Sprite Advertizing Campaign
I saw my umpty-billionth Sprite commercial the other day (though my exposure to commercials overall has been reduced *drastically*, thanks to XM, Netflix, and pop-up blockers. Now they can only get me with those awful floor-stickers in the grocery store...). And I'm very puzzled.
Sprite seems to be advertizing especially hard to young urban black males. The soft drink's new mascot (well, sort of new... he's been around for a few years) is a little action figure, whose name I can't remember. He sports a large 'fro and hip "urban" clothes. The people in the commercials are often (perhaps even almost always) young black men toting basketballs, or dressed in basketball gear. The setting is always an urban area-- the front stoop of an apartment building features in several commercials. They're definitely targeting this demographic pretty hard.
So it brings to mind a few questions.
Firstly: why? What exactly does a soft drink have to do with a particular demographic? Did someone do a study somewhere and figure out that urbanite black males between the ages of 14 and 25 bought Sprite more than any other group? Does Sprite have something to do with basketball that makes the use of basketball players in the commercials make sense? Why this soft drink? Is the Coca-Cola company going to start targeting each of its products at specific demographic groups? Fresca for elderly Hispanics, Orange Crush for white suburbanite country music fans? I just don't get it.
Sprite seems to be advertizing especially hard to young urban black males. The soft drink's new mascot (well, sort of new... he's been around for a few years) is a little action figure, whose name I can't remember. He sports a large 'fro and hip "urban" clothes. The people in the commercials are often (perhaps even almost always) young black men toting basketballs, or dressed in basketball gear. The setting is always an urban area-- the front stoop of an apartment building features in several commercials. They're definitely targeting this demographic pretty hard.
So it brings to mind a few questions.
Firstly: why? What exactly does a soft drink have to do with a particular demographic? Did someone do a study somewhere and figure out that urbanite black males between the ages of 14 and 25 bought Sprite more than any other group? Does Sprite have something to do with basketball that makes the use of basketball players in the commercials make sense? Why this soft drink? Is the Coca-Cola company going to start targeting each of its products at specific demographic groups? Fresca for elderly Hispanics, Orange Crush for white suburbanite country music fans? I just don't get it.