OK Soda was a short-lived 1990s soft drink put out by the Coca-Cola company, remarkable for the brilliant postmodern irony of its marketing campaign. Thomas Flight’s short documentary tells a fascinating story about its failure.
Can you sell disillusionment? Can you subvert something and achieve the same thing that what you’re subverting achieves?
Coca-cola couldn’t in 1993. But compare to the successful 2015 LeBron commercial for Sprite, which also sells disillusionment. What, Flight asks, did it do differently?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn_H1AJRlMw
Flight does point out that OK Soda tasted bad, which might well have been a factor in its quick disappearance.
Conscious postmodernism in advertising usually leads to:
a) Cringe-inducing forced coolness.
b) “How do you do, fellow-cynics?”
c) the toxic media spillway that ultimately dumped America in a giant tub of Trump.
d) The obvious impossibility of marketing piss with metahumor about the awfulness of marketing and of piss.
But sometimes someone gets it right.