What The New Coke Ad Should Have Looked Like

Before we start, let’s be clear. I love Coke.

As a customer I love the taste and as a marketer I love the fact that they have been responsible for some of the greatest advertising and comms campaigns of the last hundred years.

That includes the design of the bottle which was briefed to be:

a bottle which a person could recognize even if they felt it in the dark, and so shaped that, even if broken, a person could tell at a glance what it was

It includes the 70s TV ad which became a hit record, the recent campaign which tied Spotify downloads to bottles and cansan event in Israel which made a festival truly social and changing their colours to match the 72 different clubs of the Football League, including the blue & white of arch-rivals Pepsi.

But I’ve been wanting to write about their new Australian ad for some time as I think that, compared to their normal efforts, it’s a little weak. Essentially it’s an ad that looks like it’s been made by cutting and pasting Instagram shots together (the rounded corners and retro filters scream Instagram, though the app doesn’t get a shout, which is disappointing, if nothing new) and is promoting a competition that offers the potential to win $5,000 if you buy a bottle or can*.

There’s nothing worse than people who simply bitch about other people’s work though, so hadn’t actually written anything. But then I saw this and it’s everything that Coke ad should be.

Rather than just looking like Instagram, it’s made of Instagrams.

It’s beautiful, elegant and one can easily see it being skewed to bring to life the feeling of summer. There would undoubtedly be much more work to be done finding and sourcing the creators of all the shots (being a non-commercial piece of work gives the creator a lot more lee-way) but that could simply be a case of Coke hiring this guy to direct their new ad (he’s obviously in the biz) and asking everyone involved for their permission.

I am guessing that enough would say yes to make it possible. Heck, you could even make it a competition, though that could give rise to complaints that Coke is trying to do photographers out of a living. But whatever came up negatively could undoubtedly be planned for and dealt with and the result would have been a delightful piece of work with real resonance.

Damn, hindsight is sweet. Just like Coke I guess.

*Presumably because it was time-sensitive, the ad seems to have been wiped from the web.

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