For the past week or so, I've been hearing a radio spot for Pepsi Max, touting its man-friendly image, letting guys know that there's a new diet drink in town, safe for them to drink in the company of their compadres. I had no idea, prior to this campaign, that diet drinks suffered from such a crisis of confidence. Are we really afraid to drink diet sodas when we're out with the guys? Or is it just Pepsi guys that are ashamed of diet Pepsi?
Whatever the case, the tagline on the commercial pretty much says it all: "Now you can drink your diet cola and still look your cojones in the eyes!"
That first definition ("a vulgar Spanish word for testicles") pretty much says it all, and is the reason I was in tears the first time I heard the spot. And I HAVE to assume the ad was fully vetted by the folks at Pepsi and, somewhere along the line, someone had to approve it.
But there's a part of me that wants to believe that a couple of bored ad copywriters slipped the word in there, wondering how long it would be before someone noticed that 'compadres' and 'cojones' weren't the same word. In that fantasy, those two copywriters are sitting back today, laughing as hard as I am that it got on the air. (The announcer's pronunciation of 'cojones' as "co-HOE-knees" adds a small bit of credence to my admittedly far-fetched presumptions.)
Whatever the case, it seems to have worked, at least in my case. Thanks in no small part to Pepsi's ballsy ad, I had to try Pepsi Max this weekend. And I really liked it. Maybe it's the ginseng, but it didn't seem to have that annoying artificial sweetener aftertaste that all diet drinks have.
So maybe I'm gonna be looking my own cojones in the eyes soon.
At the very least, it's going to be a long time before I get that visual out of my head.
Whatever the case, the tagline on the commercial pretty much says it all: "Now you can drink your diet cola and still look your cojones in the eyes!"
That first definition ("a vulgar Spanish word for testicles") pretty much says it all, and is the reason I was in tears the first time I heard the spot. And I HAVE to assume the ad was fully vetted by the folks at Pepsi and, somewhere along the line, someone had to approve it.
But there's a part of me that wants to believe that a couple of bored ad copywriters slipped the word in there, wondering how long it would be before someone noticed that 'compadres' and 'cojones' weren't the same word. In that fantasy, those two copywriters are sitting back today, laughing as hard as I am that it got on the air. (The announcer's pronunciation of 'cojones' as "co-HOE-knees" adds a small bit of credence to my admittedly far-fetched presumptions.)
Whatever the case, it seems to have worked, at least in my case. Thanks in no small part to Pepsi's ballsy ad, I had to try Pepsi Max this weekend. And I really liked it. Maybe it's the ginseng, but it didn't seem to have that annoying artificial sweetener aftertaste that all diet drinks have.
So maybe I'm gonna be looking my own cojones in the eyes soon.
At the very least, it's going to be a long time before I get that visual out of my head.
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