Coke Ads Delightful - Or Disgusting?

"It's 11:30," the blonde whispers.

Breathy, feminine voices take up a cry in chorus.

"Diet Coke break! Diet Coke break!"

Power skirts and heels rush in a blur to the office window.

Outside, a construction worker whips off his hard hat. From her perch inside, a 20-something brunette breaks into a smile of anticipation.

The worker's shirt comes off. He leans bare-chested against a piece of heavy equipment and hoists - a Diet Coke.

"Ah," moans another woman. "That was great."

The camera closes in on the man's naked upper body, the Diet Coke can brushing his lips.

"This," reads the logo, "Is Refreshment."

It certainly is. But for whom?

The commercial, one of seven just released in a new Diet Coke advertising campaign, provokes delight and disgust on the gender front. Roughly, they fall into these camps: Those who see sexual stereotypes overturned and those who only see them reinforced.

The "Diet Coke break" commercial, as the company dubs it, premiered with the six others on Jan. 22. They've begun showing up during prime-time. But this is just a prelude to what Coca-Cola is promoting as center-stage exposure during the Feb. 12-27 coverage of the Olympic Winter Games.

Diet Coke's campaign may be new. But already, even those who haven't seen the "Diet Coke break" commercial are uttering those words dear to advertisers' hearts - "I haven't seen it, but I've heard about it."

The campaign is Diet Coke's debut into the '90s. "Relying on wit and humor," reads a company press release, "each of the ads features an unexpected story-line twist."

"The premise of Diet Coke as a way to refresh one's perspective," the release continues, "is the foundation for our new campaign."

As it turns out, perspective is the key.

The target audience is consumers 25 and older, with, as they say in the advertising biz, "a female lead." Women make up 65 percent of the soft drink's buyers. It's no surprise that Nancy Gibson, worldwide brand director for Diet Coke, says, "Usually, we have made absolutely sure that the female appeal is there."

Of the seven ads, both "Diet Coke break" and a second female-focused spot, "pool hall," appealed most to Coca-Cola's consumer test groups. Just what the appeal is, however, depends on who's talking.

Each has its own theme song from Louis Armstrong's "Kiss to Build A Dream On" to Bobby Darin's "Beyond The Sea" to Dr. John and Ricki Lee Jones' "Makin' Whoopee." They feature the construction worker, two waitresses sunbathing in a diner parking lot, an Evander Holyfield sparring match, Olympic bobsledders, a honeymoon suite, a bubble bath and a pool hall.

While the honeymoon-suite and bubble-bath spots focus on traditional gender images, the "Diet Coke break" and "pool hall" spots are the ones that stand out for their gender statements. And of the two, the "pool hall" commercial is arguably just a modern twist on an old theme.

That commercial opens with a woman squealing to a halt in front of a pool hall in a dusty convertible, a dog in a faded bandanna at her side. She gets out, paces, slams the door and proceeds to unceremoniously throw a variety of male belongings - a suitcase, baseball mitt, a guitar case - through the pool-hall door. The grizzled local men watch silently or ignore her altogether while she stomps a cowboy hat flat.

The dog looks worried. But the woman pets him, takes a swig of Diet Coke and, smiling in satisfaction, drives off into the proverbial sunset.

Listening to a description of this ad, Wendy Kaminer, who writes about gender issues and who is a Radcliffe fellow, observes, "I was remembering Mary Martin in `South Pacific' - washing that man right out of her hair. . . . But it's adding an aura of toughness and control."

If there is anything that defines reactions to the "Diet Coke break" and "pool hall" commercials it is the age-old struggle between men and women for power and control.

The "Diet Coke break" spot, Gibson says, is "a moment to laugh at vive la difference."

The younger men who saw the ad surely seemed to appreciate that sentiment. They projected themselves into the role of the construction worker. Older men conceded that the switch in gender roles was, after all these years, fair play.

And the women, Gibson reported, "had a great deal of fun with it."

Even the women on Coca-Cola's board of directors, she says, "loved it."

The difficulty is that there is no one perspective that men and women share - especially on an issue as divisive as gender. Further, not all women or men see gender issues and roles the same way.

"I think the answers aren't really simple," says Mary Ellen Brown, a University of Missouri assistant professor of communications, who studies gender and TV images.

But listen to the varied reactions and there is one word, said and unsaid, that links them: power.

"There are theories about the power of gaze," Brown says. In the "Diet Coke break" ad, she points out, the women are gazing at the man.

"But it seems," she says, "like a masculine distortion of women's pleasure and attributing a kind of orgasmic pleasure that one assumes that men have."

And there is a parallel message that plays to men, she theorizes, that, "There is a certain kind of sense that these women are dangerous. They are going to start experiencing a raw sexuality that men always have been privy to in this culture."

Virginia Schein of Gettysburg College specializes in sexual stereotyping. She says, "On one hand, it's a reaction of turning the tables. . . . But, if you look at it seriously and say (one) wasn't so great, then why is the (other)?"

"Sure it's amusing and at least it makes us smile," she says. "But maybe these advertising companies ought to stop using that kind of focus on a woman or a man."

The "pool hall" spot, Schein says, doesn't fit in the same category. But, again, power is implied.

"The woman is doing what needs doing," she says.