It’s getting hot out there, so stock up on those great summer coolers like ice tea and lemonade. You’re probably saying, but Buzz, what about soda? Isn’t it one of the most popular beverages in the world? Yup! The average American consumes 150 quarts per year. That’s almost a pint of soda each day. That’s a lot of gas. If everyone in the world were to take a long drink and burp the nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide at the same time, we wouldn’t be able to contain the laughter. We’d laugh the planet off of its orbit. Why do we purchase so much soda? Answer: the advertising.
Do you understand what advertising slogans mean? Lots of thought goes into a name, a phrase or an aroma. For the Love of it. It’s a slogan. What’s the product? The slogan doesn’t mention it. It’s a circle with the top half red, the bottom half blue, and a wavy white line runs through the center. It could look like a globe, but there is more to this iconic logo. It is claimed by its originators that the Pepsi logo represents Earth’s magnetic field, feng-shui, Pythagoras, geo-dynamics, renaissance and more. In short, it is some kind of Da Vinci Code. What it doesn’t say is that based on the body’s tolerance for sugar and carbonation, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, phosphoric acid, caffeine, citric acid, and natural flavors, it’s a drink that keeps on taking. Let’s get real here! It’s a can of highly promoted sugar-water.
Do we drink it for the taste or the ingredients? Let’s look at their slogans to see what they think of us. Based on what’s in the can, Live For Now is the most honest. Dr. Pepper came out on top in the test of taste after over a half-million votes on the website Ranker.
Question: what kind of natural flavors can overcome the HFCS (High fructose Corn Syrup) which has been leeching its un-holy contribution to our bodies by facilitating weight gain starting at the molecular level? Is Coca Cola any better? It has more sodium so it is less healthy than Pepsi if you can associate the word ‘health’ with a carbonated beverage. Here’s a classic Coca Cola TV commercial. https://archive.org/details/Coke_Commercial
Ads that circumvent consumers’ conscious awareness by depicting a fun, vague or sexy scene that seems to have nothing to do with the product are less likely to activate the part of your brain that inhibits impulse buying. They want the impulse buy. Show us the dancing bears, we’ll figure out the product. Play music that drags our attention away from the litany of side-effects too. Watch those big pharma commercials and you’ll hear the easy listening music build as the side effects are read just under the music. As the music crescendos we hear “less major bleeding, skin rash and possible early death” but at least we don’t have the sniffles anymore.
But let’s all rally ‘round the red, white and blue can of sugar and carbonation. This should lift us up and give us gas at a decent price. Too bad we can’t fill the gas tank with it. We might get some on the paint and you know what happens then.
Where did ‘For the Love of it’ come from? The first Pepsi slogan, which ran for 30 years starting in 1909 was ‘Delicious and Healthful’ Yeah, they knew they were on to something way back then. Did we care about healthy eating a hundred years ago? No, they cooked with lard, butter and sugar daily, the meat was heavily salted as well so how bad was it? Today we can soak bleached white flour bread in coffee creamer, wrap it around a hot dog and deep fry it to taste. MMMMMMM!!! Can’t you feel your arteries constricting like a toad’s butt in a cold pond?
Really, where’s the Love? Is it when you buy the product? Is it the sugar rush?
Is it the carbonation? Aha! Gas! We need to answer the question ‘is there joy in gas? No! That’s why we have Beano. In France it’s a compliment to the chef when we get gas at the table after the meal. The chef hears this, comes out of the kitchen tossing a giant snail into his mouth and rewards you with a smile. Apparently, they’ve got great hearing.
Ad slogans don’t really tell you about the product, they just appeal to your sense of belonging in society. If slogans honestly reflected the products they sell, we’d have the new tag line for Pepsi as “Pepsi; a Little sugar but a lot of gas”
That sounds good, so let’s see where this goes.
Campbell Soup would go from MMM MMM Good to MMM MMM salty and adequate.
A Diamond is Forever and so are the Payments.
Nike’s Just Do It becomes Just Do It in a foreign country where you can get away with child labor.
Do we remember Can You Hear Me Now? Yes, and so can everybody else! You’re in a check-out line.
When it absolutely positively has to be there overnight because you didn’t get it together to send it on time!
“I’d walk a mile for a Camel.” Of course, I’d be out of breath when I got there.
What if countries had slogans like products? Mexico: Come for the water, stay for the Pepto Bismol. It all goes to show that we’re subject to the whims of marketers who sling slogans instead of reality.
