American soda consumption has now reached a 30-year low, according to Beverage Digest, but that hasn’t stopped Pepsi’s latest project to promote Pepsi Light— 2 liter (kilogram) dumbbell filled with soda.
Pepsi teamed up with the Brazilian ad agency AlmapBBDO to create the free weight. If nothing but a laughable attempt at promoting healthy living, it at least gets people talking.
“Problem: The client needed an irreverent way to show Pepsi Light’s benefits,” one advert reads for Pepsi’s newest creation reads. “Solution: Rethinking the product packing for it to carry a new meaning. The new design imitates dumbbells, making Pepsi useful in a fit way of life.”
Representatives at AlmapBBDO have said that the bottles have not yet been mass produced, but some folks are not at all happy with Pepsi's attempt at cheeky marketing.
"For those keeping score, regularly drinking 'light' or diet sodas can lead to more belly fat, will make you more likely to eat other junk foods and increases the odds you’ll be overweight or obese, is associated with depression and wreaks havoc on your dental health," writes Katie Bratskeir, food and health editor at The Huffington Post. "Meanwhile sugary, regular soda is thought to be the leading cause of Type 2 diabetes and may raise your risk for heart disease, dementia and gout, among other conditions."
Bratskeir says that the new ad causes confusion in the same ways as athletes do when they promote unhealthy foods.
"While there’s yet to be research on how marketing a product to look like exercise equipment affects sales, studies do show that when athletes endorse unhealthy products, it creates confusion."
