Coca-Cola Co., has decided to take an offbeat, unexpected approach in a new advertising effort for its Sprite brand, which has been suffering from sluggish sales despite being the leader in the
lemon-lime soft drink segment. The ads include bizarre imagery and strange scenarios and are intended to break through the clutter of more traditional fare and keep viewers from zapping through them.
Spots include scenes of a woman whipping a tongue and a floating green frog as well as one with two sumo wrestlers painted yellow and green who crush a man's head. The spots carry the line, "Welcome
to Sublymonal advertising. Don't worry, it will only affect your brain." The ads sign off with "Obey," which echoes the 12-year-old "Obey your thirst" Sprite tagline. But despite that similarity,
they stray far from the brand's hip-hop, basketball roots. The creative also reintroduces the "lymon" concept amidst a wash of avant-garde imagery best seen in slow motion. The struggling lemon-lime
soda's revamp comes as Coke's cup runneth over with high-profile new-product launches including Godiva, Coke Blak, Tab Energy and trademark Coke's latest ad campaign "The Coke Side of Life." Said a
source familiar with the launch: "There's so many things going on with the other brands that Sprite has been lost in the shuffle." Still, bottlers are excited, said Lauren Steele, a rep at Coke
Consolidated, Charlotte, N.C. "We're hoping it can put new energy back into Sprite. Quite frankly it needs it."
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