Hasta La Creative!

In the past, water filter brand Brita has targeted plastic bottles as public enemy No. 1, but now it has its sights on a new foe: Soda.

A new spot created by DDB California uses towering piles of sugar cubes to show the impact of drinking one sugary soda a day (which would be pretty a moderate intake for some families). In the ad, we see a stack of cubes illustrating a single day of cola, followed by a skyscraper modeled from a year’s sugar, ending on a cityscape built from the  221,314 sugar cubes a soda fan could consume “over an average adult lifetime.”

It’s a striking visual, one taken even further by the brand’s #ChooseWater campaign in an exhibit this week at New York’s Chelsea Market, where roughly 1 million sugar cubes (weighing 7,000 pounds) were shaped into an even larger skyline to reflect the amount consumed by a family of four over their lifetimes:

If you thought 200,000+ sugar cubes sounded like a lot check this out! #ChooseWater pic.twitter.com/SjNedletA7

— Brita USA (@BritaUSA) October 21, 2014

The sculpture features 28 buildings, varying in height from 2 to 7 feet. That’s one tall drink of terrifying.

Here's an amusing bit of mischief. Coca-Cola brought together fans on both sides of one of soccer's fiercest rivalries by making them give each other sodas.

"Fair Play Machines," a campaign from McCann in Milan, shows the brand placing a pair of its signature high-tech, manipulative vending machines at opposite ends of San Siro Stadium in Milan while club teams Inter Milan and A.C. Milan were facing off there. Fans of each team could hit a button to serve a Coke to an opposing fan at the other machine—effectively forcing opponents to do something nice for one another.

The clip is full of the happy vibes to be expected from Coke ads, and a nice nod to good sportsmanship—in a league where its opposite has been disturbingly true lately.

It's also reminiscent of the brand's "Small World Machines" campaign from last year, which tried to ameliorate the India-Pakistan conflict with a similar set of interconnected machines—though softening a sports feud is maybe a less pretentious bit of peacemaking for a sugar water company.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Coca-Cola
Roel Annega – CSE Marketing Director
Andreas Johler – CSE My Coke Director
Guido Rosales – EUG IMC Director
Claudia Navarro – CSE IMC Director
Francesco Cibò – CSE Content Excellence Manager
Camilla Zanaria – CSE Content Excellence Manager
Agency: McCann Worldgroup Milan
Global Creative Director: Miguel Bemfica,
Creative Director: Gastón Guetmonovitch, Miguel Usandivaras
Art Director: Cristina Caballero
Copywriter: Curro Piqueras
Graphic Designer: Marina Tercelán
Account Manager: Sanziana Fanica
Account Director: Andrei Kaigorodov
Agency Producer: Massimo Busato
Production Company: Filmmaster Productions
Director: Edoardo Lugari,
Executive Producer: Karim Bartoletti
Producer: Elena Marabelli
Editor: Francesco Cusanno, Toboga
Music: Alberto Cimarrusti, Bronze Radio Return

Ever wanted to chomp a big, savory bite of barbecue brisket right out of the side of your soda bottle? Of course you haven't. That would be disgusting and real damn strange. But Texas-based soda brand Big Red is floating the idea anyway in its new ad for the (blessedly fictional) Big Red BBQ Bottle. The spot was created by Austin comedy duo Beef & Sage, who also partnered with the brand last year to create a surprisingly entertaining video series called "Don't Tell Mom We're Doing Experiments in the Garage." The Big Red BBQ Bottle is apparently the first of three new videos that will roll out this summer. "Our new series highlights new 'innovations' that Big Red created to either solve a common consumer problem or make the lives of our consumers better," Big Red marketing svp Thomas Oh tells AdFreak. "Complementing BBQ with the sweet, smooth flavor of Big Red is a fan favorite, so we wanted to feature a new way to enjoy both." Well, Thomas, mission disturbingly accomplished. Credits and more Big Red comedy clips after the jump.

CREDITS
Client: Big Red
Spot: "Big Red BBQ Bottle"
Agency: Real Normal/Beef & Sage
Copywriter: Beef & Sage
Executive Producer: Toby Schwartz
Director: Kirk Johnson
Art Director: Sam Webber
Director of Photography: Nathanael Vorce
Editor: Beef & Sage
Production Services: Real Normal

Oh, hey there, ladies. Feeling fat? Of course you are. Don't worry. I've got some advice. Don't get sugary, fattening soda from that fat, tubby vending machine over there. Get delicious, trimming diet soda from from me! The Slender Vender. I'm so skinny, I fit between chairs at the hair salon, so you can be thin, but pretty too. I fit between treadmills at the gym, so you can drink more diet soda—it hydrates!—while you're working hard, so you can be more thin, like me. You won't find me, though, at that sketchy artist's loft in Brazil, where that soap company hangs out. Whatever you do, don't go there. They'll try to convince you that you're not anywhere near as fat and hideous as you think you are. And they'll probably serve you soda in a creepy skinny can. For Diet Coke, from Ogilvy Paris.

Coca Cola, invented in the late 19th century and marketed as a “cure-all” for diseases like morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache, and impotence has come a long way in a century. A friend once told me that Coke’s special formula used cocaine. Which is true, although at the time I called him a “lying pooh-pooh head.” In fact, a single glass of Coke contained nine milligrams of blow. The nice thing? No crusty white boogers or mirror checks before going outside. ‘Cola’ was spawned from the Kola nut, which added caffeine to the mix. It’s a wonder Ritalin wasn’t invented sooner.

One thing fair to assume in a company the size of Coke; upper management probably doesn’t have a clue about work in the trenches. So, when a plant worker at a Coke bottling plant in Columbia was gunned down for trying to unionize, no one upstairs was any wiser. (It was actually seven murders…). Well, this week that all changes.

Activist organization “The Campaign to Stop Killer Coke” plans a negative PR blitz in Atlanta against the beverage giant. The group, which claims Atlanta-based The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) is guilty of labor, human rights and environmental abuses, will have this week a mobile billboard truck on metro Atlanta streets campaigning against Coke’s alleged abuses. One billboard says “Unthinkable! Undrinkable! Murders in Colombia, Child Labor in El Salvador, Stealing and Polluting Water in India, El Salvador and Mexico.” A second billboard says “Killer-Cola: The Drink that Represses!”

Coca Cola’s response, stunned that a PR blitz consists of a single billboard, has called an agency review.

Jeff Louis is a Strategic Media Planner, Project Manager, and New Business Coordinator. His passion is writing, contributing to BMA as well as freelancing. He’d love to hear from you: www.linkedin.com/in/jefflouis or on twitter @jlo0312.