Killer Coke Workshop

The task we were set in today's lesson was to create our own Killer Coke Campaign. The first half of the 2 hour lesson was to watch a documentary based around the dark side of the Coca Cola industry. The hour long documentary was called 'Dispatches - Mark Thomas on Coca Cola' and discussed multiple issues involved with the brand Coca Cola and the hidden secrets which the public may not be aware of. It was a controversial documentary which portrayed the popular and famous trademark in a completely new light. It was presented by journalist and political activist Mark Thomas, who travelled to many different countries including South America, India and parts of the US to investigate the ways in which Coca Cola suppliers operate and the extent to which they upholds ethical

and moral obligation. 

These are some of the notes I got from the documentary:

• Around the world 1.7 billion bottles of coke are drunk daily. 
• In the original recipe of coca cola actual cocaine was used as a key ingredient. 
• The same person who invented Coca Cola (John Pemberton) went on to create Dr Pepper. 
• Coca-Cola had a controversial relationship with Germany before and during World War II.
• In 1936, Coca-Cola was deemed unsuitable for children due to its sugar content and additives.
• Several of Coke's top executives in Germany were public members of the NSDAP.
• When the United States entered World War II, Coke began to represent its product in the US as a patriotic drink by providing free drinks for soldiers of the United States Army.
• Fanta, a product developed in Germany due to shortages of supplies to make Coca-Cola, was merged into the Coca Cola brand line following the end of the war.
• The brand Coca Cola supported the 1936 nazi olympics by advertising itself along with nazi's. 
• In Martin Luther King's last speech 'I've Been to the Mountaintop' he requested people to not buy Coca Cola 'We are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis'. 
• Around 1960 a lot of Coca Cola company's refused to employ black people or would only give them the most physically hardest jobs. 
• Controversially Coca Cola has continually created ad campaigns to celebrate black history which goes against its unemployment of black people. 
• On Jan. 18, 2004, more than 500 protesters, including about 150 residents who live near Coke's bottling facilities were beaten for rioting after a large majority of villages water wells were being used up for. 
• One litre of Coca Cola using two and half litres of water.
• Coca Cola use around 290 billion litres of water a year. 
• When the documentary was created (around 2004 to 2007) Coca Cola were planning to become 'water neutral'. Which means only using water which they can give back. 
• Pestersides found in coke bottles around Indian. 
• Indian won the Golden Peacock award (3 years running), the award is sponsored by Coca Cola. 
• FEMSA owns 53.7% of the world's second largest bottler of Coca Cola. 
• Coca Cola employers are in grave danger after being threatened by the Black Eagles. 
• The Black Eagles are responsible for 9 murders in Columbia. 
• In El Salvador employers are forcing underage family members to help burn, cut and collect sugar cane for the sugar in Coca Cola. 
•  Coca Cola factory accused on contaminating whole villages rivers and turning the water black, making fish die and causing skin rashes on people who have contact with the river water.

Killer Coke Campaigns

Killer Coke Draft Drawings

These are a few draft idea's for my Killer Coke campaign, I really liked the idea of making a can of coke look dark and meaningful with the issues raised in the documentary. I wanted to change the name of the famous Coca Cola logo into 'Killer Coke' but keep the recognized handwriting. I want to add symbols which represent the bad side of the popular business like a gravestone printed on the can and a pool of blood at the bottom to show the Colombian deaths. I also want add a illustration of a peacock and eagle to represent the contrast of positive and negative. The peacock is a symbol of the Golden Peacock award and the eagle is a symbol for the Black Eagles.

Creating Killer Coke Campaign

The first task of creating the coca cola campaign was to choose a good software to use. I decided to use adobe illustrator as I wanted to produce a cartoon style campaign which didn't look like a silhouette or a photograph. My aim was to make the campaign look more like an animation then anything else.






After I created a new template on Illustrator I found images from Google which I wanted to use in my campaign. The images I decided to use all had relation to the dispatches documentary from the cocaine which related to the drug being a main ingredient in the original coca cola recipe to the eagle which symbolizes the black eagle.

After the preparation I started creating my campaign. My main image was a cup of coke, previously I planned on using a can as that's the most traditional and well known form of the drink but then I thought I could work better with this image and extend my original idea. The next step was to make my images have a cartoon effect, I started by transforming the colour quality from normal to one of the other options. To create the animation style there was multiple options I could choose. The one I used for the coca cola cups was '6 colour' and it created a cartoon look to the image, then I clicked the the expand button to finish the effect. I did this on all of the images but some I used different effects on some of them. For example the image of the eagle was originally in very high contrast black & white so I used a different effect to make sure all the images had the same cartoon effect.

The next step was do remove any white background on the images so it looks more professional and stands out. I did this by using the direct selection tool, using this tool I simply clicked on the white background then clicked on a random place on the page and finally deleted the background. I found this step easy to do after I learnt how to do it properly and could do it again in the future. After I did this I arranged the images around my main image to create a 3D effect. I got inspiration for this idea from the 'Colombian Coke Float' and 'Don't Drink Killer Coke' campaigns (top of the page).

Overall I'm pleased with the final outcome as I feel I've improved my graphics skills and have learnt new skills which I could use again in future tasks. I enjoyed this task as I felt the topic was interesting and thought-provoking.

Final Piece