gregh  2007-03-24 04:51  coke  coke_zero  Law  taste_infringement   

Have you seen the ads? Two supposed brand managers of Coca-Cola want to take legal action against the brand managers of Coke Zero.

I had seen the following video first, and I was left in stitches. In fact, the TiVo didn't help me skip the commercial; it helped me view the commercial several times.

It turns out, the Coca-Cola lawyer really is a Coca-Cola lawyer.

Law.com has a great story on the ads:

In the commercials, Kline and in-house lawyers Elizabeth Finn Johnson and James M. Koelemay Jr., as well as Dalton, Ga., attorney Robert A. Cowan react with varying degrees of amusement, disbelief and, in Johnson's case, incredulous outrage at the suggestion of the brand managers.

"You don't have valid claim!" Johnson shouts at one point.

What the lawyers didn't know at the time was that the litigious brand managers were really improvisational actors Bob Beuth and Bill Glass of Los Angeles, that they were being filmed and that this was all part of a marketing campaign to promote Coke Zero.

According to the Coke v. Coke Zero page, the following of the two ads on YouTube (also in the Law.com article) are the actual lawyers, while I'm not sure about the outside counsel whose video is supposedly available online.

This guy plays along:

And you can tell this attorney really just wants out of this meeting:

Finally, I wasn't too sure about this part from the article:

The goal of all this legal shtick: to revamp Coke Zero's image. The drink has a new black label and is being marketed toward men in the 18- to 34-year-old age bracket -- men who might not drink Diet Coke because a "diet" drink is perceived as feminine, but who could be attracted by the humorous marketing of the calorie-free Coke Zero.

With only a little more than two weeks in that age group, will I escape this perception that I am drinking a feminine drink?