Coke Is an Idiot

If you've surfed the internet at all during the past couple of weeks, you've probably come across the Eepybird.com experiment concerning dropping a piece of Mentos candy into a bottle of Diet Coke. The combination results in a geyser of soda that shoots as high as 20 feet into the air. So in other words, Coke + Mentos = explosive fun.

A recent The Wall Street Journal article describes a fast-growing cultural phenomenon, in which amateur video-makers around the world have taped the explosive results. Mentos, a tiny fruit-flavored candy manufactured by a small Italian-based company, who are also known for their extremely cheesy commercials, says it's "tickled pink" by the phenomenon. According to an article by Rich Smith,

In investigating its popularity, [Mentos owner, Perfetti] has discovered about 800 videos of the chemical reaction posted on the Internet. Perfetti says the free advertising being posted on the Web is probably worth in the neighborhood of $10 million to the company–half of its annual U.S. advertising budget. When Coca-Cola was asked to comment on the science experiment, however, its response was more muted: "It's an entertaining phenomenon…[but] doesn't fit with the brand personality" of Diet Coke.

Now, it's no surprise that mighty Coke, with its $2 billion-per-annum advertising budget, isn't as thrilled as Perfetti is with the pop-goes-the-geyser phenomenon.

Seriously, Coke shouldn't be giving Mentos the cold shoulder here. Coke should be partnering with Perfetti to turn this into The Fad of the Summer of '06, staging performances of the experiment in public parks, and selling not just Mentos and Diet Coke, but other relatives from the firms' respective brand families to enthralled audiences. This is the kind of free, viral marketing that a clever company like Hansen Natural would have been all over months ago. That Coke passes it off with a "pshaw" and a "can't-be-bothered" helps explain why, unlike the Diet Coke-plus-Mentos geysers, Coke's stock has lain flat for five years.

Personally, I prefer Pepsi, and more specifically Mountain Dew.