For decades, the Coca, Cola Company has been associating Coke with a single emotion: happiness. Santa Claus holding coke, Olympic winner taking a sip before winning a gold Olympic medal, and other happy and colorful commercials. You won’t find any images of people laid off, in hospitals, or at funerals holding a coke. Great marketing from Coca Cola Company indeed.
Ueeej, I have a Coca Cola, I am happy! I will be happy when I buy a coke.
When I was growing up in former Czechoslovakia, communists didn’t allow the home market to be filled with products from the west. Especially from America. But you could still buy a Coca Cola in a specialty stores and certain bars. And we all wanted it. We all wanted to hold a bottle of Coke. And when we did, we were happy.
I still remember sitting on the patio of a hotel in the mountains with my schoolmates after long day of skiing and holding my Coke in my hand. It was 1988 and I was a fourth grader. They came in the nice glass bottle that time. We were sitting there, sun was warming our faces, snow was all around us and we were all drinking coke. Hey, we were 11years old that time, so drinking beer in public when teachers could see us wasn’t that smart, even do we still did it occasionally. We were sitting there holding our cokes, feeling good, cool and happy.
But you know that exactly the opposite is truth about coke. While all it’s commercials are about happiness and winning, the sugar content in each can or bottle is huge. About 39 grams per can. And while you might get away with it when you are really young, you will not when you get older. The sugar content, the plastic sugar in diet cokes included is slowly killing you. Yet, we all want our coke, because when we have it, we feel happy. We feel like winners. Actually, we are the losers at this end of the marked and eventually that coke will make us very unhappy. The real winners and the happiest people actually don’t drink coke at all.
Similar thing is going on in beer commercials. Beer commercials, which usually feature attractive women and confident men. Your rational mind knows that drinking a certain type of beer will not make you more attractive and confident and have all the most beautiful women want you. No, those men who drink lots of beer have big gut and lack self confidence. But correlation is powerful – your brain will make the association anyway.
My last words here will be: Not winners drink coke and lots of beer. Losers do.