The unreal thing By Michael Schrag

To play Michael Jackson as a youngster in a new commercial, Pepsi will use a white boy wearing an Afro wig, his skin darkened slightly through video colorization. The process, sa

Is Pepsi trying to one-up its biggest rival? Or is it just playing catch up? Coca-Cola, after all, explored similar territory last year when R/Greenberg Associates offered up a necromantic array of biologically dead and barely living media icons quaffing 1-calorie Diet Cokes.
There’s always been a tension between genuine commercial creativity and the seductive lure of pupil-dilating special effects.