Staples 7

Max StaplesAshley HumphriesENC 1101 5 April 2015Swimsuits? I Think NotBeing healthy and fit is something that is important to most people. People enjoy eating and drinking healthier things that wont cause them to gain weight. Due to this, companies that sell traditionally un-healthy food/drinks must find a way to target the audience of healthy people. Coca Cola came out with this new ad for their coke zero product. The ad can be seen in many different points of view. The viewer will first notice the curviness of the coke bottle itself, making it seem as if drinking coke zero would actually make you thinner, since the can itself is thin. Also, the coke bottle is wearing swim-trunks and there is text in the bottom right corner that says swimsuit friendly. This is targeting a male audience that enjoys being fit and healthy, again promoting the fact that if you drink coke zero then you will be thinner and look good in a swimsuit. The thing is that we all know that drinking coke alone will not produce a body that is swimsuit friendly and may actually do the opposite. This ad would attract people who are trying to be healthy or who want to look better in a swimsuit but it is lying to them because no form of coke (regular, diet, zero) is healthy and none of the forms will actually promote a healthy lifestyle. In addition, a tumblr post states that it is quite evident in this Coke Zero advertisement that Coca Cola has set out to appeal to men in hopes that they can become healthier (Boyd). This source adds to my argument because they agree that the ad is just trying to trick men into believing that drinking coke zero will actually make them lead a healthy lifestyle.The background of the photo is also interesting in the fact that it is actually fairly bland and really draws the eyes of the consumer to the coke can itself. This is obviously to make the can the center of the advertisement. The background is also red, I think that Coca Cola chose the color red for its products because red is traditionally a color that is associated with love and passion. Coke wants their customers to fall in love with their product and by choosing the color red it makes this much easier. This may seem like a stretch but the entire coke marketing might be centered around this, all coke products include the color red and from what I have learned from literature classes is that everything is intentional and the color red is almost always associated with love or passion.The text in the bottom right corner saying swimsuit friendly is also interesting. The word swimsuit is written in red hand writing which goes back to the color red and what I have said previously. But also think about the font of text itself, it is in a casual handwriting which makes coke customers think that coke is a laid-back organization and is a fun product that they should drink. The word friendly is in all white block letters and I think that Coca Cola chose this to get across the point of their product being swimsuit friendly. The final thing about this ad is the overwhelming size of the coke can itself. The can is absolutely monstrous in comparison to everything else on the advertisement and Coca Cola obviously chose to make it huge to draw attention to the can and its features (size, shape, color, etc.) I think that coke should push away from the marketing scheme of trying to get people to believe that their products are actually healthy and focus on why people usually drink cokes, for their own enjoyment. My anti-ad has the same background as the original add and the same coke bottle. I kept the background the same because I felt that it wasnt what was wrong with the ad. Changing the background would not have benefitted my anti-ad in any way because the background was already extremely neutral. Some major differences would be that the coke can would be enlarged in the mid-section because the coke can in the original ad is made to seem thin and fit. If the coke can is bulbous then it would show the true size that one would obtain from drinking coke. According to Coca Cola, coke zero is healthier than regular coke or diet coke but that still doesnt make it truly healthy. No matter what type of coke one drinks, they will not be gaining healthier attributes. I dont know why coca cola tried to trick their audience into believe that coke zero could really help them get a body that is swimsuit friendly when they could just target their largest consumer base which is just people who drink cokes for the enjoyment of drinking them. My ad will also exchange the swimsuit on the bottom of the coke can for sweatpants and also change the text from swimsuit friendly to sweatpant friendly. Obviously not every person who wears sweatpants is unhealthy but I could not think of any other clothing that counter-acts a bathing suit. Bathing suits are fairly revealing while sweatpants show almost nothing about a persons body which is why I chose sweatpants, not because wearing sweatpants means that a person is unhealthy. Another difference between my ad and the original is the size of the can. In the original add the can is thinned down to match the theme of a healthier and slimming aspect that supposedly belongs to this drink. In my ad as well as replacing the swim trunks with sweat pants, I widened the can to closer represent the size of an actual coke can. This removes another aspect of the original ad which was clearly deceptive. The cans size alone was supposed to suggest the health benefits of this kind of coke in comparison to other options. Coke is actively misrepresenting the visual image of their cans as well as the health benefits of coke and simply replacing the thinned can with a normal sized can helps to remove a portion of the misrepresentation. Advertisements are obviously meant to be appealing. It is clear that Coke wants to sell its product with ads such as these. The issue however, arises when they actively misrepresent the health benefits of their product. The food industry as a whole constantly uses misrepresentation in their labeling to make products appear healthier to the uninformed consumer. By presenting unrealistically small serving sizes or by using advertisements, like this coke ad, the consumer is often lead to believe that this product is a healthier alternative and thus a good purchase. If simply by removing this veil of misrepresentation a product can be rendered much less desirable, it is clear that the product might need to be changed rather than the advertisement.The argument from these massive food companies would probably be that the consumer is provided with all the information to determine the health value of any given item. They would most likely maintain that any concerned consumer could easily look up the contents and quality of their product. However, this stance is irrelevant when the way most consumers get their information about a product before purchasing is through advertisement. A majority of consumers are not dedicated enough to do in depth research and calculation to discover the true health effects of various beverages and as a result will rely upon the information given to them by the producer of the various products. This is why it becomes a tremendous issue when the most readily available information about a product is not entirely representative of its legitimate benefits. In the same way that cigarettes were once pushed on the masses with glitzy and glamorous advertisement campaigns junk food and soda is now being pushed towards the plates of every consumer through devious use of statistics and purposeful implication of misinformation. This epidemic is far more dangerous as well due to the fact that because food is a necessity for life, junk food can be peddled to children before they even have a chance to comprehend or care about the relevant health information which is hidden behind slogans such as swimsuit friendly. The responsibility for the childrens health would fall to the parents and they are equipped to decide based on the provided information is what the large food companies would say. However, when these parents are equally misinformed and mislead by the deceptive advertisements a whole family can be tricked into a terrible and unhealthy lifestyle in much the same way that multiple generations were mislead into a lifelong habit of smoking due to a lack of limitations on the representation of cigarettes in advertisement. Junk food is the modern day cigarette being pushed on even younger children than cigarettes, often without any good defense against it. If the parents are not as dedicated to ensuring the quality of their childs food the result can quickly be a downward spiral into a kind of abuse of unhealthy food and drinks.This kind of unhealthy life style has strong potential to take control of a whole family as well. As these company focus more and more on enticing children to enjoy the convenience and taste of heavily processed, heavy in sugar, and generally unhealthy foods, they will raise a generation which will feed their children on the same types of foods which they eat, unhealthy, sugary, junk food. This is a very similar kind of dependence which the tobacco companies of the past relied heavily on for their return customers.So long as these disturbingly inaccurate advertisements are allowed to run rampant there is a serious risk of a great number of people sacrificing their health without even fully realizing it. The reason they may not realize it is the simple fact that basic health information is often not clearly and readily available in the advertisements for these products. Due to this a consumer can quite easily overdose on a given snack or drink and not realize that, while the packaging indicates that a single serving is fairly healthy, the average amount consumed by themselves is in actuality multiple times larger than the serving size from which nutritional values on the label are derived.This issue has not yet reached its peak. It is still a very much significantly growing problem as obesity rates among children and adults in the United States are continuing to grow. The negative health effects of these misrepresentations will be long lasting and terribly impactful in the near future of the current generation. A lack of proper regulation of these advertisements and nutritional facts on labels has allowed junk food to become an enormous problem and has spread obesity across America. Change will need to be swift and widespread to reverse these harmful effects for the future generations but the damage has clearly already been done on those living in the U.S.A. today. Coca Cola is deceiving their customers, tricking them into buying their product with the false belief that it will increase the customers health. My advertisement set out to uncover these false notions and show the customer the truth. By changing the size of the can and the choice of bottom wear from a swimsuit to sweatpants, my advertisement has successfully shone light upon the unjust Coke Zero advertisement campaign. By attempting to fool their customers, it causes them to seem unprofessional and should inevitably reduce the amount of customers and profits they receive.

Works CitedBoyd, Adrienne. Swimsuit Friendly. Tumblr. Sleepover. Web. 5 Apr 2015.