A recent Pepsi 7UP ad (by DDB Mudra) showed a man seated in the ladies’ seat on a public bus. A young woman wanted that seat, and just as she arrived near that seat, the man feigned to be asleep (even as he was speaking on the phone till then).
7UP’s cartoon mascot, Fido Dido, comes to her rescue. Fido throws a plastic snake on the man (no, I’m not making this juvenile thing up, nor am I writing about a Chhota Bheem episode). The fake-sleeping man jumps up scared shouting ‘Snake, snake!!’ (even as every other person on the bus remains calm!!) and runs out of the bus. Woman thanks Fido. The end.
The man in the ladies’ seat, instead of feigning to be asleep, just had to yawn visibly and look exhausted. If he had done that, the young woman would have offered him a chilled bottle of 7UP and then he’d have woken up, noticed that he’s seated on the ladies’ seat… and got up.
No, that did not happen in the 7UP ad, but in the brand new Coca-Cola ad featuring a ladies’ special bus, Ishaan Khatter, and Janhvi Kapoor.
Observe how the ad starts with Ishaan clearly calling out the time immediately after yawning visibly and audibly: “It’s 2 in the afternoon”.
Why bother mentioning the time in a Coca-Cola ad?
To clearly demarcate the product use-case from the most popularly associated product with a yawn – coffee!
The coffee-yawn is more related to the morning yawn (related to sleep).
Coca-Cola India is framing this yawn, in the afternoon, as a result of heat-related exhaustion.
Why? Because a cola drink’s primary use-case is to do with thirst.
But Coca-Cola India seems to be making a conscious attempt to reframe the association of the product with thirst since every single fizzy drink is going to jump into that bottle shortly, with summer arriving soon.
So, out goes ‘thirst’. In comes ‘exhausted because of the sun’.
And what does Ishaan do because he is tired and exhausted by the heat?
He enters a Snickers ad 🙂
What is Snickers’ long-running trope that also involves a classic misdirection?
You are not yourself when you are hungry.
Coca-Cola uses that trope, but twists ‘hunger’ to ‘tiredness due to sun/heat’.
So, Ishaan enters the wrong bus (a ladies special, at that), by mistake.
Because he is exhausted by the heat.
In the afternoon.
Do people drink coffee in the afternoon to feel refreshed? Of course, they do. But when they are in the office or a cafeteria.
In a non-ac town bus? Unlikely.
Plus, it is very hot, remember? Hot coffee, in that heat? No way!
Cold coffee (one of my favoritest drinks of all time!!)? Of course – that would be delightful. But this is not a cold coffee ad 🙂
In comes a chilled bottle of Coca-Cola, courtesy Janhvi Kapoor, who seems to be in a generous mood unlike Shreya Chaudhry in the 7UP ad.
The caffeine (19mg in the 200ml bottle of Coca-Cola) kicks in and Ishaan finally realizes that he’s in a ladies’ special bus. The Snickers’ version of the ad would have shown a woman yawning at 2 pm in the afternoon, inside a ladies’ special bus and the gag would be that the other ladies inside the bus would still be looking at this lady incredulously. Janhvi would have offered her a bar of Snickers and then the scene would quickly cut to us see her as being Ishaan Khatter!
But this is a Coca-Cola ad! Also note the 2 leads’ t-shirt colors – coordinated for the brand 🙂
Coca-Cola trialed this ‘yawn’ based product use-case prompt back in September 2021.
But the 2021 ad clearly put a lot more focus on the traditional/native aspect of ululation that is popular across the world, and specifically (in the ad) in West Bengal. The yawn was easily drowned out in all the ululation 🙂
And yet, it is the yawn that leads to her being offered a Coca-Cola and that leads to her ululating immediately with enthusiasm (they are watching cricket)! She was not exhausted by the sun and there was no indication that she was particularly exhausted either, till she yawned!
Coca-Cola did not open her eyes to something she was doing by mistake due to tiredness (like Ishaan’s wrong bus). You could stretch the ‘she not being keen to cheer for a sixer’ as the ‘wrong’ action, though. That ad didn’t even frame her as being tired till she yawned, unlike the new ad that clearly sets the time (afternoon; peak sun) and context (inside a bus; others are looking hazy – using first-person narrative) for the product cue.
The ‘exhausted by hot sun’ point is usually more closely associated with glucose drinks in India! Remember the famous imagery of the sun sipping ‘energy’ out of a boy’s head?
Glucon-D, at least, has product ingredients (glucose) at its disposal to make the claim that the product is effective in managing heat-related exhaustion.
Coca-Cola keeps the ‘carbonated water’ mention all through its ad at the footer, with no mention of even caffeine as an ingredient that would make it slightly more appropriate for the corner they have painted themselves into.
In the case of coffee advertising and yawns, ‘Jagao, Nescafe Pilao’ (2005) comes to my mind immediately! Even Coca-Cola’s ad title (‘Khud ko jagaa, ek thanda lagaa’) is very similar, barring the ‘thanda’ contrast.
Then there’s Douwe Egberts coffee’s airport activation (2013) by the agency Joe Republic that uses motion sensors to detect yawns at an airport to dispense free coffee.
Or the 2015 Cafe Pele activation by the agency Lew’Lara\TBWA that uses proximity sensors at a metro station to make the model in the digital billboard yawn and it gets contagious (to sell coffee, of course)!
There is a tea-connection with ‘waking up’ too – Tata Tea’s famous ‘Jaago Re’ campaign. But Tata Tea has consciously and famously moved the meaning of ‘Jaago’ in that campaign from the literal ‘jaago’ (waking up) to the figurative ‘jaago’, or ‘waking up to‘ various social evils.
Beyond tea and coffee, Pepsi too has linked their cola with yawns and yawn-related tiredness!
Diet Pepsi Max (agency: BBDO), to be specific, by highlighting ginseng and caffeine as key ingredients!
The clincher is this, though: a 1933 print ad by Coca-Cola that is perhaps the first-ever communication from the brand to use the ‘yawn’ 🙂
Much later, for the 2020 Super Bowl ad, made by Wieden+Kennedy (Portland), Coca-Cola (for the Coca-Cola Energy variant) had Jonah Hill doing almost what Ishaan did – forget to do what he was supposed to because he was tired… and was yawning as a result! 🙂
I have a feeling that the 2020 ad’s crux flew into India in 2021 Ululation ad and now the summer-special ad. But in doing so, not only is Coca-Cola fronting the main drink (as against Coca-Cola Energy that is high on caffeine) beyond the thirst-quenching framework as the beverage is popularly associated with but also moves it beyond in hitherto unconnected zones like sun and heat-related exhaustion (usually connected to glucose/energy drinks) and Snickers (from a narrative device perspective).
This is a new zone Coca-Cola India is taking its hero product into. The ad, by McCann WorldGroup is a fun watch in a very filmy sense given the fact that a lone boy in a ladies’ special bus is more likely to be thrashed and thrown out than offered a chilled bottle of Coca-Cola 🙂