What do esports events, MMO gaming, and soda have in common? If you said “Maybe you drink the soda while participating in the other two activities,” congratulations, you’re a normal human being and not the kind of wild-eyed minds behind this truly confusing Coca-Cola advertisement.
Allow us to describe the video to gird your brain before hitting the play button: The spot shows off a crowded esports event where players are engaged in combat in a game that looks near enough to World of Warcraft without actually being World of Warcraft. We focus in on one particular orc player who is running through the battlefield on a tear before being knocked down, prompting the player to grab a bottle of Coke and knock it back. This, apparently, prompts some latent early memory in the orc character, empowering him to rise up and toss his weapon aside (because that’s a skill in this fictitious game apparently) after seeing the devastation of the digital battlefield. Others join suit, the crowd is awed into near teary-eyed silence, and in-game unity is apparently achieved. All because one dude slammed some soda.
This baffling advertisement is apparently part of a wider promotional campaign that promises people are “a few days away from discovering an amazing experience which will be full of surprises.” This “experience” will involve a digital code hunt that offers up prizes like Twitch bits and celebrity gaming sessions.
As one might expect, the advertisement isn’t really going over well, as people spear the campaign for its tone-deafness to gamers and its baffling attempt to link esports gaming to greater unity and world peace. Other folks have pointed out that Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has been on the board of directors for the Coca-Cola Company for the better part of the last decade, so the allusions to WoW seem unlikely to be accidental.
Strap yourselves in for the madness of this ad and actually read some of the comments of the video for once; normally that’s bad practice for anything YouTube, but I promise that there are some genuine gems in there.
