/32/ - Psychopolitics

This seems to me like it would be targeting the "skeptical", "debunker" crowd who "fucking love science".

Let me get this straight, in order to respond to and mitigate concerns about the health effects of coca cola, the group that produced this image juxtaposed the idea of smug health food fans with criticism of junk food, as though this is supposed to polarize the two ideas in one's mind, with the hopes of the viewer will feel vitriol towards health fooders? Which is supposed to drive them towards wanting to consume coca cola?

Funny because the desired effect is a very smug outcome indeed. This image really pisses me off, haha.

The tone of this is very irritating. Claiming people who drink kale juice are doing it to be individualistic and implying that the viewer should be a real individualist and drink coca cola. AAAHHHHh

>>2001

I forgot to mention that this piece had people calling it out as bullshit in the top comments. Not necessarily a failure (it has 4000+ upvotes) but not very discrete. That's why I'm wondering how it could have been done better, or if being explicit about it has some function I'm not aware of (I'm thinking making the "opposition" visible might have some effect, especially if they get angry and use crap arguments or otherwise make themselves look like an ass).

>>2002

Yeah, I'm wondering if the tone isn't deliberately intended to provoke people into making angry, dumb comments.

>>2005

I'm noticing a lot of persuasive media is intended to provoke emotional response rather than inform or convey a clear message.

Emotions are so much more manipulable than reason.

This seems to me like a poor attempt at damage control.

Public Relations isn't just about making the positive points of your product/group/idea known, it's also about hiding its shortcomings. Almost everyone knows how bad any kind of soda is for you, but people keep drinking it, and they do it because they don't really care about the health effects.

One of the main problems is that what the infographic on coke mentions seems to be true. The best approach would have been to cite studies that disprove the information stated (Coca Cola is still one of the most powerful brands in the world, right? I'm sure they could fund an "impartial" study on the benefits of caffeine and sugar from their products).

What else could they have done? How about advertising for Coke Zero, their sugar-free version? Or making an infographic showing how much healthier coke has become over the years? Better yet, announce an ongoing project for developing healthier substitutes for their components.

The present result can be compared to being called a doo-doo head and responding with "maybe, but at least I'm not a poopy-face", and consumers can tell.

On a somewhat related topic, do you think there are any people with actual marketing, PR and psychology experience here, or are we all just interested people with no actual experience or study in these areas?

>>2009

> On a somewhat related topic, do you think there are any people with actual marketing, PR and psychology experience here, or are we all just interested people with no actual experience or study in these areas?

I'm just an interested nobody. I don't want to make the board worse, so I'll post less if it scares away experienced people.

I'm a seasoned advertising/PR professional and this was a poorly communicated attempt by CEI to create a "parody" infographic. It looks like the idea of poorly paid twenty-something account executive from a PR firm supporting the CEI front-group.

CEI did not frame the context of the parody infographic properly on the infographic itself--rather, context was placed in the text of the blog. From a PR strategy standpoint, if the infographic image is separated from the blog post, the context is lost.

They failed at Social Media PR 101.

How? Well, CEI eventually acknowledged that their right-leaning audience did not understand the purported "joke" of the kale infographic.

Quote from the CEI blog:

"Update 8/7/2015: This post pokes fun at those who trust bogus, nutritional advice they find on the Internet. Unfortunately, some of you didn't quite get the joke. So, just to be clear, CEI is not claiming that kale or kale juice is unhealthy OR that people should over-indulge in drinking soda. Our point is consumers should not assess the quality of their diet or the diets of others on the basis of infographics or Internet memes. And, dearest kale-eaters, we have nothing against you, kale was simply the newest miracle-food fad that we chose to use to parody junk science, like the viral Coke graphic mentioned above."

Original blog post: https://archive.is/dJTRK

When fighting a losing battle, like Coca-Cola, the campaign, it's important to do several things:

1) Have diet academics as third-party sources for news and opinion

2) Influence news and opinion leaders through funding and other methodologies

3) "Own" the fact that there is a downside, but factually counter any arguments utilizing an argument highlighting "moderation." This places the onus back on the user.

Highlight this message in as many PR placements as possible.

4) Deflect the consumer from health concerns by using a two-pronged approach.

- Use "moderation" and factual messaging to directly counter negative press.

- Make highly emotional advertising campaigns to evoke feelings. Brand feelings focused on by Coke are "love" and "happiness." Most of its creative advertising is associated with this messaging.

- Coke is also using "freedom" and "individuality" as an ad message, meaning the personalized cans you see in the United States are meant to subcommunicate that you--as an individual--are making the choice of drinking Coke. This is not "groupthink."

Most of the people on this forum are very advanced in their thinking--leagues better than most practicing PR or ad professionals.

However, advertising agencies hire anthropologists and psychologists as staff to help with messaging. They are called "cogs."

>>2016

Thanks for this post.

False dichotomy. "Sure, you might not like the sound of what Coca-Cola does to your body, but you wouldn't want to be one of these smug ironic hipster twats, would you?". The poster is set up to completely avoid options such as, say, drinking a glass of water.

>>2003

Got a link to that post?

As for effectiveness they went overboard with the smugness bit, should've made it more scientific and less "we're obviously trying to talk shit about the competition"

No doubt greenfags would've still gone fullretard at it for talking crap about their shitty dietary choices but as it is right now it makes it really obvious this was made by PR and not some organic food skeptic