Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Is Coca-Cola's Latest Calorie Dictionary Ad Purposely Deceptive?

You be the judge.

Below is the embedded copy of Coca-Cola's most recent anti-obesity advertisement. It's called, "Calorie Dictionary".

Watching Calorie Dictionary the inference is that it's incredibly easy to burn off the calories of a Coke.

They show various activities and then their apparent calorie counts. They also, at the beginning, note that the calorie values are for 5 minutes of the activity shown. Clearly though Coca-Cola expects the brief mention of 5 minutes to be forgotten as the bulk of their portrayed activities in real life are only momentary, like hugging a friend, falling, jumping out of a tree, or zipping up a dress which according to Coca-Cola respectively burn 7, 18, 11 and 12 calories. Seems to me that the message Coca-Cola is trying to hammer home is that calories are way easier to burn than you thought and that if you just move a teeny little bit, you can easily burn off their sugar water. Too bad it's not a truthful one.

According to the commercial if you spend 50 minutes (divided into 5 minute blocks) hugging people, swinging a sledgehammer, climbing fences, falling off mechanical bulls, jumping out of trees, running, shouting, lifting young children onto your back, diving to the ground, and zipping up a dress then you too will burn the number of calories you'd find in a 13.5 oz bottle of Coca-Cola.

Such nonsense, and more to the point, want to know what's way easier? Not drinking them.

(And if you wanted to burn off the much more ubiquitous 20oz bottle you'll need to combine 75 minutes worth of 7.5 minute blocks of those same ridiculous examples.)



So what say you? Purposely deceptive or a helpful part of the "solution"?