Concept: Funhouse Mirrors On Vending Machines
October 9th, 2009
What is this, you ask? Well, it’s a concept for a vending machine selling diet soda–in this case, Coca-Cola Light, which is the European name for Diet Coke.
The vending machine doubles as a funhouse-style mirror that makes you look thinner. As the creative brief says:
Because of the rounded form of the vender the mirror changes the viewers perception and will see a thinner version of him- or herself. [sic]
Because no matter what your size and shape is, if there’s one thing we know, you’re not thin enough!
(Thanks to Rebby-Q for the link!)
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Advertising, International, Tidbit
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I see your point… but I so love ALL fun house mirrors that I just want to go stand in front of it. They should have a whole series that make you thinner, fatter, taller, shorter!!!
Um, shouldn’t the mirror actually make you look fatter, so you’ll think you should be drinking more diet coke?
Now if it made my hair not be frizzy that would be something…..Or how about my wallet FATTER…that would be far more attractive.
Silly marketing.
I have an idea, how about it masking the completely devoid of nutritional value drink to look like some water, or fruit juice? So you can actually be healthier? Oh wait, I forgot, being thinner magically makes you healthy already…..
This is an annoying concept for sure but oh how I love funhouse mirrors.
I was with my sister and daughter a while back shopping for clothes for the daughter and while she was in the dressing room trying on stuff, my sister and I were standing just outside of it when we happened to notice that the mirror we were in front of completely distorted our shapes and had a hilarious good time making funny faces and goofing off in front of our comic reflections. That stuck with me because there was a time I couldn’t stand any mirror that showed my full body and the distorted ones only made me feel worse.
I’m sure poisoning yourself with aspartame will make U look like that…
I remember seeing one of those mirrors as a teen at a weight loss meeting that I attended and it crept me out. I was only a few pounds overweight if that and that mirror made me look sickly. They gave me a weight goal of 112, much too low since I look like a stick figure at 124.
I was starving myself at 118 and still not losing weight until I added excessive exercise. I didn’t think the club intended me to risk my health at that point and I quit trying to reach their ridiculous goal. I went back to the club when my weight returned to a healthier 124 and they told me at the desk that I was too thin to need to lose weight. I didn’t have the guts to tell them that the previous year that they insisted that I was still 12 pounds too fat at that weight.
So I’m guess the point of the mirror is to show you how “thin you could be if you drank diet coke” right? While I applaud the marketing team for thinking outside the box (…really, really outside the box), somehow it does not seem like a very ethical strategy, nor do I believe it will really actually work.
At the most people will come up the mirror for it’s novelty, whether or not they know it’s a funhouse mirror. I think Coke gives people too much credit by predicting the public will automatically think “Wow, look how thin I am! Gosh, if I drink coke I can actually look like this!”
Besides, anyone who’s read a fitness magazine in the last 5 years knows that diet soda has actually been known to cause more cravings and unnecessary hunger due to the fact that your body is tricked into feeling as if it’s getting energy when really well it’s not.
Does this actually work?!?! It seems to me to be the cheesy pick-up line of advertising.
I suspect Ann Taylor Loft has these mirrors in the dressing rooms. I always seem to have a different appearance in the clothes there, compared to when I bring it home.
I think it would be pretty neat to see one of those vending machines, just to play around in front of it for a bit.
It does annoy me a bit too, seeing all the slams against Diet Coke being unhealthy. Why does everything have to be healthy? Maybe some people do drink it out of some crazy notion that it will make them thin, but I drink it because it’s something I enjoy. To me it’s no different than eating a donut or candy, no nutritional value but I like it.