{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "soooo today i learned that back in the early 90s, coca cola tried making this thing called \u201cok soda\u201d as a marketing stunt to...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/675844551641006080/", "html": "

youzicha:

campyvillain:

soooo today i learned that back in the early 90s, coca cola tried making this thing called \u201cok soda\u201d as a marketing stunt to beat out pepsi since they had way more of a hold on the \u201cyounger/rebellious\u201d generation at the time, and their way of doing that was naming it \u201cok soda\u201d so that they could copyright the word \u201cok\u201d, the most popular word in the world, and at the same time brand it as an\u2026ironic soda??? like the whole thing with it was that they tried to brand ok soda as a counterculture soda but instead of making it about typical 90s RADICAL EXTREME!!! fodder the theme of it was uh. unsettling capitalist brutalist dystopia. instead of being bright and colorful the color scheme was only stark whites, grays and reds and the cans looked like this. bold shapes and labels stating ominous, robotic things with a figure always staring dead into you on the front, no coca cola branding on it at all.

sometimes there would be \u201cprize cans\u201d of this stuff where instead of having soda inside it there would be hats. and they didn\u2019t sell this option in boxes by the way they just put prize cans in random vending machines. and put like 25 cents in it so hey. you could get an actual soda that isn\u2019t just hats. maybe.

did i mention that this soda also had a fucking MANIFESTO??? because yeah it sure had that printed on some cans and it goes as follows

and there\u2019s these things called \u201ccoincidences\u201d, which\u2026 yeah it doesn\u2019t make it sound any less ominous

and you might be wondering how the soda itself tastes like does it taste good? ok? well apparently it was just a regular \u201ccitric\u201d tasting soda but somehow they fucked it up so bad that it was compared to \u201ccarbonated tree sap\u201d, and instead of trying to make the drink taste better they included that it tasted like shit, INTO THE ADVERTISING SCHEME ITSELF. they would literally advertise that it tasted like ass as a part of the ironic marketing, no i am not kidding.

but if you thought that\u2019s where it ended there\u2019s one more curveball and without any exaggeration, you will not expect what i am about to tell you.

take a look at this guy.

this guy is the \u201cface\u201d of ok soda, as in he was printed on the most cans and technically served as a mascot of sorts for the entire thing. his face was a major part of the branding, and this design for the cans was one of if not the most common.

okay. cool. no issue there right?

take a guess on who this guy is based off of.

the artist\u2019s coworker? a generic guy? the artist himself? a relative? some random reference model they hired?

CHARLES MANSON. YES, THIS IS REAL. MEANING FOR A BRIEF MOMENT IN TIME, CHARLES MANSON\u2019S FACE WAS USED AS A MEANS TO SELL COCA COLA.

the lead artist himself has even come forward to say this is the case. and now you may be asking wait. how\u2019d he do this? how\u2019d he possibly get away with this, years after the crimes had been committed?

well according to him, it was simple. apparently none of the contracts he signed said anything against putting a mass murderer on the can. so. there\u2019s THAT.

unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, ok soda never really caught on since *surprise surprise!* teens really don\u2019t want to buy soda that looks like a brutalist art museum, and it never had a wide release so it was only a thing for like two years between 1993 and 1995. but from what i\u2019ve heard there\u2019s still people who are giving this soda a small modern following, collecting all the cans and merchandise and even coming up with stand in recipes for the soda formula itself.

so yeah! that was ok soda.

what the fuck

While OK Soda appears on retrospective lists of failed soft drinks and fluke ad campaigns, Analyst Thomas Flight posits that OK Soda may have been “ahead of its time” in its attempts at “brand disillusionment\u201d through its subversion of traditional marketing.

Maybe we are ready now!

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