Lew's Review: "Life Tastes Good" Campaign5.2.01 By Lewis Lazare for the Sun-Times Launched with much fanfare 10 days ago, the new global Coca-Cola advertising campaign, "Life Tastes Good," is a huge disappointment. What's more, the campaign, which includes some 30 commercials, may be the most telling example yet of how globalization is making it tough for agencies to create great or even good advertising. The way Coke's "Life Tastes Good" campaign took shape was an early warning sign. Advertising by committee is always risky, but that is the route Coke's agency of record, McCann-Erickson, and its parent, Interpublic Group, opted to take. Rather than letting McCann units throughout the world create feel-good ads that uniquely reflected their cultures while still embracing the global tagline, a central committee of McCann and IPG executives came up with about 80 storylines that supposedly fit the campaign's "Life Tastes Good" theme. The group then selected what they believed to be the best 30 storylines from that initial list of 80. McCann units in 13 production hubs were invited to pick the storylines they liked most and tailor spots to their parts of the world. The result is a painfully generic, instantly forgettable campaign, despite efforts to give commercials in different countries a few distinctive touches. It's as if none of the agency creatives felt at all connected to the work. And why should they? Few of the people making the commercials helped develop the characters or the stories. When the "Life Tastes Good" campaign was announced--before the media were provided reels of the work--Coke executives insisted a major component of the advertising would be a new jingle. But that bland jingle is used too sparingly, mostly at the end of spots when the tagline appears. As for the storylines that made it into the debut group of commercials, only one of the 10 spots provided to the media had some merit. That would be the 60-second "Wedding," in which a young flower girl offers Coke to her aunt, who is being primped for her wedding. The spot strains hard to achieve a small emotional payoff. That is more than can be said for duds such as "Long Island Railroad," a tedious, drably shot and poorly edited look at some kids heading home from a rock concert on a deserted train. Or "Jakob Dylan," which thrills us (yeah, right) with the sight of the musician drinking his Coke off-stage just before an encore. Coke has produced some wonderful advertising in the past. Not now. Maybe it's time for Coke to find a great boutique shop that can push the envelope a little. More than it needs a campaign that can play around the world, Coke desperately needs distinctive work with some real emotion and musical pizzazz that viewers can embrace. "Life Tastes Good" most definitely is not that campaign. Lew's view: D+ E-mail: llazare@suntimes.com *** Production credits B>Agency: McCann-Erickson Global/North America ``Life Tastes Good'' worldwide creative head: Jonathan Cranin Creative directors: Jeff Weiss and Antonio Navas Senior copy writer: Jim Lewin Art director: Nathifa Akbar Executive producer: Arrow Kruse Producer: Katya Bankowsky Director: Rolf Schmerberg |