Like many junk food peddlers these days, Coca-Cola is reeling from the fallout of the consumer realization that ingesting massive amounts of sugar and chemicals is detrimental to their health and well-being. To keep profits as fat as their stalwart customers, Coca-cola is scrambling to cater to the non-alcoholic beverage needs of the nutrition-savvy marketplace. Maybe it happened something like this…
Coca-Cola Marketer #1: Ok, strategy number 1 is to push back against all this Type A Diabetes and obesity hoop-la by spurting a bunch of McBullshit McRhetoric that flies in the face of all sound nutritional advice.
CCM #2: We need to fight against high-fructose corn syrup’s bad rep, and promote that it’s not actually high in fructose. Let’s start an exercise initiative and get a bevy of Coke-chugging athletes on board.
CCM #3: “Learn the importance of balancing the delicious, refreshing calories you consume with the calories you burn.”
CCM #1: I don’t buy all this learning and balancing shit. I mean, how are I going to enjoy my frigging soda if I’m busy calculating my penance on the treadmill. Can’t anything be enjoyable these days?
CCM #2: We need to appeal to what the consumer wants to believe, that moderate amounts of soda can’t hurt and their 64-ounce, 800 calorie Big Gulp falls within the USDA-approved range of a discretionary treat.
CCM #3: “A low-sodium mainstay of American life. Soda has been around for decades – you’ve only been obese since 1990.”
CCM #1: Shit. Strategy 1 ain’t going to fly. Let’s move on to strategy number 2. We abandon the men and fatties sailing on the goodship sugar-pop, and direct all the women, children, and metrosexuals onto the wellness lifeboats.
CCM #2: We can no longer rely on the expanding market share of existing diet product lines. There’s too much in the media about how artificial sweeteners actually make people fatter, and cause tumors, cancer, blah blah blah. The educated health-conscious consumer wants something more than ‘no calories.’
CCM #3: “A revolution in refreshment: the healthy soda.”
CCM #1: (snorts) Come on, not even the most delusional, gullible gastric-bypass surgery candidate’s gonna believe that anything called ‘soda’ is healthy.
CCM #2: It needs to sounds natural, like it once flowed in an aquifer. It needs to sound superior to juice. And we need to use the word ‘antioxidant.’ The average consumer thinks antioxidants flush fat and toxins out of their bodies.
CCM #3: (deep breath) “Zero-calorie sparkling refreshment fortified with vitamins and minerals and infused with antioxidants that tastes great.”
CCM #1: (whistling) Not bad. Fucking fortified with buzzwords, that was it is! I’m sure development can manufacture something resembling this… this… hey, what do we call this stuff?
CCM #2: We need a name that says ‘this beverage is sexy, fun, and contains vitamins B3, B6 and E, and chromium.’
CCM #3: Well, um, you know I used to work at a big pharm firm, and when we were specing out an obesity drug that was never launched because it caused constant diarrhea, we played around with a name that I sort of like: Tava.
CCM #1: Tava! Like Tab with vitamins! Damn, I could use a Tab. (standing up) Anyone else?
CCM #2: No thanks. That stuff can take the paint off of a car. I’ll take a green tea.
CCM #3: (thinking out loud) “Sparkling Green Tea Tava”…
RETRACTION
This morning Mr. Pinault and I were enjoying le petit dejeuner when some nice folks in suits rang the doorbell. They identified themselves as attorneys representing Pepsi-Cola North America (the refreshment beverage unit of PepsiCo Beverages and Foods North America, a division of PepsiCo, Inc). They were retained by PepsiCo specifically to inform me that my post on March 9 erroneously identified Tava to be marketed by Coca-cola, when it is, in fact, a PepsiCo product. After legally impelling me to write this retraction, they poured coffee on our croissants and gave each other high-5s.
