Coca-Cola's old school propaganda on the beverage tax is an insult and a missed opportunity.
A full bore campaign to defeat a possible tax on sugary drinks is underway (the tax has been proposed as a possible source of revenue to support health care reform):
- The lobbying group calling itself "Americans Against Food Taxes" is running a TV spot called "Pennies" that claims a few cents' tax on the gallons of soda pop a family is obligated to buy would put undo hardship on its finances
- The trade media is claiming that a tax intended to curtail consumption "...would create serious problems and potentially impact sales for the American beverage industry"
- Coca-Cola's CEO reportedly said that the proposal was "outrageous," and that if the government could tell people what to eat and drink, "...the Soviet Union would still be around." Its full-page newspaper ads declare that "Americans are realizing the importance of living a balanced, healthy lifestyle," which is supported by the calorie counts on its labels, a smaller can size, and some sort of guidelines Coke helped bring to schools. The web site promoting these things is gloriously ill-named, over-produced, and devoid of meaningful content
- We're talking about soda pop, not guns or nicotine
- Coke wants us to drink as much as possible, as it should
Imagine "Are You Serious?" as the headline for a newspaper ad, and the theme woven through social media -- a contest for people to nominate other inane things to regulate or tax, for instance -- and comments by Coke execs that let us know that they know that the tax proposal is silly.
The reason why I think this approach would be more authentic (whether I'd support it or not isn't the point) is that it wouldn't crash into Coke's basic desire for all of us to drink our fool heads off:
- Drive-thru cups are sized for giants
- Restaurants push free refills
- Store bottles are so large they don't fit in some refrigerators
- Fast-food straws are wide enough to amplify sound
And, like the oil companies, the false bravado of Coke's campaign amounts to cognitive dissonance that comes across like they know that they're guilty of something.
There's some proof that support for the tax is waning, but nobody can make the case that the campaign was responsible. Even it the effort is helping, I still question what this sort of old school propagandizing does to Coke's brand, and whether it could have been pursued in a way that was authentic and supportive of it.
I would have recommended that the company focus on an approach that was based on telling a simple fact, whether to consumers of its propaganda, or of its drinks:
It's just sugar water, stupid.
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