Leading marketing magazine Campaign has criticised Diet Coke’s latest television advert, which featured elderly women using a dating app.
The spot shows two ‘Grannies’ swiping through a made-up app called ‘Twinge’ while using a variety of modern slang and expressing that they’re “not looking for long-term”.
Campaign named it their “Turkey of the Week”, a title handed out to new promotions that miss the mark.
The magazine explained that the creators had managed to “trivialize” Gen Z with some of the phrases used in the video, as well as with the new range of limited edition cans which have “can’t even” and “it’s lit” written on them.
Diet Coke was trying to encourage people to celebrate their individual identities by having them embrace mainstream trends.
Campaign also noted that dating apps are becoming a trope in advertising, with many companies using them to represent modern life. Vodafone Australia recently used an old lady getting a match on an app as a way to reference feelings of joy.
The online magazine was highly complimentary of recent advertising efforts by actual dating brands.
It described the ‘Designed to be Deleted’ campaign as “savvy marketing” and said that by actually attempting to ‘kill’ the app, Hinge was standing out from in a saturated market.
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