Alex Bogusky might be the modern-day Mad Man. He created a legacy on Madison Avenue by junking the rules of advertising and drumming up ground-breaking ads for Burger King and Mini Cooper. Under Bogusky, the agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky became the go-to, hipper-than-hip agency. But Bogusky left two years ago as co-chairman and has since sought out socially relevant causes. He made headlines this week for an animated parody video he helped create of the "real" Coke Polar Bears. The video, at TheRealBears.org, depicts the bears losing their teeth, their sexual appetites and even their legs due to over-consumption of cola. Bogusky, 49, spoke exclusively with USA TODAY marketing reporter Bruce Horovitz about the biting video, his life after advertising -- and which cola he drinks. (Edited for clarity and space.)
Q: Why did you do this video?
A: I got a call. It was Michael Jacobson (executive director of advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest). I'd done a project with him before, and I'm a big fan of his.
Q: You're a guy who spent most of his career extolling the virtues of junk food for clients from Burger King to Domino's to Coke. Why the change of heart?
A: My views began to change (in 2008), about the time I wrote The 9 Inch Diet, about portion control. I've grown concerned about portion size, because I think we treat soda like a beverage, but it's really a candy.
Q: How much soda is too much?
A: When consumed in small portions, it's not a problem. But in huge quantities, it is. It's portion distortion.
Q: Soda is just one of many causes of obesity.
A: We know that soda is the biggest single contributor of calories in the American diet.
Q: You've got teenage kids. Is the "angry daddy" behind this?
A: My son loves soda. I love soda. My idea is not a world without soda. We just have to recognize the costs of drinking too much of it.
Q: You like soda? What kind do you drink?
A: My family looks for soda made with cane sugar. We have a theory that high fructose corn syrup is a problem. Our favorite here in Boulder is a brand called Izze.
Q: Aren't you telling people not to drink soda?
A: No. I formerly worked on an anti-smoking campaign called Truth. It was not about asking people not to smoke. It was about showing them: Here's the reality. At this point, because of portion sizes, we have the same thing with soda. I think, as a culture, we're getting a wake-up call.
Q: What is that wake-up call?
A: Well, you have a (soft drink) industry with unrelenting profit demands. As it turns out, there's a health cost to those demands. As a society, we're just waking up to that.
Q: Why would this video change anyone's behavior?
A: The Truth (anti-smoking) spots we did were among the most successful social-marketing campaigns to date. There was a 30% decline in teen smoking over two or three years.
Q: Do you think you can do to soda what you did to tobacco?
A: There's no way to know. There are some social parallels. But we're a long ways away from that.
Q: What are the parallels?
A: We were once at a place where tobacco advertising could talk about how soothing it was for your throat or how doctors recommended it. We're still in that place with soft drinks. Some say that if you drink it, you'll be happy, and life will be glorious. But drinking too many soft drinks definitely doesn't equal happiness. Some day soon, when we see that kind of happy advertising for soda, we'll laugh.
Q: You call these bears "The Real Bears," but they're the Coke Polar Bears in parody. Why not say that?
A: They're just some bears. They don't really resemble them. It's interesting what would happen to bears if they had the consumption habits that we do.
Q: C'mon, Alex. These are obviously the Coke Polar Bears in parody. Has your attorney advised you not to admit that?
A: They're just some bears. I have no attorney. I leave it up to people to decide if they see a parallel.
Q: What is it that you hope to accomplish with this video?
A: This is a drop in the bucket. We'll see what it does. The hope is that people will begin to think about drinking sugary beverages and how it affects their health.
Q: Some might think that you're specifically out to get Coke.
A: I'm very empathetic about the position that the (beverage giants) are in. For them to make their business work in the short term, it's probably going to be part of making us sicker. That's a tough position. Most corporations, by design, don't allow for our personal humanity to come through.
Q: What do you want? A soda tax? Ad limits on soda?
A: I'm just one member of society with a point of view that we're getting sick because we're consuming too many sugary beverages. How we, as a culture, choose to deal with it is a group decision. That's how we improve our system. I don't hope about a specific decision, but I think dialogue will help to create one. This is just a conversation starter.
Q: Do you plan to air it on the Super Bowl alongside Coke's ads?
A: This will not be on the Super Bowl.
Q: What else are you working on?
A: I recently invested in an agency dedicated to the resurgence of American manufacturing called Made Movement.
Q: You got rich off of Burger King, Domino's and Coke, and now you're punching them all in the gut. Aren't you a hypocrite?
A: That's fair. When you change your mind about things, you get painted as a hypocrite. I get that. But if I wasn't willing to go though this stage, I couldn't change. People paint others as hypocrites because they want to make people afraid of change. I'm stuck with that. I've changed. Oh, and I never worked on a calorie beverage for Coke. We did Coke Zero.
Q: Anything you'd like to change about the video, now that it's viral?
A: We thought about making a PG version of it. We'd have cut out the erectile dysfunction scene. And the amputation scene was originally pretty grisly. We cut that way down.
Q: The video ends with the bears all pouring their cola into the ocean. Isn't that the wrong environmental message?
A: That was the No. 1 reaction we got: What will happen to the fish? That's so wild. We're willing to drink cola and serve it to our kids, but we're concerned the moment we pour four bottles of it into the ocean.
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