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30 November 2012

Coca-cola sucks Christmas into its terrifying maw

The ADgenda: This week's most alarming advert.

By Sophie Barnes

It must get a bit dull being the world’s leading brand. No need for inventive or expensive advertising campaigns when the product you’re touting is quaffed by the bucketload by a significant proportion of the world’s population. Consequently, Coke has plumped for world domination, focusing their advertising efforts on strong-arming the few remaining stragglers who haven’t embraced their sugary world view.

So it is that everyone’s hotly anticipated festive moment – the Coke ad – has taken a decidedly creepy turn. A determined Father Christmas stomps through the snow, slapping a note on a mysterious giant present that reads “For those who don’t believe”. We cut to a drab cityscape, with a lone girl chugging on a Coke bottle only to be interrupted by a thump outside the window – run to look outside and there’s a massive present nestling in the snow. The ribbons fall off and inside sits a giant puppet Father Christmas, who pulls off his restraints and rears up to his full terrifying height.

Serving as a reminder of Coke’s pervasive presence the world over Father Cokemas stalks the streets winking knowingly at all the non-believers. He’s got your number.

Things were already taking a sinister turn when Christmas was heralded by a fleet of honking lorries breaking the idyllic quiet of a snow-scene while a creepy choir chanted “Holidays are coming”. But such was the potency of the sugary stuff that this did nothing to dissuade the global population with Coke sales maintaining their constant high and head office fielding calls from disgruntled customers clamouring for the return of the seasonal ad when it briefly left our screens for a couple of years – for them, Christmas wasn’t Christmas without the brown stuff.  In the 21st century Coke IS christmas, HGVs and all. Are you one of the non-believers? Father Cokemas is coming to get you…

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