Coca-Cola’s new ad is a perfect example of how brands are trying to appeal to the ever-growing esports audience. The company has also been on the forefront of using advertising for purposes other than selling their product, with ads that promote world peace and even esports.
The overwatch league is a marketing strategy that Coca-Cola has used to appeal to esports fans, MMO gamers, and world peace.
What do esports tournaments, massively multiplayer online games, and soda have in common? If you answered, “Perhaps you sip the soda while doing the other two tasks,” you’re a regular human being, not the sort of crazed brains behind this really perplexing Coca-Cola commercial.
Allow us to explain the video so you can prepare your mind before you press the play button: The commercial depicts a packed esports tournament where participants engage in battle in a game that resembles World of Warcraft but isn’t World of Warcraft.
We concentrate on one orc player who is tearing across the battlefield before getting knocked down, causing him to grab a bottle of Coke and slam it back. After witnessing the destruction of the digital battlefield, this supposedly triggers some dormant early memory in the orc character, enabling him to stand up and throw his weapon aside (apparently a talent in this fictional game). Others follow suit, the audience is stunned into near-tearful stillness, and in-game unity seems to have been attained. It’s all because one guy smashed a can of Coke.
This perplexing ad seems to be part of a larger advertising effort that claims consumers are just “a few days away from experiencing an incredible experience full with surprises.” This “event” will include a digital code search with rewards like as Twitch bits and gaming sessions with celebrities.
As one would imagine, the commercial isn’t doing so well, with critics praising it for its lack of respect for gamers and its perplexing effort to connect esports gaming to better cooperation and global peace. Others have pointed out that Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has been on the Coca-Cola Company’s board of directors for the greater part of a decade, thus the references to World of Warcraft seem unlikely to be coincidental.
Prepare yourself for the craziness of this commercial by reading some of the video’s comments; usually, this is poor YouTube practice, but I assure you that there are some real gems in there.
