Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Coca-Cola Aggressively Targets "Kids" With New Powerade Campaign

In its very slogan, Coca-Cola's new Powerade campaign, "Just a Kid From Chicago" announces the ad's target market.

From a selling sugar water perspective, it's truly a great ad and kids are going to love it. It features Tupac Shakur's voice reading his powerful poem The Rose that Grew from Concrete over scenes of a kid chugging a Powerade for breakfast before hopping on his bicycle to pedal away from his home in Chicago's inner city, to culminate with the Chicago Bulls' Derrick Rose giving one hell of a visual shout out to the "power" of the product being shilled.

"Don't ask me why, ask me how" says Tupac just as we see Rose lifting up a 20oz bottle of Powerade and taking a swig. Then the ad fades to black.

That's one crystal clear message.

Coca-Cola knows it too, and while they'll likely claim that kids over 12 aren't definable as kids any more and are therefore fair targets, clearly I don't agree.

It would seem Rose doesn't agree either, at least about the target market not being kids that is, and he sure does know the value of his personal brand. Here's what Rose himself had to say in the ad's extended edition,
"As long as I can reach one kid, that's fine with me. I know there's one little kid out there that's watching every move that I make, so me always knowing that I just try to make sure I watch where I step, watch what I say"
Mr. Rose, in my opinion, you just failed at that job. Little kids, big kids, and I'd venture somewhere in the neighbourhood of 99% of grown ups will never have any need for any sort of sport drinks, let alone one that packs just shy of a staggering 14 teaspoons of added sugar per that very same bottle you swig from in the commercial. And if you're curious about what's actually in that bottle, here's my very rough home made version of same from about 3 years back.