Barbara Lippert's Critique

Pop princess Britney Spears appears in this new spot for Pepsi Twist, but, shockingly, she doesn't sing or dance or even get to unleash much heaving belly button. Instead, she gets punched in the head and knocked backward to the ground. That's a pretty bad twist, but it gets worse—her long blond tresses practically get pulled out of her head, and, most painful of all (for a sexy virgin so tied to the teasy not-a-girl-but-not-yet-a-woman image), she has her gender questioned. But she takes it like a man, baby. It's all in the service of plugging a Pepsi Twist tie-in with Austin Powers in Goldmember, which opens in late July. A takeoff of a takeoff (with a twist), the spot reprises a scene from the first movie, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, in which fellow agent Basil Exposition (Michael York) introduces his mother to the snaggletoothed mod shagger. Relying on his stealth intelligence and powerful sixth sense, Aus tin declares that she's really "a man, baby." They fight on the floor as he struggles to unmask her, pulling harder and harder at her hair as he howls, "Why ... won't ... this ... wig ... come ... off?" Turns out, the poor woman taking the lumps really is Basil's mum—although, as Austin says, "It looks like she was beaten with an ugly stick." It takes a strong diva to go along with this joke, and Britney appears to be an amazing sport. Given all the past Britney/Pepsi extravaganzas and production numbers, it's a kick to see her in a commercial in which she's so underplayed. Not only that: In the pre-violent opening seconds, when she arrives at a party with an all-male entourage, Britney entirely makes fun of herself, from the lyrics of her songs ("Oops, I did it again," she says, and all her hangers-on laugh) to the level of her power to buy friends (with one "cut" gesture, she silences the posse's laughter). As with any good piece of 21st-century communication, from the Austin Powers movies themselves to the spots for Pepsi and Pepsi Twist, the commercial is chockablock with layers of pop cultural links and references. The biggest link is that Britney does have a cameo role in the new movie. And let us not forget that in the second film, Dr. Evil reviles his own son, whom he calls "the mayonnaise, the Diet Coke of evil." The spot opens on a happening L.A.-type cocktail party, with a smarmily sibilant waiter telling a polka-dot and ascot-wearing "Mr. Powers," "Look, there's Britney Spears drinking a Pepsi." (Could this also be Britney's mea culpa for getting caught drinking Coke products?) Myers gets to go through his "That's not a Pepsi, it's a Pepsi Twist" spiel, which leads to his hair-pulling "That's not Britney Spears, it's a man ..." This, of course, refers not only to the movie but to the original Pepsi Twist commercial, in which Halle Berry ("Actually, I'm not Hallie Eisenberg, and this is not a Pepsi") morphs into the very-much-dissed, short-end-of-the-stick-in-the-fame-and-glamour-department Barry Bostwick. This clever six-degrees-of-separation thing not only alludes to BBDO's Visa ad with Kevin Bacon, but the unzipping device and morphing metaphor is a mighty literal and visual way to explain the nature of a line extension itself. Then, of course, in doing this with Mike Myers, Britney—who impersonated Madonna by way of Marilyn Monroe in her last Pepsi epic—alludes again to Madonna, a Pepsi promoter in her time who did "Beautiful Stranger" for the second Powers movie and appeared on Saturday Night Live with Myers, spanking his bottom. With Britney and Madonna, Myers really has gone from top to bottom. By typical Pepsi standards of crowd scenes and production numbers, this commercial is small. But it shows that Pepsi Twist, like Britney, is already a large and powerful enough cultural institution to take a lot of unzipping.

Brand Marketing

Barbara Lippert's Critique

Barbara Lippert

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Barbara Lippert