The "Zero Calories" Advertising

Some history of diet soft drink & advertising

davyb — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:37:14 +0000

Diet soda made its debut in 1952, when Brooklyn, New York’s Kirsch Beverage Company introduced No-Cal, a sugar-free ginger beer. The company’s founder, Hyman Kirsch, was also the vice president of the Jewish Sanitarium for Chronic Disease. He developed the zero-calorie beverage not for dieters, but for diabetics and cardiac patients. In 1958, Royal Crown offered Diet Rite Cola on a limited basis, also aimed at the medically-restricted crowd.

Things quickly changed in 1963 when Weight Watchers International was formed. Suddenly, people were openly discussing weight problems on television, low-calorie recipes filled magazines, and dieting became a national pastime. Diet Rite went national (making it the first diet soft drink sold coast-to-coast), followed shortly by Tab and then Diet Pepsi in 1964.

Tab was a Coca-Cola product, but in 1983, the company finally put the brand name appeal of their flagship product to work by introducing Diet Coke. More recently, the development of new artificial sweeters has led to the introduction of a wide variety of diet soft drinks in today’s market.

Nestea Enviga

davyb — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 16:48:20 +0000

Nestea’s Enviga, a carbonated green tea drink from Coca-Cola claims that drinking burn calories.

You may have read about the calarie burning advantages found in green and white tea. Coca-Cola claims that Enviga, launched in November, 2006 is “calorie deficient”, containing a blend of green tea extracts, caffeine and micronutrients, designed to increase the calorie burning process when drunk.

The slogan “invigorate your metabolism” is being used for Enviga, but it is not clear whether Coca-Cola plan to change it for the product’s official launch.

Pepsy-Light

davyb — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 18:57:58 +0000

I’ve found an other kind of advertisement made by the principal competitor of Coca-Cola : Pepsi. The interest is to make a comparison between the two kind of ads and finally analyse their strategy.

First, as we can see, the global presentation is not the same, in that case the magazine advertisement is made with a large white background. It’s a way to differentiate their ad from their competitor’s as they use black and coloured background. The interest is to draw the attention of the readers.

Furthermore, in order to keep a good image of their product in the consumer’s mind, the person showed is a thin woman, that prove the consumption of Pepsi sodas doesn’t make you being an overweigh person. On the contrary, that seems to make her being happy and having fun while she is drinking a Pepsy.

That ad is placed on two pages and the person is just in the middle of the magazine (on the folding). Like that, the woman seems to be thiner than usually and that shows and amplifies the will of the company to persuade the consumers to drink it.

Diet Coke

davyb — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 15:23:44 +0000

Diet coke is a brand of the Coca-Cola Company and, to promote its product, the company has used an uncommon way of advertising. It’s a promotion in which there is an evolution on the ads showed.

In the first ads the product is not showed clearly in order to make customers more interested and attentives in the ad while they are looking at a magazine. During several weeks, those ads would be published in magazines, on billboards… The aim is to develop the customer’s loyalty.

Finally, an advertising would end the campaign by showing clearly the whole product.

First part:

In that ad, we see an undefined form with a black ba ckground. The goal of that voluntary lack of clearness is to make people see in their mind’s eye a different representation of the real purpose. That’s why at a first sight, we can imagine the curve of a woman (the back and the bottom of a sweaty person), a slim figure person. In fact, the shape is a fresh bottle of Diet Coke.

Furthermore, the slogan is also made with a double meaning: “all curves, no calories”. That signifies the product has a good taste but without any calories, and in parallel the slogan describes also the imagined woman since she has a slim figure because of no calories… In that slogan, the technique used is not only a play on words but also a parallel structure.

The only clear appearance of the product is the logotype which is placed near to the slogan in a corner.

Second part:

The company started its activity by selling the worldwide known soft drink Coca-Cola but as its usual product are made with a lot of sugar, the brand Diet Coke has been launched in order to propose a “less calories product”. The aim of that launch is to reply a demand on low fat products by the people who is suffering from overweight. That product appeared in the 60’s in the US because of the growing of obesity in America. Nowadays, Diet Coke is also well known in Great Britain because that country is concerned as well by obesity. However, in France, it is not so common and the brand Coca-Cola is more purchased, perhaps it’s due to the lower rate of overweight people.

News on the French legislation

davyb — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:05:48 +0000

Last wednesday, a law concerning the legislation on food advertisements has been signed by the French government.

Today, in France there are 20 million people who suffer from overweight including 5.9 million obese. And one child on six is in overweight. However overweights and obesity are important factors of risk for many diseases: hypertension, diseases cardiac, diabetes and cancers.

But the French situation is not the worst in comparison with the american or even british situation where the rate of overweight perple or obese is more important.

In order to prevent it, the recent law envisages the apparition of written or spoken messages which will be placed at the end of each ad. Those messages will encourage people to eat balanced and to do sport.

The “Zero Calories” Advertising

davyb — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:12:00 +0000

Nowadays, the trend in food marketing is weight loss so there are more and more products without calories or sugar. For example, the world wide known brand Coca-Cola has recently launched its product Coca-Cola Zéro (have a look on the Antoine Thines blog).

That kind of products has a lot of success because of the phenomenon of obesity and fatty food mainly in the developed countries. The producers try to play with the overweight of the consumers by putting the aspect of no calories forward while the taste of their fitness products is not spoiled.

I’ve decided to present you that new brand of products by explaining the strategy of the producers, showing the different kind of products concerned and illustrating it with interesting ads.

The blog will be actualised at least weekly and I’ll respond to all the comments you will post.

I hope you’ll enjoy my blog and it will be a place of discussion and exchange, so don’t hesitate and send your comments!