The Politics of Advertising: Diet Coke
Have you ever stopped to notice that nowadays, it’s unusual for a brand to not be political? There was a time when consumers were inclined to give a company their business simply because they liked the product being offered. Today, it’s a lot more complicated than that. With the rise of social media and direct communication between consumer and producer, it is easier than ever for consumers to make their voices heard and demand transparency when it comes to labour practices and material sourcing. The actions of individuals within a company are more visible than ever before and the political positions that the CEO of a company might make automatically reflect the views of the company in question.
By and large, social issues have become entangled with advertising in a unique way. Many companies have taken stances on a myriad of social issues. But we must ask ourselves, what’s the purpose? Do these brands genuinely care or do they just want to be noticed? The following series, to be published over the next few months, will set out to analyze these types of advertisements. Not to necessarily come to a conclusion, but to present both sides of the question: should companies be socially responsible? If so, what’s the appropriate way to do so?
Case 1: Diet Coke
For the first installment in this series of advertising turned sociopolitical, I’ve decided to analyse Diet Coke’s ‘Unlabeled’ video ad.
Within the 80 second video, Diet Coke is trying to tell its audience that labels are restrictive and that they can put us as individuals into a box. We see a very diverse group of people talk about how the labels they’ve had imposed on them have affected them. In one instance we learn about a man being labeled ‘suspicious’ for wearing a turban. In another, there’s a woman talking about how having being an immigrant makes others think she’s uneducated. The stories presented are all about the impact that these labels have had on how others perceive them. These include being “too old, too girly, too traditional, or too ethnic.” More often than not, the experience has been negative, as these labels limit what others might think of that individual. There’s no depth to the person, nothing that goes beyond the label that’s been placed on them. Now here’s the metaphor that Diet Coke has decided to employ: Diet Coke will ‘remove their labels’ (from their Diet Coke cans) to make room for a conversation about your own.
This is a great message, but I do think that there’s a bit of a stretch between the labels that are put on a person and the labels that identify what a product is. Literally speaking, a Diet Coke can will not face discrimination, stigma, or prejudice for being what it is. Taking the literal sense of what a label is and relating that to individuals who do face all of these things is, in my opinion, a bit of a stretch. A well intended stretch by all means, but a stretch nonetheless.
Does that however, devalue the message? Not at all. These messages are incredibly important in a climate in which division is being championed at appalling rates. These are the messages that young audiences like to hear because they’re important and not talked about enough. Diet Coke knows this and as a result decided to roll out this campaign. But is social justice simply a market characteristic? A checkbox that needs to be filled in when creating millennial and gen-z friendly content? Or do large corporations with a wide-reaching platform such as Coca Cola’s have a responsibility to promote these ideas?
We have seen previous iterations of what it means for a soda company to be political. Take Pepsi’s now infamous ad starring Kendall Jenner. That campaign focused on creating a conversation about protests and demonstrations. They alluded to a can of Pepsi being a unifier of demonstrators and police authority - thus failing miserably. The entire ad was widely received as tone-deaf and inappropriate for Pepsi to even do. Now why is that? I think it has to do with the fact that there is no connection between demonstrations and Pepsi. The issue they tried to target was also far too complex. It was impossible for an audience to see some sort of link between Kendall Jenner, a person whose privilege would likely not place her at a demonstration, a Pepsi can, and Pepsi’s idea of “peace.” Now, whether or not Diet Coke’s campaign was in some way reactionary to Pepsi’s failure, there’s a clear difference in effectiveness. Finding some sort of link between a product or service and a social issue is, in my opinion, what makes an ad like Diet Coke’s ad more digestible than Pepsi’s.
The important question to ask ourselves as consumers of media is: how do we distinguish between meaningful intent for social change and pandering for profit? In a time in which escaping advertisements seems impossible, it’s definitely important to at least be aware of the fact that the act of using a social issue to promote a product is sometimes problematic. When done in an insensitive manner, it will come off as tone deaf and the reaction to it will be negative. Advertising creatives need to be aware of the sensitive nature of these social issues in order to create meaningful content because combining social issues with advertising doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. In the meantime, all we can ask as viewers and consumers is for heightened awareness and understanding of the issues advertisers are trying to associate their product with. It can be a slippery slope, but with a platform that can reach millions, why not use it for some good?
