Relieve Yourself from that Legend!

1998 was a great year in the history of Russian advertising. Coca-Cola took this country seriously and launched a fantastically expensive and aspiring advertising campaign “Coca-Cola – Drink the Legend”. The message was ‘localized’ – TV commercials were cast in Russia and pictured a plot from a Russian fairy tale. Before that all Coca-Cola commercials were ‘imported’ from the US and simply dubbed into Russian. The dubbing was not much professional – actors opened their mouths not in sync with Russian text.

Unfortunately this pretentious campaign was a complete failure. First, nobody got the plot of the commercial. They tried to squeeze too much content into 30 seconds. Second, MTV-like cutting was too flickering and annoying. And third, Russians didn’t get the message. What does it mean – drinking the legend? Was it the wrong translation from English? AskOxford.com says that a legend is a traditional story that some people think of as being historical, but which is not authenticated. Exactly the same meaning as in Russian ‘leghenda’ (легенда). What does it have to do with Coca-Cola? Coca-Cola is not authenticated or what?

I don’t think there are many people outside Coca-Cola HQ who think that this carbonated, caffeinated and sugary soda has anything legendary. Well, it definitely rudely forced out from the market many traditional Russian soda brands in a truly Genghis Khan manner. But is it something to be so proud about.

Russian design studio BraMC immortalized this legendary campaign with this parody ad – “Coca-Cola – Relieve Yourself from that Legend!”