Mentos 1, Diet Coke 0

[by Todd] How is it a soda company can have no sense of humor?

In case you missed it, Monday's Wall Street Journal had a great story about the fun people are having mixing Diet Coke and Mentos. What made it so interesting was not the two guys who created a Bellagio-like fountain with 101 bottles of Diet Coke and 523 Mentos shooting 20-feet high.

No, the really interesting part was the dramatically different way the two companies have reacted.
Mentos got it. Coke didn't.

"We are tickled pink by it," says Pete Healy, vice president of marketing for Mentos' U.S. division.

"It's an entertaining phenomenon," said Coke spokeswoman Susan McDermott. "We would hope people want to drink [Diet Coke] more than try experiments with it..." But Ms. McDermott says that the "craziness with Mentos ... doesn't fit with the brand personality" of Diet Coke.

Two guys create a video with your product. It's viewed more than 800,000 times in pure viral fashion. And all Diet Coke can say is that it doesn't "fit with the brand personality?"

How clueless can you be?!?! Unless your brand is rooted in life and death moments, then this is absolutely in keeping with the brand personality. That's because brand personality is what your customers say it is.

The irony here is that Coke has seemingly gone to great lengths to embrace consumer generated content. MyCoke.com is built around the concept of create and share. Now we see that Coke wants consumers getting involved only if it is on the company's terms.

Killjoy.