Watch the full ad here:

Rob's thoughts:

"I used to work at a brilliant and very cool comms agency for many years. One of the floors was for the PR teams. Sometimes I’d visit them — they would take pity on how I was dressed and give me free clothes from the showroom.

One thing I noticed was that, without exception, every single person on that floor had a can of Diet Coke on their desk. I could never tell if they were drinking the Silver Ambulance because they were hungover or if it was just part of the job.

Diet Coke is the sexy fizzy pop — the one that belongs next to your MacBook and the Italian edition of Vogue you stole from reception. The reason why it is sexy is because of the mid-90s ad The Diet Coke Break Ad.

The premise was simple: a group of office women pause work at exactly 11:30 to watch a shirtless construction worker crack open a Diet Coke while Etta James belts “I Just Want to Make Love to You.” It was cheeky, funny, and just a little bit scandalous — a cultural reset that flipped the male gaze on its head and let women be the ones doing the ogling.

This campaign was iconic because it sold a moment, not a product benefit. No talk of taste or calories — just a ritual you wanted to be part of. It became watercooler talk (literally) and turned 11:30 into an appointment to stop, look, and smile. And crucially, Diet Coke kept it going — with new ads, new settings, and just enough reinvention to keep the anticipation alive.

What can we learn from it now? Build worlds, not one-offs. Give people something to share, a tiny drama they can talk about, and create work that takes big swings. In a world of low attention and duel screens , Diet Coke Break proves that when you create an ad that feels like a collective experience, it can live rent-free in people’s heads for decades."