Milk Bar Level: 100. A new ad from Organic Valley turns the idea of a coffee shop on its head, with the La Farge, Wisconsin dairy co-op serving $2 half and half shots in a small New York City pop-up. The coffee–set on the condiments bar and served in pitchers marked “decaf”, “light roast”, and “dark roast”–is free.
First picked up by Mashable, the ad is a spoof on how many perceive modern coffee culture. And sure, it’s a pretty easy target (and a popular one), but the commercial gives a lighthearted ribbing to the coffee world without throwing shade at the craft itself. It takes potshots at things like the idea of needing a hip, small NYC storefront or a slick rebranding with “an X in it, or some arrows.” And if you, dear Reader, haven’t made a crack about an X or arrows being in a logo, then you probably have an X or arrows in your logo.
Organic Valley is not new to the spoof. Their two previous ads, “Real Morning Report” and “Save The Bros,” have playfully skewered other oft caricatured topics: the idyllic morning routine seen in yogurt commercials and bros (duh), respectively.
Despite Mashable’s hot take that this commercial “is meant to highlight the pretensions of hip big-city coffee culture” and that it “tricks coffee snobs into drinking straight half and half,” the ad is lighthearted and pretty funny. And for what it’s worth, most of the “coffee snobs” (read: normal people that happen to visit the pop-up) seem drawn in by the spectacle and appear to lack all that pretense those gosh darn coffee snobs are replete with.
At the very least, the video a good way to kill a few minutes between writing angry internet screeds defending coffee culture.
Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.
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