NEW DELHI: World’s largest beverage company, Coca Cola, is busy in a face saving exercise these days. A recent faux pas in their advertisement, declaring that their products — Coke, Sprite, Thums Up and Limca — are not “recommended for children” have put them on the spot.
While this “safety warning” is mandatory for those products that contain “artificial sweeteners” like Diet Coke and Coke Zero, the advertisement had all the variants, including those which do not contain artificial sweeteners.
The sloppy marketing blunder has now gone viral on social media, pushing the senior management of the company to run a campaign clarifying their stand. All carbonated drinks have to declare their contents and in India, those beverages that contain artificial sweeteners have to carry a “safety warning” that “it is not recommended for children”.
The government made it mandatory for the beverage companies to add the warning with a rationale that children need sugar and not sugar substitutes.
Ironically, the recent ad of Coca-Cola that appeared in newspapers about the availability of pop cans carried the “safety warning” even when it had those variants that did not contain artificial sweeteners.
