First Drop: A Tall Glass of Liquid Metal

The age of liquid metal has been on my mind a lot lately. After watching Terminator II recently at home, I then watched a bunch of old Capri Sun ads from the mid-90s that captured the same shiny, shape shifting aesthetic of the Cyberdyne Systems T-1000.

In the ads, the Capri Sun pouch itself becomes a series of metallic tweens and teens, as they surf, play basketball, and otherwise do cool West Coast-y stuff. It’s a memorable ad from an age of memorable ads – the mid-90s were actually an incredible time for them, with everything from Coke’s Fruitopia kaleidoscopes to the late Richard Lewis delivering oddball riffs and stories that had absolutely nothing to do with the Boku he was, ostensibly, there to promote.

That wicked, ever-malleable liquid metal got me thinking, though, about the ways that marketing has changed for beverages, both for good and for ill.

When Kraft started rolling out these “Liquid Cool” commercials for Capri Sun, they bombarded the airwaves with a steady stream of terminator teens – and they did their job, cementing the brand in the national shopping cart. (For more about Capri Sun, and about juice brands, and about import beer, dig deeper into this issue!)

Ad shops now face a more difficult time targeting consumers. Networks have bled viewers. Cable has yielded to streaming services, many of which are ad free. The most popular streamer today is YouTube – a “station” that encompasses, in one form or another, a significant percentage of all of the video ever recorded, either professionally or by amateurs, whether it was meant for upload or not.

Messaging has been blown apart, into so many tiny droplets, like a T-1000 driving a semi that’s just been hit with a grenade launcher.

This decay of centralized distribution isn’t all bad, of course – in fact, it’s what has led to the growth of so many new brands. The internet has been a massive accelerator for entrepreneurs, leveling the marketing playing field, allowing founders to create direct connections to consumers.

We know that advertising has long been moving toward digital channels; this year, however, according to a recent story in Adweek, digital spending was finally expected to pass linear. The question remains, however, whether there’s any way to make any of this spending, television or online, worthwhile. Especially when there’s an even wider spectrum of approaches to get brands in front of the public, from sponsorship to the field to the celebrity investor or founder game.

There are two effects of this that are tough for me to handle. First, when was the last time, besides during the Super Bowl, that you paid attention to any advertisement? Second, there’s a shift in tone, as if those droplets aren’t just reforming to create a message, but to take over your life.

Rather than use advertising as a way to entertain and amaze, to inform and to sell, the keywords now are seemingly interrupt, track, acquire. I can’t say whether other people feel this way, but as algorithms and trackers have become primary marketing tools, I know that I often experience the feeling that I’m being stalked, by products and services, all of which are waiting for one missed click to take me to an obscure land where my details are harvested whether or not I actually make a purchase.

I understand this is the price I pay for progress as a consumer, and that this is the route you’ve been forced to take as marketers and suppliers. But as every single step I take seems to be accompanied by a pop-up, a link, a digital ad, a sponsored search, I’ve started to consider a new question: would I rather be chased by the Terminator, or plugged into the Matrix?