So Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola both introduced new ad campaigns. Pepsi went the traditional route (i.e. boring) once again and signed another fit superstar to sing about how awesome their soda is.  

Thanks,  Beyoncé, it's all been done, but I am thrilled you got $50 million to endorse it. 


Credit and link: GQ Magazine

Coke did something really weird, for being supposedly an evil, mercenary, Big Corporation bent on exploiting children at all costs - they addressed the claims about soda and obesity in their ads.



Perpetual wet blanket Marion Nestle, who basically can find nothing right in anything any successful food company does, criticized that too. It's good to be in academia, where you never have to build anything but can just ridicule people who do stuff, and insist a beverage company should just fall on the sword. And if beverage companies commit this cultural seppuku and obesity does not go down, well, self-proclaimed experts just move on to something else.

Look, calories count.  In a daily reasonable amount of calories, lots of companies are going to compete for that budget - contending that soda companies have an unnatural hold on children means we have to not expose them to anything. Not political ads, not news, not movies that have kissing or any violence or anything at all.

How Coke Beat Pepsi in the New Cola Ad War by Sarah Stodola, The Fiscal Times