four Loko has never had anything but a crowdsourced, viral marketing strategy.

The drink owes its success to the numerous YouTube videos and online word of mouth that made it a target of authorities, which in turn became one of the greatest viral marketing campaigns of all time.

Consumers rushed to stockpile the beverage brand and, in some cases, black-market sellers filled the void by plying their services (including delivery) on Craigslist.

And who is going to go through the trouble of entering a birthday on Four Loko's Drinkfour.com site to see a gallery when many more "user generated" Four Loko content are uploaded to YouTube every day?

From this past weekend alone:

Unfortunately for Phusion, even Funny or Die, its new branded entertainment partner, has made a better, and far more popular Four Loko video: