A buddy of mine drinks diet soda, and the first couple of times I saw him drinking it, I thought, "chicks drink diet soda." How and why, I don't know, but that's the image ingrained in my head of diet soda.

I drink diet soda occasionally. (Basically, it's when I run out of my own and raid my wife's stash of Diet Dr. Pepper -- hey, it really does taste more like regular Dr. Pepper.) It doesn't make me feel like a girl or less of a man or anything like that.

what title an advertiser puts on their beverage. I know countless men who drink diet soft drinks. It never occurred to me that the word "diet" had anything to do with masculinity or femininity. If it ever occurred to them, they didn't let on about it.

Coke Zero has been around for like 3 years. I like it because it tastes good. I also drink Diet Dr Pepper. Slow news day?

If you go to Europe, it's my recollection that I never found "Diet Coke" anywhere; it was always called "Coke Light". Maybe the french are manlier than Americans...

Yes, "diet" IS less manly. Why? Because "diet" is marketed towards the insecure who believe that a tiny amount less of sugar is really what's holding them back from the ideal body image. Overall, that there aren't very many young men in that group.

Furthermore, most people (like myself) see the word "diet" and think "tastes like crap." We've tasted "diet" before, and it's nasty. "Zero" doesn't have the predetermined association. Once it becomes widespread, I expect that those who reject diet will reject zero as well. Those that don't are the same that will go in for diet anyway - people who have the body image issues that cause them to rationalize drinking (and ultimately becoming accustomed to like) something that really isn't much better for them and that tastes downright awful.

Surprised that it took this long for everyone to notice. Color' "scheme" is black. Name: Zero, don't need nuthin' from nobody. Tagline? A command: "Everybody chill" Having been on insulin for decades, I can now order a manly Jack and Zero. (Sounds like a vaudville act though.) Very uncomfortable a few years ago with my Jack and Tab. Noticed a rough looking 20 something in front of me in Safeway with a Coke Zero fridge pack. Hard to picture him with a case of Fresca.

Coke has hit a home run. A big, testosterone fueled, bases-clearing, game-winning, get the girl home run.

As a 23 year old male, I guess I fall right into the target marketing demographic. I've never really considered the role gender might play into my choice of Coke Zero, and I cannot say I've even seen any advertising for it that I can recall. What initially attracted me to the product was the black cans and boxes. I'm willing to admit I'm a sucker for anything visually different. I knew it had zero calories and was going to dismiss it as tasting nasty like diet Coke, but it actually does taste like Coca-Cola Classic. So my attention was grabbed by the black (a darker and therefore manlier color?) packaging, but I continue to drink because it tastes like Coke and it has no calories. It just seems like a win/win.

What a stupid, petty, pathetic thing to give any thought whatsoever to. It's demeaning to the real stories you run on this page that you get so exercised over something as banal as this. Get some perspective.

I too almost always associated "diet" drinks with women for whatever reason--I remember I had a shop teacher in junior high who always drank Diet Coke, which struck me as really anachronistic--but if you think about it, as much as Coke Zero might be marketed towards men, Diet whatever has almost always been advertised if not exclusively to women, at least moreso than for men or gender-neutrally. I recall a Diet Coke commercial a few years back that had an office full of women eagerly awaiting the big, brawny Diet Coke delivery guy. It may have changed a bit, recently, but going by the ads they have up on their website, even their latest commercials almost all show women drinking and/or after the Diet Coke. It's strange, I suppose, but shouldn't be entirely surprising that the gender connotation is there when Coke has been actively promoting it for the last 25 years.

Someone is actually paid to cut and paste fluff about soda marketing from the NYT?

Glad Salon has feminism so powerfully represented by the "broad sheet" which is by no means an insulting joke or anything. Certainly glad I'm not paying for it.

And I drink diet coke/pepsi for the most part. It has nothing to do with calories, and everything to do with avoiding high fructose corn syrup. And frankly, a regular coke tastes disgustingly sweet and syrupy to me.

However, I recently was buying my diet pepsi at a gas station, and the clerk was surprised and incredulously asked why I was getting diet. I just explained that regular tastes gross to me, but she still seemed a little put off. Struck me as odd.

I've never tried coke zero or any of those, not sure why, except they seem to smack of marketing, and I am generally distrustful of products marketed towards me.

When I was going out with a diabetic the waiters *always* put the diet coke in front of me and the regular coke in front of him.

I think this marketing campaign will work.

Back in the early 1980's Cecil Adams' "Straight Dope" column (published in the Chicago Reader and other "alternative" papers) tackled the inside story of why the Coca-Cola Company invented "Diet Coke" when it already had a diet beverage, Tab. Their market research showed that Tab was perceived as strictly a "chick drink" and repositioning it as a unisex beverage was thought to have insurmountable difficulties. So...they made a slightly different formulation, labeled it Diet Coke, and included both men and women of yuppie-type appearances in the advertising. Presto - a hot new product with roughly 50-50 gender mix among buyers.

Apparently since then, the public perception of Diet Coke is changing, once again seeing it as primarily female-oriented, hence the "new" macho Coke Zero.

What next - Coke Negative Calories, aimed at those (primarily female) dieters who insist that the energy used to chew on a celery stick neutralizes the calories therein?