COCA COLA LIFE | Parents | 2014
As Real as Throwing Up in the Baby Aisle / COCA-COLA LIFE "PARENTS"
This is a parenting ad with zero soft focus and zero shots of sleeping babies. It's a 60-second film that opens with a father writhing in pain after stepping on a toy — and it won Gold at Cannes.
The problem
At the end of 2013, Argentina was the world's first test market for Coca-Cola's new stevia-sweetened cola, Coca-Cola Life. With its green packaging putting "natural" front and center, the challenge was figuring out how to actually hand this new product to real people.
The insight
Talking about "natural" through leaves and green landscapes had already become a cliché. So the agency decided to use the word "natural" as a metaphor for the unvarnished reality of raising kids. The idea flipped things around: parenting with zero sugarcoating is actually the most natural thing there is.
The idea
A young couple finds out they're pregnant, and soon after the birth, they're plunged into sleepless nights and chaos. A record gets broken by a kid in the middle of the night, the parents step on toys in the dark, they stop their child from eating the dog's food — the film shows every messy, ugly part of parenting without hiding a thing. A classic love song plays over this montage of chaos, and before you know it, the string of stressful moments has turned into a record of something you can't help but love.
What happened
The film won a Gold Lion in the Film category at Cannes Lions 2014. It served as the centerpiece creative for the launch of Coca-Cola Life in Argentina.
Afterthought
It skips right past the usual "it's hard, but it's happy" formula and instead just affirms how hard it actually is — I love that kind of nerve. The way it kicks the parenting-ad template to the curb before finally arriving at "I love you" really gets me.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2014
