Cockfight for a Pepsi
Pepsi has a knack for being uncool.
The sentence would give Pepsi's corporate overlords and "cool hunters" grand mal seizures if it was uttered by young men in a market research round table, but it's true.
Not convinced? Take a gander at Pepsi's recent roster of celebrity-centered campaigns:
1. Bob Dole, high on a Pepsi and Viagra speedball, leering at Britney Spears.
2. Carson "The Tool" Daly pimping a Pepsi truck years after his "TRL" glory days had passed.
3. Donnie and Marie Osmond joining a still-drunk Osbournes to personify the "twist" in Pepsi Twist.
It really makes you wonder to which mixed-up demographic PepsiCo had hoped to peddle its soda. (Conservative politicos who used to watch MTV but haven't in months?)
Seemingly aware of this complication, they've recently moved away from selling celebrity and are using traditional athletics to push their product. The current ad features a sumo wrestling match between two headless, roasted chickens.
That's right. Sumo. Headless. Roasted. Chickens.
Marketing research apparently concluded that hip young dudes lust not for geriatric 1980s supermodels to accompany their Pepsis, but rather, necrotic, thigh-slapping chickens in sumo mawashis.
In the commercial's establishing shot, we find ourselves in front of a corner market in a city. An "18-24-year-old tech-savvy male" walks in, decked out in Buddy Holly horn rimmed glasses, sporting a goatee and wristbands and carrying a messenger bag. (Hallie Eisenberg is nowhere in sight.)
"Hey, uh, I'll take one of those, uh, chickens?" he mumbles to the clerk — in truly nuanced "young dude" vernacular. Then, computer-generated graphics breathe a warrior spirit and we see our plucked, skinned, roasted heroes, languishing under a heat lamp. A sudden zoom shot on a two-liter Pepsi, pressed against the glass, sends the message home: This is one caramel colored, carbonated beverage worth a cockfight to the death.
The distressingly voluptuous, pixel-shaded carcasses then face off. Much glistening flesh is on display as one chicken flails, spread-eagled, in his immodest sumo garb, before hoisting his opponent by his ample backside and chucking him out the back of the display case. The shot closes with our headless victor, in his green sumo skivvies, grunting appreciatively as he cuddles a bottle of Pepsi with his sticky, glistening wing stumps.
It seems they were fighting for the honor of being washed down someone's gullet with a Pepsi. Bon appetit.
This poultry scrimmage is directed by Paul Hunter, the brain behind many lurid, popular videos including "Dope Show," in which Marilyn Manson convulses on a gurney, dressed in a women's vinyl body suit filled out with B-cup Nubra inserts. Clearly, Paul Hunter is no stranger to displaying carcasses in a lascivious manner for the purposes of entertaining Generation Y. But can he move Pepsi?
The answer, it seems, is yes. According to a survey by Ad Age, it was the top rated commercial for June 20 through July 17, 2005.
Coke, it's your move.
— Cheryl Lowry (tiny-dog [at] comcast [dot] net)
