Coca-Cola is making jump scares feel ‘great’ in its new Coke Zero ad

Coca-Cola’s existing ad campaign, titled #JustAddCokeZero has recently launched a new ad which is claiming to make jump scares taste great. Starring Tiger Shroff, the ad shows a jump scare getting interrupted because the female lead in the ad runs out of Coke Zero, prompting the monster from the movie to exclaim Shroff’s iconic, “Choti Bacchi Ho Kya?”

The balance of the horror universe is, however, restored when Shroff just adds a Coke Zero to his Swiggy InstaMart and gets it delivered in under 10 minutes, resuming the jump scare and making it taste great too.

Shroff has been the face of Coca-Cola’s Coke Zero commercials in India since February 2023. He does resonate with the audience as the athletic, health-conscious type. The fact that he hails from the younger crop of actors also helps Coke’s cause, as it is the younger audience that is particularly concerned with curbing its sugar intake.

The clever integration of Shroff’s popular “Choti Bacchi Ho Kya?” exclamation, which went viral in the past, also rings a bell with the audience and shows that the creators were paying attention. Kriti Sanon was seen in the last Coke Zero Sugar ad. 

The distinction between Coke Zero and Coke Zero Sugar is primarily in the name and its recipe, with the latter aiming to taste even more like the original Coca-Cola.   

Coca-Cola also seems to have collaborated with Swiggy Instamart in this installation because, in the ad, Shroff is seen just adding Coke Zero to his InstaMart cart, and a Swiggy rider shows up almost instantly, justifying just how instant Swiggy’s mart truly is.

Surprisingly, Coca-Cola was introduced to the world as a headache remedy by a doctor called John Pemberton in 1886 on pharmacy counters in Atlanta, Georgia. To the unacquainted, this fact may truly come as a surprise, given that modern-day doctors would never endorse, let alone prescribe as a remedy, a beverage known to have about 40 grams of sugar in a 375-ml glass.

After being the king of soda for almost a century, the sugar content in the bottle began to concern the masses. Allegedly, Coca-Cola, once the world’s favourite drink, had now started to fall out of favour with health-conscious consumers due to its high sugar content and calorie count.

Coke’s answer to the rise of anti-sugar sentiment in the masses? Not Coke Zero yet. In 1963, Coca-Cola launched Tab, its first diet cola for ‘keeping tabs’ on your weight. Diet Coke was later launched in 1982, followed by Coke Zero in 2005. All these successive sugar-free variants were formulated to taste more and more like the original Coke. 

Coke Zero is the sugar-free answer that worked its way up for the brand, and since then, there has been no going back.