I saw on David Cameron's blog about a new ad for Coke featuring fuzzy little creatures. This is usually where ads lose my interest, but this ad wasn't too bad. It didn't make a lot of sense, wasn't particularly stylish, but had sort of a Muppet feel for me.
However, then I noticed that this isn't just an advertisement... this is a whole new brand direction for Coke, featuring these little Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, La, La, La creatures and suddenly it felt like the wheels were falling off.
The Coke Creatures have their own website(which I guess is not too far off into left field), and their own facebook page, flickr, and I gotta think will tweeting in no time.
All of which makes me question what the heck is going on over at the Coke branding department. If you want Coke to be equated to summer fun, do weird little musical creatures that are a cross between a mini-wookie, a muppet, and a gremlin really do it for them? Not to mention that everyone is drinking Cokes out of the classic glass bottle. I can only get those in one grocery store that happens to carry "Mexican Cokes".
Anyway, the music is pretty infectious and enjoyable, and as I said the commercial itself stands pretty well on its own. However, if coke were to ask me, trying to give life to these creatures and make them something "more" is a pretty terrible idea.
So, how to make the Coke brand = summer fun then? Running this music (even this particular ad) is fine, and I agree that its vaguely reminiscent of older Coke commercials when young people were holding hands on hills to Buy the World a Coke. Using the creatures as a tool for sprouting involvement with upcoming fun music for the summer is fine. I think that music and branding can work very well together because music has an emotional attachment and gives Coke the opportunity to get more direct interaction and actual conversations (instead of crazy made up conversations about photoshopped travel photos). If you really must include the creatures, why not have website visitors become more emotionally involved by making their own versions of the song by remixing using the creatures various "talents". (Oh lord, have I slipped into a Coke branding hallucination?)
Making the creatures the key feature and trying to build them as a branding tool, is likely to be a dismal (and creepy) failure (to wit: the facebook page has been live for almost a month and so far only 609 fans, with the power of Coke's ad spend, I would surely be disappointed with that slow a ramp-up). I have to wonder if Coke will be daring enough to measure the ROI on this ad: those little creatures are all animatronic and puppets, not digital! From an art perspective, that kicks ass. From an advertising ROI perspective, that's probably disasterous.
1 comment:
I was gonna all into this particular ad—discussing, critiquing—and then I remembered: oh yeah, MOST of Coke's ads suck.
The layperson might ask why Coca-Cola needs to advertise at all. I won't go that far afield but I will say I've always thought Coca-Cola is wisest when it simply and stylishly leverages its iconic status as THE original American cola/soda/pop beverage.
The script, the bottle, the dynamic ribbon device, their specific red hue, and pouring/flowing Coca-Cola itself say it all for me and always have. Throw in timely music and people and you've got it.
Most of the identity changes they've done in the last 5 years I've really appreciated, returning the brand to its more classic glory (thankfully the fake water droplets, double waves, and other textures are gone from the can). I even read they've stripped the "Classic" from the name, though I've yet to see that.
But as for these little creatures. Amusing for about 4 seconds, forgotten just as quickly.
And now I'd like a Coke please.
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