A 3D billboard at Guarulhos International Airport in Sao Paulo is showcases Coca-Cola's "Masterpiece" campaign by animating Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" as a girl whose life purpose it is to put bottles of Coke into a pipe that leads to the vending machine for the soft drink.
This is not "real magic TM" as the Coke video declares. It is a travesty of art that reduces a masterpiece to a Disney-style short film.
I can just picture the thought process behind this with a discussion of the creative team that went like this:
Rich: We need something everyone recognizes as a masterpiece!
Josh: But it has to not be under copyright!
Rich: Right!
Dave: How about Mona Lisa?
Rich Maybe, but can we find something else?
Dave: Vermeer!
Rich: What?
Dave: ChatGPT says one of his paintings is really famous because there was a movie about it.
Josh: Oh, yeah, "Girl With a Pearl Earring." So long as that's not under copyright, it should be good.
Rich: Yeah, any woman in a famous piece of art acting as a waitress to get you to buy Coke should work.
High fives all around.
And so you have it. The enigmatic subject of Vermeer's masterpiece is reduced to Disney-heroine-as-serving girl to allow Coke to appropriate high culture to sell you brown-colored carbonated water filled with ingredients that are detrimental to your health.
I'm fine with a brand promoting itself and with showing off 3D effects and other high tech. But it should have gone the route of creating its own character for this rather than stealing art that is not copyright protected.
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