In this week'sStrategic Marketing Insights
Since the company was founded over 130 years ago, innovative marketing and advertising have been the key players in Coca-Cola’s immense success. Even in its early days, the company invested heavily in building its brand identity and awareness. In 1889, Coca-Cola spent around$11,000 ($300,000 today)just on marketing and by 1910, the advertising budget had grown to $1 million!
These large initial investments in advertising helped establish brand positioning during Coca-Cola’s formative years. As many companies grow, they scale back on ads once consumer recognition is achieved; not Coca-Cola, though. The brand has continued to aggressively invest in marketing, spending around 10% of its total revenue – around $4 billion today – on commercials, sponsorships, print ads, and promotional merchandise.
This heavy advertising focus and its many innovative marketing campaigns, such as the viral “Share a co*ke” campaign, have helped push Coca-Cola to global dominance. In 2020, the company was ranked the 6th most valuable brand in the world by Forbes.
In this article, we’ll explore the strategies, campaigns, and concepts that define Coca-Cola’s marketing success.
🟡How They Expanded Internationally
Coca-Cola’s global dominance did not happen overnight – it resulted from a carefully planned strategy for international expansion. The company began targeting key markets early on, establishing bottling plants to produce and distribute co*ke locally. It also tailored its marketing to appeal to local tastes and cultures while maintaining brand consistency. Here’s an overall look at their foundational, intercontinental, personalised system:
🟡Brand Identity and Messaging
Any brand is first identified and recognised by its logo; and perhaps no other brand understood this more than Coca-Cola.
Maintaining the same brand logo while pushing consistent and compelling messaging ensured brand loyalty and positioning. Coca-Cola’s labelling pattern has become a distinctive trademark for the brand; everyone knows co*ke when they see it.
Some key elements of Coca-Cola’s branding and messaging include:
🟡Mergers, Partnerships, and Acquisitions
Acquisitions
Here are several prominent acquisitions that assisted the brand’s expansion:
Mergers
In 1989, Coca-Cola merged with Spanish soft drink brand KAS. This strengthened their presence in the European market by adding KAS brands like KAS Nixe, KAS Tónica and KAS Limon.
In 1999, Coca-Cola merged with Schweppes Beverages, gaining global control of Schweppes brands like Canada Dry, Vernors, and Orangina. This expanded their non-co*ke branded offerings.
In 2010, they merged with Japanese juice brand Zoom Companies Co Ltd, giving them a direct foothold in the Japanese juice market, which was Zoom’s stronghold.
Partnerships
Besides owning many brands, The Coca-Cola Company has created several successful strategic partnerships contributing to its exponential growth.
One such partnership was in 1995 when McDonald’s first entered the market and needed a distributor. A deal was made whereby Mcdonald’s would sell Coca-Cola products exclusively. Coca-Cola benefited substantially due to McDonalds’ staggering international success.
Coca-Cola also partnered with other big restaurant chains, including Burger King, Chili’s, Chipotle, and Domino’s Pizza.
🟡Innovative Campaigns
No one does marketing campaigns as Coca-Cola does. Over the decades, the company has launched many innovative and memorable campaigns that have helped solidify and enhance its brand identity and positioning. Some of their most iconic campaigns include:
🟡Social Media Strategy
Coca-Cola understands social media’s value fordriving engagement. With a massive social media presence boasting millions of followers globally, Coca-Cola knows how to use its various social media accounts on different platforms in a way that enhances brand awareness and gets engagement from customers.
co*ke has used its social media to incorporate positivity into its brand with campaigns such as its#RefreshtheFeedthat passed a message of starting afresh to its followers.
To top it all off, co*ke participated in social issues such as theblackout trendagainst hate speech sometime in 2020. All of these have established strong brand positioning with their consumers, who feel supported and part of Coca-Cola.
Aside from Coca-cola’s involvement in social issues, it also uses User Generated Content, such as the#shareaco*ke campaign,to drive customer engagement. The brand is also active on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, Instagram, and Pinterest.
🟡Conclusion
Recommended next reads
Coca-Cola has shown what it takes to build and maintain one of the world’s most iconic and valuable brands. At the core of their success is an unmoving focus on innovative marketing, creative advertising, and consistent brand identity.
But Coca-Cola never got stuck in the past. As times changed, the company consistently reinvented and reinvigorated its marketing efforts through fresh ideas, new technologies, and strategic acquisitions. Their obsession with staying relevant, elegant, and creative has allowed one of the oldest brands to feel still modern while staying true to its core values of togetherness, joy, and optimism.
Their story serves as an inspiration – and a blueprint – for others aiming to achieve the same kind of enduring success through innovative, creative, and strategically savvy marketing.
The lessons from Coca-Cola’s marketing approach are invaluable for any business wanting to build an iconic global brand:
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