Garfield's Ad Review
Coke's 'Open Happiness' Narrowly Misses the Mark
Best Things About New Wieden Effort Are Holdovers From Previous Campaign
Remember "Always?"
It was the best Coca-Cola slogan ever, better even than "The pause that refreshes." It reminded you that Coke is always delicious, always refreshing, always a perfect complement to food, always at hand, always been there, always will be and always a better choice than, say, Pepsi.
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Title: Open Happiness Marketer: Coca-Cola  Agency: Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, Ore. |
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| The very best things about the "Open Happiness" ads are holdovers from the previous "Coke Side of Life" campaign. |
But, as usual, we digress. The subject today is Coke's new campaign from Wieden & Kennedy, "Open Happiness." Or, as we think of it ...
... Almost.
It's almost consistent, almost cohesive, almost seductive, almost thoroughly charming. But just not quite. Furthermore, the very best things about the advertising are holdovers from the previous "Coke Side of Life" campaign:
1) the animated tag of the twirling red-and-white contour bottle and sublimation of the onscreen type into bubbles.
2) The generous use, such as in the spot called "Crave," of effervescence audio, which we have always believed to be one of the three most satisfying sounds in the world, along with children laughing and a 9mm magazine being fisted into the pistol grip.
Mind you, standing alone, the spots are mainly lovely. "Happiness Factory 3" is another cute, animated, fanciful notion of where Coke comes from. "Avatar" shows ordinary folks transforming into their online/video-game avatars, yielding a "Beauty and the Beast" moment between man and monster/total babe as they both reach for the same Coke. "Heist" is like "Snow White" in Pixar, as insects make off with a picnic Coke. Ahhh, that's sweet. Ahhh, that's refreshing. In "Swelter Stopper," two towering comic-book monsters terrorize a city, till they share a Coke truck and turn all mellow.
Got it? A Coke makes everything wonderful. That's good as far as it goes, but though the digital animation is far more sophisticated, the warmth somehow is less transcendent than the polar-bear spots of a decade ago. Worse, the feel-good effect at the moment is easily trumped by Pepsi, whose new ads are positively buoyant. Wieden's work by contrast seems somehow labored, perhaps too adorable by half.
And then there are the actual errors.
"Crave" is about a guy so thirsty for a Coke that, in his search for refreshment, he sees contour bottles everywhere. Happy mirages. Happy hallucinations. We'll buy that -- but why is the music so eerie? Kind of a buzz kill, if you ask us. As for the spot titled "Library," well, words simply fail.
It shows a couple of high-school kids in an innocent flirtation. While they're supposed to be researching their term papers, they're goofing off with drawings they've inked onto their hands. Naturally, the artwork becomes animated and before long the boy's pic of a Coke bottle is pouring happiness into the girl's pic of a contour glass.
Whoa! The first 50 seconds are fabulous, but, sorry, the denouement is either a classic metaphor for coitus or a modern metaphor for intravenous drug use -- neither of which famous pauses that refresh having any business within a mile of a Coca-Cola trademark. Are they insane?
On the plus side, the music -- "Strange Love" by the Swedish transvestite sampling artists Koop -- is absolutely fantastic. Maybe Wieden can switch it out into a recut "Crave." That would give Pepsi a run for its money. Or, anyway, almost.
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Walter Graff
Bluesky Media
"Happiness" is not what this spot invokes. It just made me itchy. Bring back the Polar Bears.
I launched Always campaign in Romania in early 90's and as a marketer, remained forever a fan of that slogan and positioning. I still consider Always, after all these years, the quintessence of this brand and the best Coke campaign ever. I would have never changed that slogan, nor its spirit and executional strategy, would have just refreshed it and completed it from time to time with so many possible pieces of the Always puzzle.
With few exceptions, Pepsi did a better job in the last ten years, even if some soccer & music epics started to become predictible. Obviously I am talking about international advertising, being less familiar with US copies.
Catalin Lascu, Bucharest, Romania
Unfortunately, it seems the current Coke CMOs best spots are those for Microsoft's B2B product in which she's featured. Sadly, they're not her own. As a comparison, the Microsoft spots feature interesting animation, and they tell us something about the product in a new way.
Understandably, saying something new about sugar water is tough.
Maybe that's why the non-sugared Coke Zero work is so much more inventive? Yeah. More so, asking real attorneys to sue a sister diet brand for tasting like the original is a really funny, aggressive concept.
Since Zero will take Coke's final Super Bowl ad slot, we'll hope to see one spot that's 'refreshing.'
If not, the overall brand score in the big game for this brand could be Coke, zero.
Rob, bandwidthmktg.com
Bob the real world - connection you so long for, with food, has all been lost searching out the emotional connection, not the gut connection as you have embedded in your brain. Youngsters have wised up, you've seen the product mix.
What's a poor agency to do in the midst of "G," and wings, et.al.? What I have been seeing is a paid search to find the connection with what Pepsa had called: a new generation, of sugar sucking caffeine addicts.
I think that was what you were trying to say instead of "Narrowly Misses."
Hugh?
Also, seeing as your fond of the sound of guns being "fisted", but shocked by allegations to "coitus", perhaps you should not review any work coming out of Europe. Believe it or not, the rest of the world are not Americans.
I love you, too bad I moved away from my once haven at UC Berkeley.
I'd be ready to connect in a transcendent "Bear hug," and we could talk sex, or be European and actually engage in it. Rather than the American lip service of dancing around and not connecting as man and women like the Europeans. But rather like pretentious Americans, who control the world - or aspire to do so as world-cops.
And we can do that in cyberspace ... pretend, that is, like Garfield does.
With his sugar-coated wah-wah and sarcasm that has little to do with how advertising is created as much as it does with his collecting a paycheck. Easier to criticize it, then it is to create it.
From here on out why don't you have a two-pronged approach to your snipes: a. one the criticism, and b. your better strategic idea.
Bob would be more fun if he was more Ann Landers or Dear Abby in his approach instead of Rash Limbo, aka Rush Limbaugh, of the advertising and media critic genre.
Could be fun ... love, love, love. We can get a coka or a pepsa, whatever you like.
It's been a weird day, sorry.
1, you are fairly reasonably sober when you write them; and 2, you actually try to make a tiny sliver of sense?
Then we can sit down and agree that Bob lacks a little in the global world view, and he is certainly no music expert. And then you can explain to me how you came to be the only one to know about the entire European continent's inability to connect as "man and women", whatever that means.
You are of course right. It means nothing with my inadvertent typo. "Rather than the American lip service of dancing around and not connecting as man and women like the Europeans."
That's missing enough punctuation and an extra "not" to have lost all its meaning. Somehow I got an extra not in there. Sorry Jane, I did want to connect like Europeans and not dance around like Americans. Meaning Europeans are direct.
As a Euro-American I envy them, connections are simpler.
About sober, wish that was my excuse, but no, it was as I said, a weird day. And not rereading what I write. I'll get better, promise.
a coke & a smile (and a BIG thank you for my morning's entertainment) cheers