Starting this week, our client-side advertising review staff has added a new voice.  Bob Bader is Group Director responsible for strategy development and marketing intelligence at Coca-Cola.  Bob wrote our review of Geico’s Caveman advertising this week and will soon be reviewing the Chase Freedom campaign.

Of course, Bob will not be writing about Coca-Cola or its competitors.  The rest of us won’t stop reviewing Coca-Cola or be any easier on Coke when we review their new campaigns.

Please join us in welcoming Bob to the ThirdWay Advertising Blog.

Brand: Coca-Cola
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Male videogamers
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David

Description:
A car in a videogame careens through the streets of a city. The owner, a guy in a leather jacket and aviator glasses steps out and into a bodega named Fung’s Mini. The startled owner raises his hands as if he’s being held up. The leather jacket grabs a bottle of Coke out of a cooler and slams payment down onto the counter as the store owner looks grunts, surprised that he is not being robbed. Leather jacket pulls a preppy who has been driving erratically out of his convertible and hands him a bottle of the Coke. They drink together. We hear a homeless main strumming a singing “Give a little love and it all comes back to you.” Leather jacket walks past a fire in a steel barrel and puts it out with a fire extinguisher that clicks into his hand with the sound of weapons being changed in a videogame. An armored car guard drops a bag of cash and leather jacket flips it back to the guard. He stops a mugger and gives an old lady back her purse as the music swells “You’re gonna be remembered for the things you say and do. You give a little love and it all comes back to you.” The city is transformed by these good deeds and people come together into a musical dance number.

What Works:
This brilliant take on the Grand Theft Auto genre by Wieden + Kennedy and Nexus Productions effectively takes the Coca-Cola brand positioning into the videogame world. Grand Theft Auto is the leader in an immensely popular genre of PS2 and Xbox videogames that are played by teens and 20- and 30-something men. The genre depicts lawless cities where the player is a two-bit street tough trying to work his way up the criminal food chain. Acts of violence and lawlessness are encouraged and necessary to win the game.

Enter Coca-Cola. As this advertising blog has long argued (back to here), Coca-Cola is most effective when it is a social connector that creates shared happiness. Along with two other innovative spots, this effort convinces us that Wieden + Kennedy is the first creative shop in a long time to really understand brand Coca-Cola. Their work with The Coke Side of Life and Happiness Factory has helped reestabish the brand as an authentic creator of social connections and producer of happiness. There is good research to back up this positioning and Coca-Cola has known for decades that the craving that Coke drinkers experience for Coca-Cola when they eat pizza or go to a social event is psychological as well as physiological. In other words, our soul craves Coca-Cola as well as our body. This happens because we associate the drink with happy times and celebration. The job of the brand positioning is to refine and support this subconscious association and to make it relevant to new generations.

This spot does an excellent job of creating cultural relevance by upending the violent videogame genre with wit and sensitivity. This spot will appeal to games and non-gamers and the production values are excellent. By staying close to the core brand positioning for Coca-Cola, Wieden has also made a spot that could not be copied by Pepsi.

What Doesn’t:
This advertising blog thinks this is a very slick spot that will be effective with its intended audience. Looking at three recent spots coming out of W&K (albeit Happiness Factory was from W&K Amsterdam, not Portland), one does have to wonder if there will be too much creative diversity on the brand. The creativity and effectiveness of each spot is impressive, but there is a danger that by executing against too many widely divergent creative concepts, W+K and Coca-Cola may lose the benefits of a more consistent campaign, particularly with longterm recall of the brand message.

Branding Bottom Line:
Coca-Cola scores at the video arcade.

Brand: Sprite (The Coca-Cola Company)
Execution: TV, Online
Link: TV Spot Here, Online Here
Target: Attention Deficit Soda Drinkers
Rating: *
Reviewer: David

Description:
The spot starts with a shot of the classic Sprite can which morphs into the new can. A voiceover says, “Welcome to Sublymonal Advertising.” The voiceover and style sounds big-brotherish and may be familiar to computer games from the game title “Command & Conquer.” The spot then displays the words “Sublymonal Advertising.” The spot shifts to a huge greenhouse where a gardener with a backpack full of Sprite lymon and a squirt gun is watering the flowers. When they are hit with the limon they open up revealing mouths including lips and teeth and say “aaaahh.” Then the flowers start singing, “Time of the Season” by the Zombies. Intercut with this action are individual frame shots of “Obey” (familiar from the last campaign, ‘obey your thirst’), a rotating lemon with a school alarm bell ringing and eventually a lemon exploding, lemons and limes hitting a man in a tongue suit and another man cleaving through a lemon with a sword. Just as soon as it has begun the song and greenhouse scene end with a flicker of the words “Sublymonal Message Complete” (complemented by the voiceover saying ‘Sublymonal Advertising Complete), a corporate suit and the word “Obey.”

What Works:
As we have come to expect from the creative work of Crispen, Porter+Bogusky, this is a visually arresting spot. The editing is jarring and disconcerting which also makes it mesmerizing. The spoofs of Orwellian advertising techniques from ’1984′ also do a nice job of keeping our attention focused on the ad. The branding is very good as the Sprite can makes an early appearance and is reinforced with the familiar “Obey” message as well as the constant appearance of lemons and limes. The focus on ‘Lymon’ is clearly meant to return Sprite to a focus on the taste benefit of lymon which in this case is competing more with colas than in the eighties when Lymon was created to counter a strong showing by the ‘un-cola’ 7-Up.

What Doesn’t:
While we believe that rational and creative thought have gone into this spot, we have difficulty understanding the advertising strategy behind it or the brand positioning for Sprite. Sprite has magical properties, that is clear. Is it the antidote to the controlled, nightmarish society portrayed in the spot? Not likely. In fact, it appears to be the agent of control, the Soylent Green for this repressive regime. The most obvious clue is the simple play on words (Subliminal Advertising has been replaced by Sublymonal Advertising) which shows that Sprite is being insinuated into your unconscious brain by the makers.  This impression is reinforced by the ‘sublymonal’ website which features a verbal version of the subservient chicken where the female voiceover voice from the spot shoots big-brother-esque definitions back to you for virtually any phrase you enter.
We are not teenage boys, but we are hard pressed to understand how portraying the Sprite brand as the agent of mind control might help the franchise which did terrifically well with ‘Obey Your Thirst.’ However, the last Crispin Porter campaign we did not like and did not understand was for Burger King and we feel more confident in our assessment of this campaign after seeing the terrible operating results reported by Burger King after a year of running the ‘King’ advertising.

Although this advertising blog is open to hearing other interpretations, our strong feeling is that this spot is intended to attract eyeballs and spawn conversation.  However we do not feel that it strengthens the brand or will sell much Sprite.
Branding Bottom Line:
ThirdWay recommends strict Freudian analysis for the Sprite creative team.

Brand: Coca-Cola
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Coke Lovers
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David

Description:
A bearded young man puts a Euro into a Coca-Cola vending machine and we’re transported behind the plastic face of the machine into a fantasy world where the coin rolls down a mountainside and splashes into a waterfall. An empty Coca-Cola bottle flys past, borne by three plump flying bugs. They drop the bottle into a tower where it is filled with Coke. Furry creatures kiss the outside of the bottle as the bottle cap is catapulted into place. Then a giant hand sends the bottle screaming along a track through a tunnel. When it reemerges it is in an artic landscape, where snowmen are put through a snowblower that chills the Coke bottle. The bottle drops through a hole and appears in a skyscape, plopping into a moving walkway where it is feted and cheered by cannons shooting confetti. At the end of this walkway, the bottle rolls down a chute and ends up in the bin of the vending machine, where the young man picks it up. As he drinks it, we see him pause to look down at the bottle and then the machine and smile as he walks on.

What Works:
Although it is hard to argue that this spot is positioned quite as well as Wieden USA’s marquis spot for the brand (see our review here), it is a marvelous feat of imagination. This work from Wieden + Kennedy’s Amsterdam office shows a startling ingenuity which is absent from most of the advertising for this category. As we have noted previously, we believe that the strongest position for brand Coca-Cola is as a social connector. Coke brings people together and is uniquely connected to the best moments in our life. This spot does not argue with this positioning for Coke but expands on the magical nature of the ‘reason why’ Coke is able to connect people. Although the brand user in this spot is a solitary young man, Coke brings an entire social experience into the bottle he purchases. The concept of the drink bringing group happiness to an individual may be difficult in theory but it is executed well in this spot.

Of course it is the stunning graphics and brilliant realization of this ‘Coke Side of Life’ that moves this spot and makes it endlessly viewable. Wieden understands that great advertising must be compelling and this spot scores high on entertainment value without losing the brand. The spot has excellent ownability because the execution feels very much akin to the iconic Coke Polar Bear spots – it has the same emotional intensity with superior animation.

What Doesn’t:
It is fair to wonder whether the stretch between the magical world that Coca-Cola creates in this spot and the mundane world where consumers buy bottles and cans of Coke will be too wide for this spot to have an effect on Coke sales or brand equity. It really is a very high-concept production, which lacks significant linkage to the world we live in. On balance, however, we believe that this spot will be strongly positive for the brand.

Branding Bottom Line:
Coke surprises us again with an engaging, magical spot.

Brand: Dasani (The Coca-Cola Company)
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Sleepless in Mid-America
Rating: *
Reviewer: David

Description:
The 2006 campaign for Dasani introduces three new characters; a poodle, a goldfish and a camel. As with the 2005 campaign (see our review here), these new spots have the actors who play the animals describing how they prefer Dasani to the water they normally drink (or swim in for the fish). Each talks about the ‘clean crisp taste’ of Dasani. Each has perky background music and gives the fake animal a distinctive personality. Each ends with a product shot and a voiceover of the tagline, “Dasani – the water that makes your mouth water.”

What Works:
Branding in each of these spots is strong. The Dasani bottle is visible for nearly the entire spot and the brand name is repeated several times. The characters are unique, and continuing the general theme of this campaign from 2005 to 2006 increases the odds that consumers will recognize the brand from the look and feel of the spots.

What Doesn’t:
It’s a long fall from the top. As a company, Coca-Cola helped to create some of the most memorable advertising of the twentieth century from Haddon Sundblom’s unique images of Santa Claus which defined the modern holiday (yes, Santa Claus as we know him – fat in red and with a beard – was invented by Coca-Cola) to the classic Hilltop spot from 1971 that perfectly caught the mood of a new era. Coca-Cola did not just participate in the popular culture in these years, the company helped to define it.

No longer. Coca-Cola has been stumbling along for a number of years no longer leading trends but progressively missing the boat on sports drinks where they first failed to beat Gatorade and then failed to buy it, on energy drinks (Red Bull, Glaceau Vitamin Water) and in water where Fiji and others seized the high ground. Instead of defining trends, Coke has been relegated to follower status. Absent strong innovation in either products or marketing, the company has struggled to position brands that do not have a clear place in the marketplace from the appropriately-named Coke Zero (with its disastrous ‘chilltop’ spot) to the late-to-the-party Full Throttle energy drink.

So it should not surprise us that Coke has continued a campaign for its filtered water, Dasani, which in its desperation to make an impression just leaves the impression of being desperate. There are several strange and disconcerting elements to these spots:

1. Fake Animals = Fake Water: This is not a parallel that Coca-Cola intends or Dasani needs, but the use of actors in what look like off-off Broadway animal costumes reminds us that they are not real animals. When they point out that Dasani tastes better than the water they naturally prefer (the camel says a cool desert oasis is just ‘sandy water’), we are reminded that Dasani tastes better because it is not natural water but filtered municipal water which has minerals reintroduced – fake water. This would not be this advertising blog’s preferred positioning for the brand.
2. ‘Better than Natural’ is not better: The central proposition of these spots is that Dasani tastes better than other water. In itself, that seems reasonable. Bottled water drinkers accept the concept of taste in water and wanting to taste better is a good aspiration for a water brand. But as Fiji has proven, the gold standard in this category is untainted spring water. The closer the link that a bottled water can make to natural water, the stronger the brand. So when Dasani points out that natural water can taste fishy (in the 2005 spot) or sandy, it argues with consumer beliefs. Coca-Cola needs to find a better way to make a claim for Dasani.

Branding Bottom Line:
Dasani plays cute but scares the children.

Brand: Coke Classic (The Coca-Cola Company)
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here (Link is to Best Ads on TV.com)
Target: Coke drinkers
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David

Description:
A young boy sits on his bicycle at a deserted city street corner and opens a bottle of Coke. As he drinks it he looks into the distance and his eyes widen. He begins to pedal through the empty streets. Then he is suddenly riding through the middle of a parade. The landscape changes and he is in the middle of a flat rural landscape, still passing between marching bands as he crosses over a river on an antique metal bridge. Then he rides into a small town and passes the WWII veterans marching beside their vintage jeeps in uniform. We see a long shot of the main street of a small town. We see Mexican mariachis playing, beauty pagent contestants on a float and then Scottish bagpipes in Manhattan as the boy continues his trip. The pulsing, voiceless music intensifies as a Chinese dragon and Uncle Sam on stilts kick out. The boy tilts his head up, taking a long swig of Coke and finishing the bottle as he rides. Suddenly he is back by his urban corner store. He looks down at his empty bottle and back at the empty cityscape. The spot cuts to a white screen as a spinning red coke bottle icon appears with the new tagline, “The Coke Side of Life.”

What Works:
At long last we find a Coca-Cola commercial that we can support and – no surprise – this one is a product of the relatively new relationship with Wieden + Kennedy (Portland). For those who do not know, this is the agency behind Nike’s iconic spots.

Coca-Cola is an even bigger challenge than Nike was for Wieden for three reasons:

1. Mature Category – Carbonated soft drinks have been declining in volume in the U.S. for some time as consumer preferences change.
2. Product Comparisons Difficult – Since there is little functional comparison possible for colas, reasons to choose each Cola are more purely related to branding, lifestyle and taste.
3. Unclear Brand Positioning – Coke has a confusing history over the past decade of random and sometimes conflicting brand positioning from nostalgia (hilltop + chilltop) to holiday warmth (polar bears) to ubiquity (Always Coca-Cola) to urban lifestyle (many of the spots in between). The accumulated wear on the brand has reinforce the Coke name, but drained it of any specific expertise.

This Wieden spot does an excellent job of pushing Coke into a more narrowly defined, ownable brand positioning. The positioning? American universality. (We’ll stay off of the political implications of this one.) Coke is one of a very small number of cultural icons that links Americans from the heartland to the big cities. At its core, the concept of sharing a celebration is the purest essence of the original Coke brand positioning (‘The Pause that Refreshes’). By linking these celebrations throughout America together on a seamless main street that reaches across the entire nation and using a young boy to experience them together, Coke does a great job of finding that universality that it had lost through years of increasingly segmented micro-marketing. This spot is the product of an excellent insight into the brand: it has the ability to unify and is strongest when it does just that.

As one would expect of a Wieden ad (if not necessarily from Coke spots over the past several years), the production values and pacing are excellent. The branding is also great for three reasons. First, the distinctive Coke bottle and Coca-Cola logo are visible throughout the spot. Secondly, Coke is literally the hero of this spot as it enable the journey that the young boy takes. This ties Coke to the unique selling proposition – only Coke brings Americans from all walks of life together to celebrate. Finally, this execution is so distinctively tailored to Coca-Cola’s brand character that it would be impossible to attribute to Pepsi even if the branding were not seen. In addition, the music and cinematography are top-notch.

What Doesn’t:
Our only quarrel with this brilliantly executed spot is with the tagline, which does not have the stickiness of ‘Always Coca-Cola.’ The Coke side of life is not memorable or even meaningful and the tagline is distracting and confusing. Fortunately the spot works without it.

Branding Bottom Line:
After a long dry spell Coke hits a home run.

Here is our first take on the hits and misses of the game, by category:

CELEBRITY

Hit – Desperate Housewives (ABC) – Shaquille O’Neal, Hugh Hefner etc.
Instant Analysis – A nice job of using celebrity to show that absolutely everyone is watching Desperate Housewives. Turns celebrity on its head. ABC does a nice job of using its own time to build one of its own brands.

Hit – Debit MasterCard – MacGyver
Instant Analysis – We reviewed this spot before the game (click here to read review and watch video). It does a great job of bringing the God of Small Things – MacGyver – to the card for small things – Debit Mastercard. A good balance of big-game production value and solid marketing.

Miss – Pizza Hut Cheesy Bites – Jessica Simpson
Replace Carls and Paris Hilton with Pizza Hut and Jessica Simpson and you have this equally irrelevant spot which uses sex in a puzzling way. It not only fails to support the brand – it does not even make sense in context. Click Here to view.

HUMOR

Hit – Sprint Phones – Two spots do a nice job of showing the benefits of high speed phones with TV and downloads for Sprint. The first has the phone with the extra benefit of “Crime Deterrent.” The second is about the music and ends up with a Benny Hill romp around the room. What makes these work is that the humor connects to the product and the brand and the phone is very visible in both. Click Here to view.

Miss – AmeriQuest Mortgage – The ‘Don’t be too quick to judge’ spots are both very funny, but even professionals will have a hard time remembering the brand – which shows up only at the end of each spot. Click Here to view.

CAUSE MARKETING

Hit – Campaign for Real Beauty (Dove) – We have been critical of Dove using the Campaign to sell Dove Moisturizing lotion (click here) but for the Super Bowl Dove used its marketing dollars to promote the campaign instead. In the end, this will do more for Dove than the earlier spots. (Click Here to view)

Miss – The Beer Institute – The Beer Institute? Beer needs an industry group? It was nice to learn all of those foreign words for ‘cheers’ but with Budweiser spending nearly $20 million on the Super Bowl, nobody was going to forget Beer. (Click Here to view anyway.)

NEW PRODUCT INTRODUCTION

Hit – Hummer H3 (General Motors) – This is an older spot we have previously reviewed (click here) but one that worked well for the big game. Even though we would like more face time for the Hummer, this spot reinforces the ruggedness of the brand very well. (Click Here and turn of your pop-up blocker to view the spot).

Miss – Full Throttle (Coca-Cola) – This pre-game epic spot pulls out all the stops to convince you that you’ll be meaner and badder with Full Throttle Energy drink – including running a Red Bull car off the road. At the end we’re confused and Coke is a bit poorer.

Miss – Gillette Fusion (Procter & Gamble) – Not as bad as we had expected from the preview spot, but a flop nonetheless. Gillette does try to give us a plausible reason for adding two blades and draining our wallet further (more contact points equals less pressure equals less skin irritation) but it seems weak and irrelevant. We’re still more interested in real fusion – or maybe cold fusion. (Click Here to view – 2nd Quarter spot.)

OTHER NOTABLES

Hit – Budweiser Clydsdales (Anheuser-Busch) – Anheuser-Busch wasted a lot of money during the big game with spots that were all over, many of which were just forgettable beer commercials. This one, however, connected at an emotional level. Fortunately, the Clydsdales are so closely tied to Budweiser that there is no question which beer the spot is pushing. And the value of authenticity seems like it is Bud’s best brand proposition. (Click Here to view – 3rd Quarter)

Miss – Emerald Nuts – In the early 1990′s in Los Angeles, we learned that random success (like buying some beach property in L.A. in the 1970′s) makes people think they are geniuses. But sooner or later this random-ness fails. After spectacular luck last year with a quirky little spot, these random geniuses failed spectacularly. But perhaps the real nut fans will love it. (Click Here to view)

Commentary by: David
Issue: Best and Worst Campaigns of 2005 Named by WSJ

Susan Vranica and Brian Steinberg of the Wall Street Journal today named their picks for the best and worst advertising of 2005.

This Advertising Blog will announce the “ThirdWay Awards” – our picks for best spots and campaigns of 2005 as well as our choices for the year’s worst efforts on Monday, January 2^nd. In the meantime, however, we offer you a brief synopsis of the Wall Street Journal’s picks (read the original story here) along with our thoughts and links to our reviews of these spots.

The Best Advertising of 2005 –

1. Dove “Real Women” (Unilever)
• WSJ Rationale – Unilever broke new ground with this campaign which championed the cause of real women with real curves. The campaign created a public dialogue about our society’s sometimes unhealthy beauty ideal and generated a tremendous surge of media coverage for the ad.

• ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - ** (Click Here for our review)

While we agreed with the cause and applauded Unilever for supporting the Campaign for Real Beauty (the partner non-profit in these spots), we believed that Dove as a brand was not a good match for the real beauty message. Dove lotion is still a beauty product, intended to enhance a woman’s looks and ends up feeding the self-doubt the campaign seeks to end.

1. Target “New Yorker Issue” (Target Brands)
• WSJ Rationale – Buying out an entire issue of the New Yorker magazine and commissioning original artwork was “gutsy”, generating the kind of attention the retailer is looking for in a medium that has gotten short shrift from advertisers of late. Target showed how it and print can make a difference.

• ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - ***** (Click Here for our review)

With one masterstroke, Target sealed its ownership of “Design for All” – a bold step forward in its decade-long move away from Wal-Mart in the mass merchandiser retail sphere. In spite of these years of steady progress in bringing design to everyday life, Target seemed to arrive all at once last year and the New Yorker spread was the tipping point. Suddenly, Minneapolis and not Bentonville looks like the capital of the retailing world – as evidenced by the fact that Wal-Mart hired away a top marketer from Target and started running design-centric advertising (click here).

1. Budweiser “Superbowl Salute to the Troops” (Anheuser-Busch)
• WSJ Rationale – A smart turn to the right from the usually “sophomoric” Superbowl ads from the leading American beer-maker, this “poignant” spot featuring soldiers returning from overseas to spontaneous applause in an airport featured understated branding but a powerful message. Budweiser executes perfectly and scores a big win.

• ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - ****

We agree that this spot was perfectly executed. Anheuser-Busch precisely judged the mood of the country and was rewarded with generous press coverage and strong recall for the spot. This was a tactical move, no doubt, and doesn’t build the unique rationale for the brand but does connect to some of the core brand attributes for Budweiser. And most importantly it stood out against some of the cheesier executions in the all-important Superbowl ad war.

1. Nike “Tiger Woods Miracle Shot” (Nike)
• WSJ Rationale – When Tiger woods sunk an improbably chip shot and the ball hung for a second on the lip of the cup with the Nike swoosh featured prominently, it was a moment made for advertising. “With incidents like these, who needs to make actual ads?” says the Journal. They also applaud Wieden + Kennedy’s deft use of humor to set off the ad. The ad ran only briefly to avoid sounding too self-congratulatory.

• ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - ***

The actual event generated so much publicity for Nike that the ad seemed unnecessary and was very different in tone from Nike’s normal ad message. However the execution by Wieden is so spot-on that it is hard to argue with Nike’s decision to run the spot.

1. Audi A3 “Stolen A3” (Volkswagen AG)
• WSJ Rationale – Seamlessly using TV, Print, Billboards and even classified newspaper ads, Audi set up a mystery that led 500,000 consumers on a hunt to find the stole A3 which involved e-mail, IM, pagers and all manner of online and electronic clues. 500 A3’s sold in the first week of availability, in this high-profile test of viral marketing.

• ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating – ****

This campaign is a powerful argument for well-designed viral marketing. Volkswagen and McKinney + Silver orchestrated a seamless campaign that had huge awareness among the target audience and lots of targeted chatter, online and off. What surprised us most about the campaign was how invisible it was outside of the target audience. We did not really understand the extent of the cleverness here until we started adding up the media costs for the campaign and realized how much smaller the budget must have been than we would have guessed.

The Worst Advertising of 2005

1. Coke Zero “Chilltop” (Coca-Cola)

· WSJ Rationale – The spot was intended to launch Coke Zero but fell flat because it did not explain the product which confused consumers. It also left Coke open for a successful jab in an ad by Pepsi. The WSJ thinks the problem is that Coke pitches commercials at youth but tries to appeal to older people at the same time.

· ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - ** (Click Here for our review)
While two-thirds of the editors of this blog are former Coca-Cola marketers, we must agree that ‘Chilltop’ was a failure. And it will surprise many regular readers of this advertising blog that we do not blame the failure of this spot on Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Our belief is that what could have been an excellent execution for Coca-Cola classic was subverted by the Coke Zero launch. This ad was indeed confusing and in spite of Coke’s assertion that “strong year-to-date sales” for Coke Zero prove the ad worked we noticed that Coke quickly withdrew the spot and started running another campaign behind Coke Zero.

1. Domino’s “Apprentice Placement” (Domino’s Pizza)

· WSJ Rationale – a mismanaged product placement allowed Domino’s to be outflanked by rival Papa John’s. Domino’s promotes the meatball pizza on the show but advertises a cheeseburger pizza on associated spots. Papa John’s in the meantime is barred from buying network advertising on the same show but sneaks in by making local buys in 64 markets advertising a meatball pizza. At the end, Papa John’s stole the show from Domino’s.

· ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating – *

When product placements are heavy-handed and the monetary exchange is clearly the only rationale for the placement, they are ineffective. Domino’s managed to turn wasted money into lost revenue by mismanaging the execution and allowing Papa John’s to insert the “Better Ingredients. Better Pizza,” tagline they have litigated so hard for into the middle of Domino’s expensive product placement.

1. Carl’s Junior “Paris Hilton” (CKE Restaurants)

· WSJ Rationale – A terrible example of trying to cater to the “lowest-common-denominator” this spot was bad advertising and bad publicity as it stirred up a firestorm against Carl’s in spite of limited airing.

· ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating – *

This advertising blog avoided commenting on the ad and surrounding controversy on the off-chance that it is true that all publicity is good publicity for Carl’s.

1. Lincoln Mark LT Truck “Clergy Lust” (Ford Motor Company)

· WSJ Rationale – Ford made a bad decision in producing a spot featuring a clergyman lusting over a Lincoln truck after finding the keys in a collection plate (and subsequently returning the keys to the owners and writing a sermon with the heading “Lust”). The spot had to be pulled before the Superbowl and never ran despite Ford’s huge investment in production costs.

· ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - ****

We agree with the WSJ that this spot was in poor taste and would not have been effective for Ford had it run. But Ford made the right decision in pulling the spot and did so quickly and without triggering a national scandal. While the advertising was not good, we believe that this was a good example of successful public relations. Anyone can make a mistake but to deal with it effectively is the sign of character.

1. US Department of Education “Planted Stories on No Child Left Behind” (US Government)

· WSJ Rationale – When the government hired Omnicom’s Ketchum group and they hired conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and he wrote favorable stories on No Child Left Behind he hurt his reputation, Omnicom’s and that of the Bush Administration.

· ThirdWay Advertising Blog Rating - *
This advertising blog believes that the real problem here is not that the government engaged in planting stories but that in doing so they were engaging in standard PR industry practice. We believe that many current PR practices are creating great risks for valuable brands and that the day of reckoning may be soon. But that is an issue for the new year.

Brand: Coca-Cola Zero
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Men watching calories
Rating: *
Reviewer: David
Description:
Recreating the famous seventies commercial ‘hilltop’, this spot has a twenty-something guitar player singing a version of “I’d like to teach the world to sing” on a rooftop in a city, joined by other attractive young people in an appealing update of the traditional song. Instead of “I’d like to teach the world to sing,” we get “I’d like to teach the world to chill.” The spot ends with the stenciled Coca-Cola bottle icon with the Coca-Cola Zero logo drawn in.

What Works:
This spot has been airing for months. Why are we reviewing it now? Because Coke is sticking with the brand despite obvious problems and because they’ve introduced advertising to clarify the confusion caused by this spot. And because we believe this potentially brilliant advertising was betrayed by bad strategy.

As a Coca-Cola spot (ignoring Coca-Cola Zero for the moment), there are a number of appealing things about this execution:

1. Authenticity – One of Coca-Cola’s core brand traits is authenticity. Coke is the first soft drink that created an emotional connection to our life experiences. By updating a classic ad, Coca-Cola reminds us that they are the original, genuine article. This spot brings us back to the core of what is good about Coca-Cola.
2. Social Connection – Coca-Cola is about shared experiences, not individualism. The best Coca-Cola advertising creates connections between people where they might not exist otherwise. By singing together from the rooftops (literally), Coca-Cola again shows the power of harmony and the power of the brand as a social connector.
3. Mirror of the Times - Crispin Porter has chosen a nice theme “Chill” to update the classic ‘hilltop’ spot. In a world confused by terrorism, war, extremism and social division the ‘chill’ message is simple but effective. Bringing the spot to an urban setting is a simple way to mirror our changing reality.
4. Execution – All of the executional touches on this spot are expertly handled. The models are appealing without seeming unreal. The hip-hop patter under the familiar tune gives the music an energy it might not have as a simple recasting of the original spot. The camerawork is crisp and well planned.

So why have we given this spot just one star?

What Doesn’t:
This could be a great ad for Coca-Cola. But it is a disaster for Coca-Cola Zero. It is the best example we have seen this year of bad strategy killing a great execution. Coca-Cola has looked back into history and learned the wrong lessons from it.

At Coca-Cola, the advertising group used to operate very independently from the worldwide brand groups. At one point there was a rumor that a particular spot was shot for Coca-Cola Classic (the one with the elephant swimming and grabbing the can with its snout if you remember back that far) but the advertising group decided at the last minute to run it for Diet Coke instead by digitally cutting the Diet Coke can in place. The story (and we don’t know if it is true) is that the Diet Coke brand manager only heard about this spot when she saw it air on television for the first time.

Whatever the truth of that anecdote, there is a similar aura of brand confusion surrounding this ad. It looks like a perfect ad for an established brand – it is heavy on emotional connection and uses cues from older advertising to refresh the brand. It has good brand recognition but no product explanation. But it makes no sense as a new product spot. What is Coca-Cola Zero? What are we supposed to think about it? What does it do? How is it different from diet Coke?

To understand how some very smart marketers got themselves into this very obvious pickle, it is necessary to go back to Coca-Cola in the Sergio Zyman/Roberto Goizueta era. And to the introduction of New Coke.

New Coke is a little bit like Vietnam at The Coca-Cola Company. Everyone who was around at the time was traumatized by it. It made them feel like idiots at the time (in spite of the happy ending), and they passed that sense of trauma on to the next generation of marketers. In time, the Coca-Cola marketing corps learned lessons from New Coke – lessons that are enshrined in the marketing culture. The first lesson is “Thou Shalt Not Mess with a Leading Brand.”

The problem with self-evident lessons like this one is that they hardly ever give useful guidance for real-world dilemmas. And the dilemma facing Coca-Cola last year boiled down to one word: Splenda.

The problem was this: Splenda (marketed by Johnson & Johnson) had surpassed NutraSweet to become the #1 sweetener. Sucralose, the artificial sweetener in Splenda, also had a better flavor profile than aspartame or saccharin. So the obvious choice for Diet Coke was to switch from using NutraSweet to Splenda in Diet Coke.

This is where the First Commandment came in. All diet drinks taste bad (if you love diet drinks try to remember the first time you tried one) and each has a distinctive aftertaste. But none of them would be mistaken for a soft drink sweetened with sugar. So swapping NutraSweet with Splenda would make lots of people happy – but not everyone. All of these substitutes leave an aftertaste and sugar doesn’t have one. Coca-Cola was reminded of that the hard way last year when it introduced C2, a mid-calorie drink targeted at active men drinking Coca-Cola which was another disaster.

Now given the First Commandment (‘Though Shalt Not Mess with a Leading Brand’) and the bad experience with C2, Coca-Cola could not simply swap NutraSweet for Splenda in Diet Coke. It was bound to create a minority of unhappy diet Coke drinkers. After New Coke, every Coca-Cola marketer realizes that a vocal minority can create a PR and marketing disaster for the Company and might result in real bodily harm beyond losing a job.

The obvious solution was to introduce diet Coke with Splenda while keeping the traditional diet Coke around. We have mixed feelings about this as we feel that the Coke lineup is far too cluttered and confusing (look how far Red Bull goes with just 2 skus). On the whole, however, this seems like a reasonable compromise – and Coca-Cola did indeed introduce diet Coke with Splenda.

Unfortunately, a company that employs over 400 marketers on just a dozen big brands can have trouble leaving well-enough alone, and that’s where the evil we like to call ‘incrementalist marketing’ snuck in. Incrementalist marketing refers to marketing practices which try to squeeze the last ounce of juice out of the lemon, but end up giving you the seeds instead. To get the last ounce of juice from the lemon, Coca-Cola wondered – as they always do – how they could switch some Pepsi drinkers to Coke with this new, wonderful Splenda. They had failed with a mid-calorie drink. But what about a drink which was clearly a no-calorie drink (which theoretically signals inferior taste) but under the Coca-Cola brand. This is how Coca-Cola Zero was born. Ironically, it’s also how diet Coke was born in the first place.

But what is the real strategy behind Coca-Cola Zero? And how is it different from diet Coke with Splenda? The theory has to be that Coca-Cola is attracting different audiences with these two different brands peddling an identical formulation. But the reality is that it just confuses consumers who do not have time for these small distinctions. And it confuses loyal Coke and diet Coke drinkers the most. The confusion is increased by slapping the Coca-Cola Zero brand on what might otherwise have been a very effective spot. We have been somewhat hard on Crispin Porter in the past so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and suggest that the decision to use Coca-Cola Zero as the brand for the rejuvenated Hilltop spot was a horrendous lack of marketing strategy and oversight on the part of Coca-Cola marketing leadership.

Which brings us back to the news today, where we learned that Coca-Cola Chief Marketing Officer Chuck Fruit will be vacating his position and that the CMO role will not be filled in the future because the organization he has put in place will eliminate the need for a marketing chief. Pardon us for being sceptical if we cannot see any signs of control or organization in Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy these days.

Branding Bottom Line:
Coca-Cola gives us Zero. And that’s just what we get.

Brand: diet Coke
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Diet Cola Drinkers
Rating: **
Reviewer: David
Description:
Three spots positioning diet Coke. Loft: A skinny twenty-something guy with a two-day beard growth opens a diet Coke in his loft apartment and dances to the song “I like the way you move” while dressing. It’s nighttime, but he’s putting on a suit. Sparkle: an attractive blonde rollerskates and dances down a California beach with her friends as bubbles flow upwards from her diet Coke. Lime: a random slacker-guy opens a diet Coke with lime in front of an undersea mural. We see the lime bubbles flow upwards as he dances to a cool song. Others join him until a bus pulls up and we see the mural is painted on the side of a building (in Redondo Beach, if we’re not mistaken).

What Works:
We reviewed these spots because Ad Age chose ‘Loft’ as one of their ‘notable spots’ for the week, commenting: “The dancer in red socks, the multimillion-dollar loft apartment and luminous views of the Midtown Manhattan skyline are all just window dressing here. This spot’s real purpose is to associate the brand with one of the hottest, highest-energy music tracks to come out of the U.K. in recent years: ‘I Like the Way You Move’ by the Bodyrockers.”

The spots have energy, strong soundtracks and good visuals. They feature special effects bubbles which lend some energy and distinctiveness to the executions. The diet Coke can is in frame for the majority of each spot, so the branding is strong.

What Doesn’t:
When the leading advertising publication in the country says of your spot “it’s all about the music,” that’s fine if you are selling music. It’s not so good if you are selling soda.

But these spots are all about the music and visuals and while we believe that soda is bought for emotional reasons and brands are about emotional connections, we don’t believe that these spots support the diet Coke brand positioning. We say that not being clear what the diet Coke positioning is and not having been clear about it for some time.

It is a great myth that you can create “lifestyle” advertising without a value proposition that will build a brand. Even the most extreme examples of image-based advertising – like the Marlboro man – have a clear value proposition. Smoke a cigarette and be a rugged individual might sound like a dubious proposition, but if you spend enough money on it over a long enough time and you are absolutely consistent with that message it might work.

There is not a lot of consistency in diet Coke. We have not seen it in the past few years and we don’t see it in these spots. About all we can discern of the brand positioning after watching these three spots is “diet Coke is for hip, energetic, attractive young people with a lot of free time on their hands.” But what is the value proposition? If you’re one of the millions of thirty or forty-something diet Coke drinkers, do you really aspire to slackerdom? Does it have the same appeal as being a gangsta, a player, a suave socialite, a Hilton? Does it express the inner you?

Contrast this with the advertising that has built Sprite over the years and you’ll see the problem more clearly. Sprite didn’t hesitate to have an attitude, to avoid speaking to everyone because they were suffering at the hands of 7-Up. They made choices. They spoke the language of basketball and individualism and against establishment. And they became part of the urban social order in the process. Sprite doesn’t appeal to everyone but Sprite advertising appeals strongly to all sorts of real-life Sprite drinkers.

Finally, there is the question of ownability. Do these spots attach uniquely to diet Coke? There is a very significant effort to do this visually – between the constantly present diet Coke can and the bubbles. But how is this ownable? There’s nothing in these spots that might not attach as well to Diet Pepsi or any other carbonated caffienated diet drink. Or even a non-diet drink for that matter.

diet Coke doesn’t know why it exists and who it exists for. It fails to answer the basic question – how is a diet Coke drinker different from any other diet drinker? How does s/he see the world? Who is the hardcore diet Coke drinker?

None of this is entirely the fault of the current diet Coke brand team or the advertising agency. They are going to great pains to create something different and memorable. And the something – the ad – is pretty memorable. But the brand is not. And that’s because nobody seems to really understand what the brand stands for. Not the company. Not the agency. And not the consumer.

One final concern: is nobody at Coca-Cola worried about the diet Coke trademark? What’s with the full lowercase use of the brand in the tagline “it’s a diet coke thing” ??

Branding Bottom Line:
Full of sound and fury, these spots signify nothing.