Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Bathroom Monologue: It's all about image, people

Unbeknownst to the public, companies do not just run advertisements for all their products willy-nilly. For instance, the Pepsi Cola Company has divisions for marketing beverages independently of each other, including specific accounts with separate advertising firms representing Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Wild Cherry Pepsi, Mountain Dew and all of the non-traditional specially flavored variant drinks, like Code Red, Jazz and We-Swear-We-Came-Up-With-It-Before-Coke-Did Pepsi. Sure, the specially-flavored ad division has a feud with the Wild Cherry division (on many a night ad executives in the Wild Cherry wing can be heard crying, "If only we had specially-flavored's budget!"), but the worst feud is between Pepsi and Diet Pepsi. Not a commercial goes by when the diet brand doesn't claim it tastes just as good as regular cola. No, you aren't the only one who knows this is bullshit. The regular Pepsi pushers know it too, and they've been mad over it for decades. Decades of pent-up rage. But this winter, the Pepsi Cola Company will finally let the regular Pepsi ads fight back. In a revolutionary series of commercials, drinkers of any diet soda will be cast as ugly, awkward, effeminate social rejects with bad complexions and friends who don't really like them. Yes, next year it won't just be about Diet Pepsi (and diet drinks in general) not tasting like regularly sweetened Pepsi; the ads will see these "dieters" ditched outside of reststops, laughed out of nightclubs, and contracting cancer for no apparent reason aside from the can of Diet Pepsi in their hands. Their fashion sense will be mocked, their exercise regimens will be unfairly criticized, and their sexualities will be questioned. And while it may not sell more soda, the Pepsi Cola Company expects to draw a lot of attention with their new "Diet Pepsi is for Fags" campaign.

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