[aluhut]

There are ads that do this. Car commercials mostly. Especially those who don't have any message at all, showing just the product in some surreal environment for example.

But you can't really say that the superbowl commercial was something to support excising customers. I'm sure it scared away a hell lot of customers who were used to the product as far as they can remember. They didn't have to do that. They could have gone for funny or sexy. Everybody likes funny or sexy. This was a attention hammer. Liberals praise CC for being brave. How many switched over because of it? I mean, we are talking about the most expensively aired commercial in US (world?) TV. You don't really believe Coca Cola would invest that much money on that spot only (or mainly) to aim for existing customers (by even scaring a part of them away)?

I have seen all superbowl commercials. I can't remember one that would aim only for existing customers like the ones I've described above.

I also said above that the product or it's quality lost relevance already. Which makes the whole concept of advertising even worse (I said this because the topic was usability of advertisement). Vitamin water, even if it comes from the same company is a different product. You can drink Coca Cola once a week even if you are health conscious just to "reward" yourself but drink the rest of the week a product made by a different company because the whole health-claim of that company seems more true to you. Thats why Coca Cola fights a new fight for NEW customers with a new product.

Sure Coke sells an image. Or better: they jump on an image that is in at the moment. Cokes image isn't the same today as it was 10 years ago. You don't do that if you aim for existing customers because they started buying the product when the image was different. The new image is mainly for new people. If you do this but your competitor don't, you of course keep existing customers but you also gain new customers from your competitors that did not jump on the bandwagon.

Coca Cola did a risky thing here hoping they get more new customers then they lose by the message.