Critique: Coke Zero = Hero

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NEW YORK When I first heard about promoting Coke Zero with a fake lawsuit (having Coke Classic sue its Zero counterpart for “taste infringement”), I thought the concept might have originated at the law firm of “Obvious & Stupid.” I mean really, how far can we suspend disbelief? And who’s gonna care enough to try to figure it out? And aren’t commercials that use lawyer jokes in order to make fun of legalese—and happen to come from giant conservative global corporations, by the way—pretty lame, anyhow?

As it turns out, the Internet video, which was originally launched as a viral sidebar to conventional TV spots and posted to sites like YouTube, BitTorrent and Kazaa, attracted so much underground attention that the two-minute low-budget clip was cut into three 20-second TV spots, which now run on American Idol and during the March Madness games.

And



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