Rick Polito, Editor-in-chief, Nutrition Business Journal

June 1, 2015

Did you know you’re only one carbonated beverage away from happiness? A tattoo might help. Fireworks can’t hurt. Dancing is definitely required. Tear gas and riot police? Sure! Throw them in too! It also helps if you’re young, attractive, clear-skinned and at least a little bit hip. But not too hip.

Mainly it’s the carbonated beverage. Or at least that’s what you will learn if you sit down for Coca-Cola’s epic happiness video.

You see, it’s simple. You can’t wait for happiness. Actually you can’t “wait and wait and wait and wait” for happiness, as the Dutch rap artist cautions us in the video. He uses a few more “and waits” to make sure you understand. He’s emphatic about this.

Paired with this wise advice we see a shirtless woman positioning her tattooed bicep to block most, but not all, of her left breast from view. We don’t know her story. But she should know that heroin chic was over in the 90s. From there, it jumps to an Indian wedding, a middle-aged biker, an infant, a pair of young women embracing a city shoreline, oddly sullen millennials and some other stuff. It takes a full 29 seconds before we see the first Coke bottle.

But man, those people with the Coke are happy!

Definitely happier than the people at the tear gas riot a few second later, though it’s nice that one of them brought a rose. More floral arrangements should include tear gas. It goes on like that. Soccer? Yeah. A cross-dresser whipping off his wig? Why not? Who’s that guy in the meadow running from? The woman in the forest is running from somebody shooting bottle rockets. Maybe the person shooting the bottle rocket needs a Coke. But who brings a Coke to a rave?

Happy people, of course.

None of this is really any different from most other commercials for most other soft drinks. It’s just longer. And more expensive. More Euro. And definitely cooler. The video comes from an Amsterdam ad agency and might be a good start on making up for those Mentos commercials from the 90s. Those were Euro in the wrong way. The very wrong way.

But the happiest thing coming out of Amsterdam is Coke?

That’s not how we remember it.

About the Author(s)

Rick Polito

Editor-in-chief, Nutrition Business Journal

As Nutrition Business Journal's editor-in-chief, Rick Polito writes about the trends, deals and developments in the natural nutrition industry, looking for the little companies coming up and the big money coming in. An award-winning journalist, Polito knows that facts and figures never give the complete context and that the story of this industry has always been about people.

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