I really like coca cola, when I was in my 20′s I’d drink about 2-3 ltrs of the stuff a day (yes you read that correctly, that’s 8-10 cans a day), and contrary to what you may think, I was as thin then as I am now, plus I still have all my own teeth!

But Coca-Cola’s having a tough time at the moment, with greater public awareness on the obesity epidemic and the reported dangers of artificial sweeteners such as Aspartame, their sales of diet coke have dropped by 3% (diet Pepsi down 6.2%), while Coke is down 1% (Pepsi down 3.4%). Coca-Cola announced earlier in the year that they would start a new advertising campaign defending the use of these sweeteners. But let’s hope for their sake that it’s more successful than their previous campaign on obesity.

That didn’t go too well, going by the drop in sales, the comments on their Youtube and Facebook pages, plus the meme video with an overdubbed voice over that appeared within a couple of days of the original video. I can’t help but think they would have been better off not trying to spin it in such a positive manner, and rather than telling us to come together, maybe they should have come a bit clearer with the facts, as without doing so, they simply left themselves open.

Maybe due to the online backlash from last time, is why so far, they’ve stuck to print advertising, but in this world of social media, they know better than anyone, you need to be out their participating in dialogue, and not simply broadcasting your message

Meme video 1,714,573 views (1,000,000 more than the original coke advert)

The original commercial (734,458 views)

New Advertising Campaign