Summarized, an attractive but vacuous girl says something like, “Hey, here’s the thing with Diet Coke, it’s delicious”. (Editors note: it’s not delicious. Up until now, no one in the history of time has every used that word to describe Diet Coke. Mostly, it’s OK, if it’s cold enough and you’re fond of bubbles, phosphoric acid, and caffeine. But I digress.)
Anyway, she continues describing the various questionable choices people make – living in yurts, running marathons (which, for the record, is a lot more admirable than imbibing a soft drink) – and therefore, there’s nothing wrong in having a Diet Coke.
But…this is strange, because before this commercial, there was no reason to think anyone was feeling, you know, actual shame, for drinking a Diet Coke. Sure, there’s the “well that’s $1.99 I’ll never see again spent on water and artificial sweetener” regret, but you don’t actually try to sneak the can of Coke in with your purchases of tampons, condoms, and porn just to hid the shame.
So what’s the deal with the “carpe diem, let’s throw caution aside and have a Coke”? Did some new report come out on the health risks of diet soda? Will drinking it to you whatever was done to this spokesgirl to make her so irritatingly shallow?
Strange. Is this a new strategy in advertising? Create some faux outrage about your product so you can get people to stand up against “THEM” and say “THEY can’t tell us what to do!” withouth realizing there is no them or they.
Saw this ad for the first time yesterday in a movie theater before the movie.
My main impression was to wonder who the actress was.
Looked familiar - reminded me of Anne Hathaway.
But as someone who doesn’t drink soda and was just waiting for a movie, it didn’t really impress me otherwise as significantly different from most advertising.
Only reason I remembered it was the references to yurts and marathons - but other than remembering a cute young woman, I couldn’t have told you the tone, message, or anything else about the ad.
Probably couldn’t have even remembered what it was for.
To the OP: you’re letting your feelings of superiority over us Coke drinkers, us enjoyers of “bubbles, phosphoric acid, and caffeine” cloud you. Just because you don’t like “water and artificial sweetener” doesn’t mean that those of us that do are somehow inferior. In other words, get over yourself.
Given that, yes, this is a stupid-ass commercial. She’d too smug, to annoying (and IMO, not at all cute, so I don’t even get that small enjoyment) and too millennial for my taste.
There’s a lot of unwarranted aspartame hate out there, with people claiming it causes everything from weight gain to brain cancer and alzheimer’s disease. I didn’t watch the commercial. Does that sound like the sort of thing they were being defensive about?
There was a sort of similar ad campaign some years back for Apple Jacks, with parents or older siblings mocking kids for eating it. “It doesn’t even taste like apples!”, was one of the oddly on-point jibes. I think the kids ended with the slogan, “We eat what we like!” But since 11 the year-olds probably didn’t write the ad, it came off as, “You’ll like what we tell you to like, even if it’s crap – in fact, because it’s crap – you sniveling little midgets!” Or so it did for me.
Then there was the Dominos campaign a while ago where they admitted their pizza was terrible, but said they had hired gourmets to totally redo it, and now it was great. You know, that would be more convincing if you hadn’t just admitted to lying for the the last couple of decades. It was effective in that it got me to try Dominos again. Yeah, not really any better. I couldn’t even tell how it was different. Maybe it’s time for another redesign!
WTF is wrong with living in a yurt? The distinctive pattern of bars and rings that make up the ceiling of a yurt (or ger, in Mongolian) is the heraldic device in the seal of Kazakhstan and the flag of Kyrgyzstan. The yurt is the cultural “home” of the nomadic souls of the steppes. It’s a huge part of the social identity of those cultures, to the point that it gets reproduced in permanent buildings to emphasize “Turkicness” or “Mongolianness”.
That’s just a little casually racist. I really really hope they try that ad in Central Asia.
Damage control maybe? Trump is known for being a diet coke lover. Maybe they are trying to distance themselves from they negative association.
(I promise I don’t always try to make all things political. :))
Finagle wasn’t coming out against Coke drinkers, just slamming Diet Coke. He’s right, it sucks. Nothing wrong with most other soda, I drink a couple of cans a day myself.
There was that Dr Pepper campaigna decade or so ago, where they briefly made a 10 calorie soda. The implication was that Real Men don’t drink diet, but stuff some negligible calories in there and BOOYAH! You’ll get laid!
IIRC females are still more likely to buy diet.
I take it as a knock against hippie types who want to pretend they’re better by living off the grid and running marathons.
Of course modern rural Mongolians live in yurts which are a far cry from the teepee you made in Cub Scout camp. They are large, have some form of central heating, TV, etc. They’re more houses with leather walls than tents.
I thought it was obvious: Coke got badly burned when they changed the flavor of regular Coke back in 1985. So they want to pre-empt any possible comparisons.