For the last two weeks, my sensibilities have been irritated daily by an advertisement on the side of a phone booth that I pass from my bus stop on the way to work. Oasis, a sports drink in the Coca-Cola family, has launched an ad campaign featuring a prickly green bad boy known as the Cactus Kid and a very young girl in breezy white. I couldn’t find a photo online of the particular print ad that is pissing me off, but it’s basically just a head-and-shoulders shot of the two of them with a picture of the sports drink, the words “Cactus Kid,” and the tagline.
Now, there are a few things that bother me about this ad. Let’s start with my premiere annoyance, which is the slogan: For People Who Don’t Like Water.
I need water. I need it to live. It’s not really a question of liking water. In fact, even cacti need water. Millions of people die each year from lack of access to clean drinking water. Solution? Maybe they should try an Oasis! Ha! Oh, wait, no, it’s just idiotic. The Seabed: For People Who Don’t Like Air.
Secondly, before I saw a television spot with this campaign, I assumed that the child in the picture was the eponymous “Cactus Kid.” Really, it was not apparent to me, because the girl appears to be a kid, while the Cactus Man appears to be 28 and surly. I was very surprised, therefore, to find that she is actually a teenage runaway (I suppose thirteen counts as teenage, because that’s how old she looks) on the loose with her spiny boyfriend.
I gave up watching television a few months ago, but have tuned back in for the Olympics, so I finally caught the full campaign. A Guardian article from early July helped fill me in. Apparently, these have been ongoing for a month, although the print spots have only just hit my corner of the UK (to my awareness).
Soft drink brand Oasis is to give members of the public the chance to vote for the final instalment (sic) of a bizarre series of cinematic TV ads that tell the tale of a “half cactus, half man hybrid” outcast who escapes town with his pregnant girlfriend.
The campaign uses the strapline “For people who don’t like water” and features a love-struck girl who runs away from home after she tells her mother she has fallen in love with a “half cactus, half man hybrid” called the “Cactus Kid”.
Throughout the first TV ad the Cactus Kid, stands silently and staunchly in a white singlet, in a commercial inspired by Terrence Malik’s Badlands…
Him (sic) and his girlfriend, who is going to have his baby, have been drawn together against the “normal” world through their loathing of water.
Ad agency Mother has also created a series of three different endings – one happy, one sad and one with a twist – that the public will be asked to vote for online to decide how the saga will conclude…
A series of three TV ads, shot in the style of a road movie set in 1950s America, will air between July 3 and the end of summer telling the ongoing tale of the couple…
“This year’s campaign builds on the irreverent humour designed specifically to appeal to the 20-something target audience,” said Cathryn Sleight, marketing director at Coca-Cola in the UK.
Ok, so not only is the child involved in a legally suspect relationship with an older man, but also pregnant with his spiky Cactus Baby. God save her uterus. Cathryn Sleight, what exactly is funny about this? How is that not just odd and uncomfortable? This would be perplexing even if I were stoned and in the mood to ponder the implications of the Cactus Baby. Here’s the first spot, for your judgment.
“I reckon now she knows why I keep getting sunburned on the bottom of my feet.” Why is that, little girl? Because you are walking barefoot in the desert? Or because you are having dirty cactus sex on your back!?
Adding to my perturbance are the faux-hick accents, which I regard as a greater sin than the alleged glamorization of teen pregnancy, which has some other viewers up in arms.
I think that may be pushing it. I just call this ad out for being crap in general, however cinematically executed. So, edgy “irreverent” ad campaign, or does it miss the mark for anyone else?
August 12, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I must say I’ve never heard of it before this, but I fully support your righteous indignation and disgust, because it’s kind of hot.
PS. Will the happy couple be getting the cactus baby a pet porcupine in one of the endings?
August 12, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Faux hick accents are the worst! When I lived in England I used to laugh at how they portrayed American accents on their television shows, but of course I’m sure the same could be said for how Americans portray their British accents.
August 12, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Well, we all know why she got pregnant. The condom didn’t stand a chance.
August 12, 2008 at 3:22 pm
i am stoned.
and this is the dumbest fucking shit i have seen all summer.
August 12, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Oasis: For People Who Like Passing Kidney Stones
August 12, 2008 at 3:52 pm
ha! tailfeather, you crack me up.
and this drink reminds me alot of brawndo. It’s what plants crave.
August 12, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Brawndo has electrolytes.
August 12, 2008 at 5:06 pm
@ Tailfeather: Condom humor never gets old!
I can’t decide if they ripped Terrence Malick or Quentin Tarantino, ’cause that background music is exactly the same as the denouement of True Romance with the Patricia Arquete voice over as Christian Slater frolicks in the Mexican surf with their son.
This is one time where imitation is not sincere or flattering.
Also…I freakin’ hate all things uber-soft drinkish and am convinced Pepsi and Coca-Cola are out to kill us all with they caramel-syrup crap.
Drink Izze, y’all.
August 12, 2008 at 8:22 pm
It’s utter crap. The only advert more annoying is that Persil one where a robot turns into an insipid little boy.
August 12, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Yeah Trixie this is weird as hell. But, as SJB suggests, if there’s a pet baby porcupine or hedgehog in the happy version I could be mollified. A prickly baby should have a prickly pet!
August 13, 2008 at 12:49 pm
@paisley: Nice catch! It is the same music. But not to the same effect.
August 15, 2008 at 12:40 am
PP, TF: Bingo!
“‘The Run, cactus kid, run’ campaign, created by Mother, comprises three humorous 30-second TV spots shot in the style of the film ‘True Romance’.”
August 15, 2008 at 12:41 am
Also: Cactus Kid makes my skin crawl.
September 17, 2008 at 5:34 pm
In all honesty, how do they see this as advertising? I mean, the drink is seen twice but isn’t really mentioned (in the “what is it? sense)
I wonder what the advertising guys were sitting around in the office doing. “Hmm, yeah! let’s cover a guy in prickles… and… he could drink our drink… and get innocent not-southern girls pregnant! yes! brilliant!”
On the other hand, I noticed we aren’t talking about half a dozen other drinks right now, so that means the advertising is working. Creepy, eh?
October 30, 2008 at 10:03 am
I think this whole thing is uber cool!
Whats wrong with the Cactus Kid?
I am so GLAD that poeple voted for the ”Twist”Ending online even though I voted for ”Happy”!
January 20, 2010 at 5:13 pm
[…] I can’t believe it’s been nearly a year since I did a post about a piece of advertising that irritates me! Surely for someone as easily irritated as me, this should be ripe blog fodder and yet I […]