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SPEAK UP SO WE CAN HEAR YOU. To encourage youths to feel that Coke is on their side, the company set up a national hotline (1-800-I-Feel-OK) that lets callers hear recorded messages or speak their mind. Beside Pam's anti-OK rant, they can hear Dennis J. of Aurora, Colorado, saying, "Listen, I got something to say to you people. I think it's stupid that I can't say the word O.K. now. What, you own the words O.K. now? Yeah, I own the words. Have a nice day. All right? ((Click!))" Teens so inclined can also take a true-false "OK Personality Inventory" (Sample statement: "Sometimes people who feel OK don't deserve it.") administered in ironic tones by a male voice.
The key to the call-ins -- and to the entire campaign -- is the notion of "coincidences," or odd things that supposedly have happened to people after drinking OK. A none-too-subtle spoof of ads that link romance or success to the consumption of a product, the coincidences are proving popular with teens. Said a caller from Arkansas: "I started drinking OK two days after my boyfriend and I broke up, and ever since I started drinking it, bad things happened to him. He even broke his leg. That's pretty good." Others have simply given their opinion of the drink, including a caller who asserted that "this stuff tastes like crap."
THE CHEEK IS IN THE MAIL. Coke is also citing coincidences in chain letters that it began mailing two weeks ago to promote what it calls the "feeling of OK-ness." An obvious ploy for building word-of-mouth, the letter warns recipients not to break the chain but says they can keep it going simply by mailing it or showing it "to six close friends." Some of the fictitious coincidences sound Garrison Keilloresque. For example, "Paul S. of Grafton, North Dakota, followed the letter's instructions carefully. Within a week, he found his vocabulary had significantly increased. Within two weeks Paul was, in his own words, 'No longer shy.' And within a month, he'd appeared on nationally syndicated talk shows as an unlikely sex symbol." The letter concludes, "Whatever your problems, please remember: Things are going to be OK."
WHAT'S IN A CAN? The entire strategy behind the soda is embodied in its black-on-gray containers, which resemble post-office most-wanted pictures or underground comic strips more than typical soft-drink cans. There is not merely one design, moreover, but four. "We kept saying, 'God, we've got to come up with one package,"' Lanahan recalls. But when focus groups failed to agree on a single design out of the more than 50 versions offered, the marketers changed their mind. "One thing about this generation," says Lanahan, "they don't like to commit to one thing. They like to keep their options open."
The cans suggest a certain despondency and have nothing in common with upbeat images of pep rallies or senior proms. One can shows a blank-looking white teenager with a doleful gaze and bags beneath his eyes. To one side are panels of the teen walking dejectedly down an empty street and sitting outside two idle factories with his face slumped against his hands. Declares a message across the top of the can: "ok soda says, 'don't be fooled into thinking there has to be a reason for everything."'