I've done this as a mini-series for a couple of reasons. Firstly, breaking this whole thing into parts made it easier for me to construct the points i wanted to make in response to the book. Secondly, without breaking it up it would have been an epic post and therefore much less digestible. But the main reason for doing it this way is because Coke is a nothing product. It's not even a nothing product, it's a less than nothing - a negative value product. What i mean is it's not something we need. It's a fizzy pop. It's water, sugar and whatever that secret '7x' ingredient is. It's actually really, really bad for you.
And this is the point - the only thing they have, therefore, is the image. They sell some fantastical ideal that makes you feel like you're participating in something magical when you get that 'pffsssst' of opening a bottle. And even more so as the first glug of fizzy washes down your throat. They have their funny shaped bottles and a brand, and that's it. That's why their advertising budget has to be so (literally) astronomical (2008 - US$655 billion, a figure that could sustain the UN and all its operations for 33 years!): It has to perpetuate this beautiful myth about itself. And therefore the more times i get to use the...
...logo the more it causes a questioning of their myth; it ever so slightly dents their claims of being 'the real thing'; it stops us handing over our money for their fattening-teeth-rotting-joy-in-a-bottle quite as mindlessly as they would like. Hence four posts, not just one.
Do check out and get hold of Belching Out The Devil, it is very compelling and well researched (although, infuriatingly, all his footnotes are at the back of the book), as well as being very moving and funny.
3 comments:
Nothing beats Coke with ice cubes on a hot day. Coke comes in handy to dissolve the built up corrosion on car battery terminals. It dissolves the crud found on battery terminals, and so imagine what Coke can do to a person's stomach! Actually I prefer Pepsi over Coke. I took the Pepsi challenge.
Just have to disagree with the last point (first in the list) about the reason not to buy it is that it's a nothing product and that it's something we don't need.
You could make that argument about 100's of products available to buy. Chocolate for one. Just as bad for you and definitely something we don't need.
The taste is lovely - especially on a hot day - but whether that's because we've been programmed to like the taste or whether it affects our brain chemically with the magic ingredients I'll leave that up to the scientists.
If we stop eating and drinking things just because they're no good for us and we don't need them life suddenly becomes a lot more dull. Giving up for human rights reasons is much more sensible.
Rest of the articles really interesting and make me want to read the book.
Antony
The fact it's no good for us is a minor point on the logical journey towards realising the importance their branding to them. It's not offered as a reason to give up Coke, it's offered as a means of presenting the brand as something to be challenged, that we might consider ways of doing so - having already decided to give it up on grounds of human rights.
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