Bam. Splat. Ka-pow: Coke ads slug it out with Jamie Oliver
Lies, obfuscation and the start of a full-blown war? Following Jamie Oliver’s TV show about sugar in our diets, Dominic Mills picks apart Coke’s responsive advertising campaign.
It’s like being hit by a triple right-hander: three consecutive right-hand page ads in the national press from Coca-Cola repeated at least once over the last 10 days.
Ad one: a boast from Coke about how its new can/bottle labelling is clear. (It certainly is: the ad shows that Coke Zero and Diet Coke have no sugar, but Coke Life has 25% and full Coke 39%. Bloody hell – that’s scary.)
Ad two: another sort of boast, this time about Coke’s contribution to the British economy in the form of 4,000 direct Coke jobs and a £2.4bn contribution the British economy.
Ad three: a third boast, listing the milestones in Coke’s corporate development – 27 new drinks with less or no sugar launched since 2005; zero- or low-cal alternatives for all major Coke brands, and so on.
Ok, I thought, where’s the payoff? A new product launch? Some form of corporate mea culpa for an error (the wrong water, say), or a horsemeat-style contamination? But there was none.
Then the penny dropped: this was a response to the broadcasting the night before of Jamie’s Sugar Rush. Coke was, in effect, in defensive mode, and setting out its low-sugar stall.
From Coke’s point of view, the timing was also highly inconvenient, coming as it did on the eve of its latest sporting extravaganza, sponsorship of the Rugby World Cup (to which news I give a weary sigh and think ‘Oh no, not another sport surrendering to Coke’).
At that point I hadn’t seen the programme, but you didn’t have to be a genius to predict that Jamie was going to have a go at sugary drinks, and Coke in particular.
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Nevertheless, I’ll tip my hat to Coke for the speed of its reaction. To get three consecutive rights into the national press the day after, shows an agility I wouldn’t normally credit Coke with.
Of course, Coke being Coke, it couldn’t bring itself to admit that it was gearing itself up to take on Jamie, claiming that the ads were a “continuation of marketing activity we’ve been running all year.”
Honestly. If they’re going to lie, I wish they’d do it better. I don’t like being taken for an idiot.
I know it’s a lie because if you search Google for ‘Jamie Oliver’s Sugar Rush’, what comes right at the top of the page is paid ad for Coke that takes you to a ‘let’s talk sugar’ page on the Coke website.
By the way, if like me you get a childish thrill wasting Coke’s money, click away.
I have mixed feelings about the ads themselves. On the one hand, I feel better informed: Coke gets a tick for its labelling, and it has clearly moved some way to changing the formulation of its products.
On the other, the ad boasting about Coke’s contribution the economy feels a bit like a threat: ‘listen, Britons, if you don’t like what we do, we’ll take our jobs somewhere else’. Next, they’ll be telling us we should be grateful because they pay their tax.
The third ad uses a wording designed to obfuscate, and it pisses me off. It says: “In 2015 we are increasing our media investment in our no and lower sugar drinks to encourage more people to try them.”
Readers of this column know that media investment means advertising, but the average reader of these ads won’t work it out immediately. Why is Coke frightened of the word ‘advertising’?
I suspect that the use of the term ‘investment’ is sleight of hand designed to make it seem as though Coke is making a lasting and enhancing contribution to the economy rather than just, say, blasting 30 seconds of telly money into thin air.
Investment = good, advertising = bad, especially when it comes to carbonated, sugary, water.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like people or companies who use words in this way. It’s deeply cynical, and it makes me deeply sceptical.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that the ads are a skirmish in what will be a full-out war. Jamie is campaigning for a sugar tax, and if you watch the programme (look out for six-year-old Mario with rotten teeth, the diabetic amputees, and Mexican children who drink Coke because they don’t have access to clean water) you’ll believe he’s got a chance.
Coke is leading the resistance. This is a battle for public opinion, and will be fought out in public spaces – TV, the press, the House of Commons and so on – where advocacy will be vital.
Coke has chosen the press as the medium where it will conduct its public advocacy, although it’s curious none of the press ads pushes readers to any Coke websites.
After their torrid summer, the national press will be thankful for the cash Coke is bringing in now. What can be better than to be the medium through which a titanic battle will be conducted?
Longer-term, though, they’ll be pleased that Coke’s ‘media investment’ endorses their positioning, shown by the current Newsworks campaign, as the influence medium.