The beverage company Coca-Cola has launched its first global advertising campaign in 5 years with “Real Magic”. The target audience appears to be gamers who play WoW and watch e-sports events for LoL on Twitch. However, the advertisement has received a lot of criticism.
This can be seen in the advertisement:
- The advertisement apparently takes place in an alternate world where e-sports are conducted in such a way that armies of players in an MMORPG like WoW meet for large battles: Orcs fight against human soldiers while millions of people worldwide watch. In a massive stadium, 5-player teams compete against each other like in the LoL World Championship.
- When an Orc falls in battle, its player drinks a Coca-Cola: The Orc is then revived but gains its own consciousness, sees the carnage around it, and throws away its axe.
- The other characters in the game stop fighting. They decide to make the virtual world a peaceful, green place while gamers worldwide stare at this unusual occurrence and are thrilled that peace finally reigns in e-sports.
This is the background of the campaign: The last global advertising campaign by Coca-Cola, “Taste the feeling,” started in 2009 and ended in 2016. With the new campaign “Real Magic,” Coca-Cola apparently wants to re-enter people’s consciousness and offset the losses the company suffered during the global Corona pandemic.
According to the Chief Marketing Officer, this could be a “long-term brand philosophy.”
Coca-Cola is “defined by dichotomy: humble yet iconic, authentic yet mysterious, real yet magical.”
From Coca-Cola’s perspective, the advertisement is supposed to “highlight the many contradictions that a new generation experiences in the pursuit of harmony and human connection in a virtual and shared world” (via wuv.de).
The new advertising campaign began a few days ago and is prominently linked on the streaming platform Twitch. In the spot itself, the streamer AverageJonas is seen, who broadcasts and comments on the match live on Twitch.
“I’d rather drink New Coke”
These are the reactions to the spot: The reactions on YouTube are rather mixed. The long version of the spot has only 187 likes but already 443 dislikes.
There are comments like:
- “I don’t think these advertisers have ever seen an e-sport match.”
- “We did it. We ended fictional warfare.”
- “All I take away from this is that Coca-Cola makes you a terrible gamer. And besides, maybe your eyes fall out too. I’ll pass.”
- “I’d rather drink a New Coke than see that again.”
- “How much cringe can you pack into a 2-minute video?”
What is the problem with the spot? The advertisement assumes that a match in an e-sport game is a war. But it is not, just as a soccer match is not a war; rather, they are athletic contests.
The spot is kind of like if soccer stars Messi and Ronaldo played against each other in a World Cup final, millions of people around the world watched to see who is better, then Messi drinks a Coke, everyone hugs, and goes home.
People worldwide would most likely not celebrate that but would feel rather mocked because they were cheated out of the outcome of an exciting match.
Similarly, the casting of the new movie about Mario has been discussed recently:
Why the internet hates the idea that Chris Pratt is now voicing Mario
