Is coca-cola recycling cola! Well, this is what the audio copy in the commercial says: “If you have had a coke in the last 40 years, you have played a part in one of the largest beverage recycling efforts in the world”!

This coca-cola ad though in good intent urging viewers to do positive acts like recycling made a faux pas and said beverage recycling!

Coca-Cola’s green ads with a slogan: “Refresh, Recycle, Repeat” were supposed to tout the beverage giant’s goal to recycle or reuse 100 percent of the aluminum cans and plastic bottles it sells in the U.S., part of the company’s “Live Positively”  operating philosophy.

Coca-Cola ran several other ads besides this recycle ad, in the 81st Oscars night on Feb22, 2009.  This year with bad economy and recession, the network channel ABC which rolls the Oscar ceremony cut down the advertising rates for the spots. Last year a 30-second commercial costed as much as $1.8 million. This year just days before the broadcast, individual spots apparently  sold for $1.4 million to $1.7 million.

The other coke ads this evening were: – Diet coke, promoting heart health for women; Diet coke, featuring the supermodel Heidi Klum; Diet coke, featuring Tom Colicchio, judge of the reality series “Top Chef”, reviving the old slogan “Just for the taste of it,” which helped introduce Diet Coke in 1982; Another Coca-Cola commercial was the ahh in the sky ad, with tag line “open happiness”.

Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett crafted a couple of coke ads, while Portland,  Oregon, based agency  Wieden & Kennedy  did a couple more. I don’t know which ad agency made this faux pas!

[The blog writer has been in the advertising industry as a copy writer hence was quick to catch the faux pas. The writer besides having an advertising and marketing career profile has added interests as food writer, restaurant reviewer, film critic and more.]