14 spots left to join us for the Digiday Publishing Summit

Join us Sept. 14-16 in Miami to connect with top publishing leaders

SECURE YOUR SEAT

Coca-Cola’s GIF maker is getting trolled on Tumblr

It didn’t take long for the Internet to reinterpret Coca-Cola’s new advertising campaign.

Last week, the brand ditched “Open Happiness,” its 7-year-old slogan, for the fresher “Taste the Feeling” as part of a branding initiative to unify its dozens of drinks with one slogan. Coca-Cola explained that the new slogan “puts the focus back on the product.”

Coca-Cola also promoted the slogan with a GIF maker that lets people add a feeling overlaid on top of a massive GIF created by Coke. Tumblr users wasted to no time hijacking the GIF maker, as noticed by the Daily Dot. A scroll through the #Coca-Cola tag on Tumblr reveals GIFs that the brand probably wasn’t expecting:

diarrhea

feet

divorce

phones

benghazi

The lesson here is to never let the Internet customize anything because you’ll always end up with a poop joke. Coca-Cola hasn’t returned a request for comment.

Update: Coca-Cola responded with this comment: “Our intention is to invite people to share their feelings in fun and uplifting ways as they discover our new ‘Taste the Feeling’ campaign. While the vast majority have used ‘GIF The Feeling’ in positive ways, it’s unfortunate to see that some people have chosen to use our campaign to do just the opposite.”

More in Marketing

By the numbers: Wall Street’s tough assessment of ad tech

Big Tech continues to dominate digital growth, triggering a Wall Street exodus, but are returns imminent?

CMOs are struggling to link AI visibility with sales

Brands are spending on tools that rate their visibility within LLM responses and AI search, but proving the commercial impact of GEO remedies isn’t easy.

Lifestyle brand Stanley 1913 adapts its marketing for the AI search era

The marketing it was doing worked well, but only for a human audience. The brand needed different approaches to ensure it was picked up by the AI platforms.