There's but one calorie in PepsiMax and, as we know, one is the loneliest number. So it only makes sense that a new flight of print ads from BBDO Dusseldorf show a cute, but sad little personification of a calorie committing suicide in a few ultraviolent ways, including a gunshot, a hanging, self-immolation and even slitting his little blue wrist with a razor blade.

Needless to say, message boards today have been popping with much anti-Pepsi sentiment, most of it centered on the claim that these kinds of ads are insensitive to the issue of suicide. Suicide ads have generally landed agencies and marketers in hot water. In 2007, General Motors got bogged down in a similar issue, when a Super Bowl ad depicting a robot considering suicide caused an uproar. Likewise, Volkswagen pulled an ad in which a man tried to jump off a roof.

Conversations are circulating that the posters look like a PR stunt to get the brand and its one-calorie theme mentioned on talk shows and blogs. It had better work out that way. BBDO’s position on Pepsi is increasingly shaky. It just lost the main Pepsi account in the U.S. to TBWA/Chiat/Day.

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