Creatives-repetetives

Coke and Pepsi, two of the giants in the market, had recently been in controversy regarding the issue of quality of their soft drinks, as one research showed that they did not adhere to certain standards. Rightly, they decided to address the issue in a direct manner.

AD 1-Pepsi
It showed one of the pepsi's top brass management drinking Pepsi (of course with a smile on his face) coming right out of their factory. Throughout the ad he reassured the customers about the quality of Pepsi and that the standards are strictly adhered to. Hmmm........

AD 2-Coke
Amir Khan visits the Coke Factory. Narrates the various stages of testing of Coke and at the end of it all asking the customers to, "..peeyo sar utha ke".

These two ads remind me of a similar ad and a similar giant. Cadburys Dairy Milk; deja vu?

With the Big B at the helm, O & M came up with the idea to show the Big B visiting the Cadburys factory and verifying the manufacturing, processing and packaging of the chocolate himself. It went well with his image when he said I myself visited the factory.

What is disappointing is that JWT for Pepsi and McCann Erickson for Coke; both equally competitive agencies could not think out of the box for their individual ventures. Agreed, that the message had to be loud, clear and direct but it need not necessarily be bland.

There could have been something creative about the ad; for e.g. they could have shown Amir Khan having Coke and some kid telling him about the news and controversy, the harmful effects of Coke being circulated. Amir could have just smiled and taken the kid to visit the factory where he could have done the same what he did in the ad mentioned. I am not saying that this is what should have been done but that something could have been done make the ad look different if not absolutely original. After all they are creatives those who have given us the most wonderful of ads.

Cadburys ad ( as far as I know) was the first of its kind. And it seemed that the Coke-Pepsi ads were a straight lift off from th is ad. Creative, please don't be repetetives.