When does an illustrator get really excited?
When Coca-Cola Journey Editor Jay Moye sends him a Charles McNair essay to illustrate– that’s when.
It was called The 12 Cokes Of Christmas (& The Holidays), and I was grinning even before I started reading it.
Turns out the beautiful Frazier fir had a hidden insect nest. Then three mustachioed hens wearing berets showed up. There was a guy in a smelly reindeer suit, a sack of prunes for Aunt Plushbottom, and some Alabama carolers who insisted on singing Free Bird instead of White Christmas.
Here’s the final:
The tree winds up getting decorated for all the holidays (hearts, shamrocks, groundhogs). There’s also a cat eating turkey sandwiches and dill pickles. Um, I’ll explain those things hanging on the fireplace in a minute…
There’s trouble, of course, and the fire department is called. They’re rewarded with ice-cold Cokes, and rightly so…
On the 6th day, the story’s rowdy protagonists build a “Santa trap” in front of the fireplace. They build it out of mattress coils and brassieres, among other things, and a big sticky pool of maple syrup. They bait the trap with an ice-cold Coke and a can of sardines.
The funniest part is when, later on, they come home hungry, and fall into their own trap– hence, the call to the fire department. Someone also calls a taxi. The illustrator looked at the remaining space he had to work with, and decided to make it a toy taxi. Good call, illustrator.
My previous post dealt with Car-Freshener Corporation and its rather humorless, overprotective approach to its brand (those little pine tree car air fresheners).
By contrast, Coca-Cola isn’t afraid to have fun with its brand. By embracing humor, the company comes across as strong and confident. It’s an attractive image– and that’s a great advantage today, when brands are shaped by what people tweet and post and say about them on social media sites.
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Have you ever gone online and posted something good or bad about a company?
You want some Christmas mood music. Who do you go with: Lynyrd Skynyrd or Bing Crosby?
Have you ever seen a partridge in a pear tree? Did you call the fire department??