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25 October 2012

The ADgender: Costa makes coffee unsexy again

This week's oddest advert.

By Sophie Barnes

Coffee can have a strange effect. It’s easy to spot the morning jitterers, who’ve either had too much or too little, waiting at the bus stop clasping a twitching arm to keep it from snatching the nearest steaming cup from an unsuspecting passer-by.

Coffee has turned us into a nation of merciless, bean-thirsty ingrates, eager to trample the faces of our loved ones in a bid to reach the front of the queue and get that caramel macchiato into our gaping gobs. Or, at least, this is what Costa would have us believe if their new ad is anything to go by. The curtains part and a regiment of disembodied heads move as one, jerking along to an ominous soundtrack that includes the lyric “In the darkness, there’s so much I wanna do” as they stare manically into the camera, their coffee high at fever pitch due to the fact they’re drowning in the stuff.

This dangerous obsession has reached its pinnacle in the form of a Costa employee who, after breathing in deadly caffeine fumes day after day, now harbours dark and twisted fantasies. Beware the smiling facade, this man wants to bury you alive with only a Kiss soundtrack for company.

Quite what this all means in promotional terms remains foggy but in providing this prescient warning against over-imbibing caffeine Costa has performed an admirable public service. There you were thinking that coffee lent you a chic, sexy and mysterious air. No! You are not italian and you are not wearing Versace!

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As with most other things us Brits have appropriated we’ve taken a delicate pastime and vulgarised it into a national obsession, glugging pints of lattes and displaying psychopathic tendencies all over the shop. Thank you Costa, you’ve shown us the error of our ways.

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