With profits down, Coca-Cola shills expensive milk

According to an Ad Age report, Coca-Cola is looking to dip into your wallet with Fairlife, a new lactose-free, highly priced milk. The company’s profits were down 14 percent last year, and they’re looking to diversify.

What on earth is ultra-filtered milk? Why does it sound like something we’d be asked to drink on Mars?

This ad campaign is a severe turn around from their first attempt to get us on board with their “science milk“, a campaign that featured women wearing milk that was ultimately deemed sexist. And it’s not like Fairlife won’t have an uphill battle—a lot of people aren’t even drinking dairy milk anymore:

The dairy milk category could use a boost. Sales have stagnated as a result of competition from a range of beverages, including plant-based milk like almond milk, said Virginia Lee, an analyst with Euromonitor International. Euromonitor projects that fresh/pasteurized milk sales will fall 10.8 percent from 2014 to 2019.

If we’re entering the plants vs. cows arena, I’ve seen a lot of science fiction movies in my time so my money is on plants.

Coca-Cola sells its products through McDonald’s, who also saw an intensely sharp drop in profits last year, earning 30 percent less in their July-September quarter. Should Michelle Obama give herself a high-five?

Danielle Henderson is a lapsed academic, heavy metal karaoke machine, and culture editor at Fusion. She enjoys thinking about how race, gender, and sexuality shape our cultural narratives, but not in a boring way.