Who?s the bottle bombshell?

Ash’s waist gets compared to a Coke bottle in the cola’s new commercial. Mallika Sherawat goes a step further and turns onto a 7-up bottle when she wishes for curves. Priyanka Chopra and Kareena Kapoor both shimmy around in skin-tight costumes, pushing Pepsi. Summer is for soft drinks, but never have we seen so many sizzlers burning the air-waves at the same time. Says ad-man Bharat Dabholkar: “More A-list actresses are plugging drinks than ever before. When you don’t have ideas you turn to big stars for promotion.” The ad world can get on its intellectual high-horse, but the cola chicks are hot, hot hot. Who is the sexiest soft-drink siren?

Bobby Darling says both Ash and Sherawat look great but “while Mallika is hotter in general, Aishwarya looks sexier when you compare the two bottle-shaped women.” Arshad Warsi gives Ash his thumbs up too but thinks the bottle-shape reference in the Coke and 7-up ads, “does objectify women in some way.” But photographer Vikram Bawa has no qualms about Ash’s ‘Kamar Coca Cola’ or Sherawat’s, ‘I want to be curvy’. “You can’t get so serious,” he says, before choosing Rai as the fizziest.

Manish Malhotra picks Kareena Kapoor (unsurprising since he designed the curve-enhancing costumes of both Pepsi endorsers): “She’s sexy and has a girlish charm about her that’s very magical.”

Amrita Arora agrees “Kareena definitely looks the hottest. She has an edge over the others with her youth and is just exceptionally beautiful.”

Niketan Madhok doesn’t find any of the ads sexist either. “If you use someone like Mallika Sherawat, whose USP is her body, to promote your product, it’s great to make the shape connection,” he says, adding, “The ad will have mass appeal because people haven’t seen Mallika in a beverage ad before. I can’t pick the sexiest from these women, but Mallika certainly has the oomph to carry it off.”

Which brings us back to Dabholkar, “The ads may all be terrible but at least the Mallika ad has some thought behind it.” Mallika is more refreshing for the mind too, eh?

First Published: Apr 21, 2006 02:57 IST