Case Study - Coca Cola

Coca Cola is an American multinational beverage company that manufactures and retails non alcoholic beverages and syrups. The company can be best known for its product “coke,” which is well sold and purchased all over the world. Coke was first created in 1886 by a pharmacist named John Stith Pemberton and the formula and brand that we know today was made public by Asa Griggs Candler in the year 1892.

The company operates by producing syrup concentrates for various bottling companies in the world and has acquired a lot of juice and drink companies over the years. Minute Maid, Thums Up and Fuze Beverage are few companies that the brand has acquired and Coca-Cola also went into purchasing Columbia Pictures, which was then sold to Sony.

Other than Coke, the company is known for its other famous drinks like fanta, sprite, 7 Up and healthy products like Minute Maid, Dasani water and Powerade. Coca-Cola was named as the NO 1 selling brand in the word in 2010 and a report in 2005 said that of all the 50 billion beverages consumed worldwide, Coca Cola trademarked beverages accounted for approximately 1.5billion.

Coca Cola is such a big brand now because it looks to the future. The company looks at ways that it can follow the trends and forces that will shape the business for the better.

To refresh the world, inspire optimism and happiness and also make a difference is the company’s mission and from every public endeavour the company takes these are seen.The Coca Cola brand has become a friend to many, which is funny concerning that they only sell drinks and the company has done this by creating value for its customers through its relationship marketing.

Coca Cola’s campaigns all touch those areas that are important to their customers. They touch their hearts and make the customers believe that the brand doesn’t just sell beverages. Coca-Cola also presents itself as a helper of important human relationships and long-lasting memories.

Some examples can be found in the companies “America is beautiful” ad that shows the beauty of America’s diversity and culture and the brand has also come up with multiple creative marketing strategies that go beyond the norm.

The Friendly twist and hello happiness phone campaign are brilliant ideas of this. For the friendly twist, Coca Cola marketed themselves by providing bottles with caps that couldn’t be opened unless it was opened with another bottle. The company brought this to new college students in Columbia and was a way to create new friendships through opening the bottles.

The hello happiness phone campaign, which is one of my favourites, provided phone booths for South Asian workers in Dubai who couldn’t afford to call their families back home. What I find amazing about this campaign was that Coca-Cola created phone booths than ran on bottle caps. I am sure the campaign very well left the Coca Cola image in the hearts of those people and also increased the sale of Coke bottles in the area.

Coca Cola has also created a relationship with its customers and people around the world by its social media strategies. Through twitter, tumblr, facebook, instagram and Youtube, the company brings its customers into the brand experience and communicates with them.

During the 2012 Super Bowl, Coca Cola created an ad campaign that involved two polar bears reacting to the game in real time. The company also provided communication with the polar bears through Facebook and Twitter by the viewers posting photos and asking questions. At the end of the live stream nine million consumers had viewed the campaign across various platforms.

One of company’s most successful campaigns is its “share a coke” campaign. Here the brand used 250 of the most common U.s.millennial names and printed them on Coke cans. According to the Wall Street Journal, 125,000 social media post talked about the campaign in a shocking short period and over 353,000 virtual bottles were shared through the Coke’s campaign website.

The campaign first began in Australia and New Zealand and Coca Cola saw a 7% increase in the sales of its products and earned over 18 million impressions on social media.The campaign was then expanded across 20 global markets and gained the company more Facebook followers. The campaign was successful because of its appeal to individual consumers. They grabbed the public's attention by putting their names the products.

Coca Cola has had many successful campaigns and ideas but this doesn’t mean that it hasn’t had some bad ones. In 1985, the company made a very bad decision by changing the Coca Cola original formula. The new product was known as the New Coke and was said to be sweeter. Pepsi, the company’s rival had been seeing huge sales and Coca Cola wasn’t. Therefore market research was done, with the results that the taste of Coke was the problem.

When the New Coke launched, a poll stated that 13 percent of soda drinkers liked it but the success didn’t last long. Pepsi launched a commercial called "Somebody out there tell me why Coke did it? Why did Coke change?” and fans got angry. Grassroot campaigns to force Coca-Cola to bring back the original Coke came up and in the end the company did.

---

References

Coca-Cola. (2017). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola

Caneja, J. D. (2016). Coca-Cola and Relationship Marketing. Retrieved from http://www.theydontloveyou.com/coca-cola-relationship-marketing/

Coca Cola - Hello Happiness Phone Booth. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pF55yy0H3g

Z. (2014). Coca Cola Friendly Twist. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otx1R8mcoYM

Minguez, k. (2014) Case Study: 3 Famous Coca-Cola Marketing Campaigns. Retrieved from http://www.webpagefx.com/blog/marketing/case-study-coca-cola-marketing/

Gould, R. G. (2015). This mistake from 30 years ago almost destroyed Coca-Cola. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/new-coke-the-30th-anniversary-of-coca-colas-biggest-mistake-2015-4

Haoues, R. (2015). ​30 years ago today, Coca-Cola made its worst mistake. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/30-years-ago-today-coca-cola-new-coke-failure/