Coca-Cola: “Our Sugar Water Goes Really Well With Healthy Foods!”

The Associated Press’ Candice Choi is back with another great story; this time, on Coca-Cola’s latest marketing push: disassociating it with junk food in an attempt to entice millennial consumers.

Highlights:

• “It’s an Amateur Move to Limit Coca-Cola to Fast-Food,” stated an online ad paid for by Coke on Vox Media sites. The post, which was designed to read like a news story, talked about famous food pairings and how tastes like Coca-Cola “go with everything.” A digital video series with Univision also showed people enjoying Cokes with a variety of meals, including sushi.”

• “An internal briefing about the campaign with Vox Media’s creative division, obtained by The Associated Press, said Coke “has long been associated with hamburgers, hot dogs and other classic American dishes,” but that the focus of the push was “sharing Coca-Cola with family over a healthy home-cooked meal.”

• “The briefing said the paid “influencers” who posted on social media should show dishes that are not “grossly unhealthy or over-indulgent.” Influencers submitted ideas for recipes and photos for approval. Among the pictures with Coke that made the cut: a poppyseed and chicken salad, steak with salsa verde and an herb-roasted chicken.”

  DFPI ADDS: Interesting how Coca-Cola, which often trots out the industry-friendly argument that “there are no unhealthy foods”, suddenly has strong opinions about that subject when it comes to an advertising campaign.

• “People associate Coke with pizza and burgers because those pairings are now part of U.S. culture, but also because they actually go well together, said John Fischer, a professor of wine, beverage and hospitality at the Culinary Institute of America. He disagrees with the premise that Coke goes well “with everything,” as the Coke ad contends.”