Mike Cascino

11/12/13

MKTG 384

Coca-Cola: A Marketing Leader Worldwide

The Coca-Cola Company is not only the leading brand in the soft drink marketplace but the leader in promoting and selling products as well. Marketing is defined as anything that creates consumer demand for a product, and after 126 years The Coca-Cola Company has perfected their marketing strategy to do just that. The Company utilizes their marketing programs to create awareness and increase product appeal in order to reach consumers. These programs that the Company have in place include actions such as advertising, product and packaging research, establishing brand position, and seeking customer feedback (Jesudasen). The Coca-Cola Company has been extremely successful for so many years because they are able to use these programs to generate information about consumers. They then use the information collected to develop marketing campaigns in order to increase customer demand for their product. The Company’s balance of local and global strength is the driving force behind the worth of their brand totaling 78.5 billion dollars (Cooper).
Last April Coca-Cola launched their new “Share a Coke” campaign in which they replaced their world-renowned Coca-Cola logo with 250 of Great Britain’s most popular names. Their goal behind this new campaign was to make consumers feel special in hopes that they would share a Coke with family, friends and loved ones. The Coca-Cola Company included the hash-tag #shareacoke on each bottle to help promote the campaign online. Shortly after the campaign was launched social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook were buzzing with pictures of personalized cans and bottles and in turn the “Share a Coke” campaign spread to a much broader audience. Data suggests that the “Share a Coke” campaign increased sales as well as consumer perception of the brand. Figures released in July show sales on all Coca-Cola branded products increased by 2.9 percent in that three-month period. For those three months, Coca-Cola brand sales reached a reported £292.93 million. The volume- in liters- of Coca-Cola beverages drank in this period also increased by 2.9 percent, measuring around 271.17 million (O’Reilly). Recently, Coca-Cola decided to launch an ad thanking their customers for the great success of the “Share a Coke” campaign. The company took out ads on the back page of The Metro, an English newspaper, displaying a bottle of Coke along with all the pictures they collected from social media. The text on the bottom of the advertisement stated “Thanks for sharing a Coke with us this summer” (O’Reilly). Coca-Cola’s global dominance is directly correlated to the outstanding success of their marketing and advertising programs.
After seeing the great success of the “Share a Coke” campaign this past summer, Coca-Cola has decided to launch a campaign very similar to its original except it will be catered toward the holiday season. Coca-Cola is expanding its ”Share a Coke” theme to Christmas, rolling out Christmas-themed packaging that encourages consumers to “Share a Coke with Santa”. People will be able to digitally customize a special ribbon designed bottle to send to friends and family via the Coca-Cola Facebook page (O’Reilly). Also, alongside Coca-Cola’s famous Holidays are Coming trucks the company plans to launch a new ad showing people doing random acts of kindness for the people they love. Sometime around Thanksgiving, Coca-Cola will be airing its “Shooting Star” campaign. It features the Coca-Cola Santa in his workshop trying to create a shooting star. It then shows other people performing acts of kindness, from saving a tree with a red ribbon to a father buying his son his first car, set to a soundtrack by Elvis Presley (O’Reilly). The Coca-Cola Company is well known for spreading holiday cheer so it will be interesting to note consumer’s reactions to these new campaigns. Coca-Cola’s success in the past bodes well for