Running head: COCA COLA ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN 1

Share a Coke: An Advertising Campaign by Coca Cola

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COCA COLA ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN 2

Executive Summary

Coca Cola is one of the largest beverage manufacturing companies in the world and have a

presence in around 200 countries of the world. It sells 3500 different products and had a

partnership with 250 bottling companies worldwide. Coca Cola has a share of around 35 percent

of the total world market in the beverage industry. Recently, Coca Cola has realized that their

presence in the Australian market has been declining, so the company sought to launch an

advertising campaign to increase their brand values and sales. The cultural difference of

Australian people with other European countries really makes it difficult to launch any

advertising campaign. Australian population is somewhat introvert and egalitarian society and

they do not accept a big brand until the brand thinks from their level of understanding. So, Coca

Cola launched an innovative advertising campaign by manufacturing bottles having the common

name of the Australian people printed on the bottle instead of the brand name. This idea has

really clicked inside the mind of Australian people and they rushed to the shops to buy a bottle

having their name, which they share on social networking sites with their friends and family

members. This has started a trend on the social networking sites and Coca Cola gained its brand

values and had an increase in sales.

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Table of Contents
Share a Coke: An Advertising Campaign by Coca Cola..................................................... 4

1.0 Problem Analysis .......................................................................................................... 4

1.1 General Trends in Advertiser’s External Environment ............................................. 4

1.2 Product Positioning Strategy..................................................................................... 5

1.3 Competition Analysis ................................................................................................ 5

1.4 Target Audience Identification .................................................................................. 6

1.5 Problems and Goals .................................................................................................. 7

2.0 Creative Strategy........................................................................................................... 8

2.1 The Main Idea ........................................................................................................... 8

2.2 Various Advertising Executions ................................................................................ 8

2.3 How this Strategy Helped the Company to Achieve Goals? .................................... 9

3.0 Media Strategy ............................................................................................................ 10

3.1 Media Selection ...................................................................................................... 10

3.2 Influence of the Media Strategy on Consumers ...................................................... 10

4.0 The Results...................................................................................................................11

4.1 Impact of Campaign .................................................................................................11

5.0 Personal Views ............................................................................................................ 12

References ......................................................................................................................... 14
COCA COLA ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN 4

Share a Coke: An Advertising Campaign by Coca Cola

1.0 Problem Analysis

In the year 2012, one of the famous beverage brands of the world; Coca Cola decided to

do something unusual that was never tried and tested before. The company had started a

campaign called ‘share a coke, ’ in some of the main states of Australia. Coca Cola had realized

during the month of September 2012, that the consumption rate of Coca Cola cold drinks had

surged to around 50 percent. So, the company decided to make this innovative move. Coca Cola

got an overwhelming response from their ‘share a coke, ’ campaign and the consumption rate of

Coca Cola soft drinks had increased by around 7 percent.

1.1 General Trends in Advertiser’s External Environment

Initially, Coca Cola had launched this campaign in Australia in the year 2012. Then, after

the huge success of ‘share a coke’ campaign in Australia, the company had decided to further

launch it in some other countries like UK and USA. Coca Cola had used the power of social

media and customization to attract new customers. When people entered into the some of the

famous malls of Australia in September, 2012, then they were really baffled to see some of the

bottles being tagged with their names. The customers were really fascinated with the idea of

having their names on the bottle of their favourite soft drink. This had started a stir among the

customers and they started a trend of sharing a selfie with the bottle of coke having their name on

the bottle and tweet with a tag #ShareaCoke. The Coca Cola company had become successful to

use some of the great features of social sharing and social networks and #ShareaCoke became

one of the highest trending tags on twitter, Facebook, and other social media websites. There

were around 235,000 tweets of such selfie messages and around 111,000 fans had responded to
COCA COLA ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN 5

this tweet. Coca Cola had sold around 150 million personalized bottles in the US, UK, and

Australia with the help of this campaign (Incintro, 2014).

1.2 Product Positioning Strategy

‘Share a coke’ campaign will be remembered through the decades for its most affordable

and innovative advertising and marketing strategy. Coca Cola knows that social media has

become one of the most powerful advertising and marketing platforms and it is also the most

affordable advertising strategy for brands. If any brand is able to indulge every person personally

in their brand promoting, then it can become viral and the consumers themselves will become the

advertisers; and that too with very minimal investment. Coca Cola had beguiled the consumers to

make the ‘share a coke’ campaign viral by tweeting and messaging their selfies and messages

over the famous social media channels. When the consumers were tweeting and messaging the

their customized bottles on the internet, then they did not realize that they are advertising the

brand; instead they thought that they are doing it for making themselves famous among their

friend circle. Coca Cola also featured some of these slefie images in their advertisements all over

the billboards, news, videos, on the company websites and offices. This move had further

inspired the consumers to tweet and message the images over the internet as much as possible.

This is how Coca Cola had made a place within the heart of their customers and the sales had

increased to many folds (Tarver, 2015).

1.3 Competition Analysis

The main rival company for Coca Cola in market is PepsiCo. PepsiCo is world’s second

largest beverage manufacturing company, having a presence in around 200 countries of the world

(MarketLine, 2013). PepsiCo has been providing a great competition to Coca Cola by launching

same type of products that Coca Cola has been launching over few years. For example, Coca
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Cola had launched a natural fruit juice version to increase the sales of fruit juice consumers; with

a brand name of ‘Minute Maid’ in the year 2007. Meanwhile, PepsiCo had also introduced their

fruit juice version with a brand name ‘Tropicana’ after the launch of Minute Maid by the Coca

Cola company. This is how PepsiCo has been trying to cannibalise the business of Coca Cola.

PepsiCo has reached another benchmark in this strategy after acquiring the company

NutritionCo, in order to meet the requirements related to consumers’ health and wellness

(Asmussen, 2014).

Besides PepsiCo, there are some local beverage brands like IrnBru and Vimito in UK that

are outperforming the sales of Coca Cola soft drinks. The reason behind this change in the UK

customers is their preference for taste. UK customers do not like the sweetened flavoured taste of

most of the soft drinks that are famous in USA like Coca Cola or Pepsi, but they love the tangy

lemonade flavoured soft drinks made by IrnBru and Vimito.

1.4 Target Audience Identification

The main target audience for Coca Cola company are the teenagers and mature college

going students from the age group of 13-25. Most of these youngsters love to pass time in the

college canteen, restaurants, and cafes for gossiping with their friends and family members.

These students also love the sweetened taste of Coca Cola soft drinks and they are must while

eating pizza, burger, or any other kind of fast food. The reason why Coca Cola launched a ‘share

a coke’ campaign is also because it knows that teenagers are most active users of the social

networking websites and they would love to share selfies with a bottle having their name. So, the

company had targeted these teenagers and college going students and organized cross country

tours to connect the ‘share a coke’ campaign message with the students and teenagers living in

that vicinity. The company owners had provided an opportunity to these teenagers to customize
COCA COLA ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN 7

the Coca-Cola mini can themselves and share it on their social media networking sites. The

teenagers were really fascinated with this opportunity and the campaign became viral within no

time.

1.5 Problems and Goals

During the early September of 2012, Coca Cola brand was losing its impact in the

Australian market as a famous soft drink provider and the sales of company products were

declining. So, the management decided to launch a campaign that should be effective and

affordable and the company decided to do a survey for finding 250 most common and famous

names of people living in Australia. The company then manufactured their soft drinks, having

these names rather than the brand name on the bottles. Coca Cola named this campaign ‘share a

coke.’

The main motivation of Coca Cola behind this campaign is to increase the sales revenue.

The sales of the company had gone down by 50 percent during the September month in Australia

and that’s why ‘share a coke’ campaign was launched. Another plausible reason for this

campaign was to rebuild the brand value of the company within the hearts of the consumers.

Coca Cola was losing their brand name value in the country and it needs to refurbish their brand

value in the Australian market. Finally, the 3rd main reason for this campaign was to make a

distinct place within the heart of Australian consumers. The social settings of Australia are

different from Eurpoean countries and Australian people generally believe in suggestions of their

friends and family members over any advertisements on media channels. This is why Coca Cola

tried to convey their message through the consumers themselves.

COCA COLA ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN 8

2.0 Creative Strategy

2.1 The Main Idea

The main idea behind the ‘share a coke’ advertising campaign was to make a

psychological impact inside the mind of the consumers by providing them a chance to become a

part of the coke brand bottle. Cocal Cola company knew that if the people see a bottle having

their name in the bottle, then this would put a psychological attraction inside their mind and they

would instantly react to it by taking selfie with that bottle and sharing the image on social

networking sites. People always like something that they find related to their nature or behavior.

The company has used a strategy of Roman Jackobson’s ‘Functions of Language’ (Jackobson,

1960) that suggests that people are instantly attracted to the uniqueness of the visual appearance

of any product, especially when they feel emotionally connected to that brand or product. The

names were chosen from a survey and were introduced with a psychological function of

language, having an inspirational message ‘share a coke with,’ which catches the instant attention

of the reader and serves as an imperative mode of communication. According to Jackobson

(1960) the inspirational message on the bottles of the coke worked as a conative function and

become seemingly successful in creating a personal product for the customer, which he or she

would definitely love to buy and share with his or her friends (Jakobson, 1960).

2.2 Various Advertising Executions

The very first advertising execution strategy that Coca Cola used in their campaign was

value creation through social media. While analyzing the effect of the campaign, it is crucial to

understand the role played between the senders and receivers. It was really amazing for the

company that they became successful to sell 250 million customized coke bottles within only a

population of around 24 million Australians. The company thought from the perspective of the
COCA COLA ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN 9

Australian people by fitting into their shoes. Australian population are quite introvert and

egalitarian society and sometimes called with a phrase ‘tall poppy syndrome.’ Whenever

Australian think that someone is too big to fit into their shoes, they reject it. However, ‘share a

coke’ campaign provided them a chance to think from their own perspective and that’s why it got

such a huge response. An example of ‘share a coke’ campaign advertise has been shown in the

figure 1 below. Now it is clear from this advertise that a person with the name Kylie or Jason

would surely love to buy this bottle and share it with his or her friends when he or she sees that

advertise on the TV, billboard, or internet.

Figure 1. Example of Share a Coker Advertise

2.3 How this Strategy Helped the Company to Achieve Goals?

The advertising campaigns of ‘share a coke’ had helped Coca Cola to provide active user

participation to the consumers and create a valuation of the company brand and product. The

consumer in this case is considered as a tool since he or she can share the content created by the

company on consumer’s social networking site accounts. The consumer would get an intuition

that he or she is doing it for himself, but the fact is that he or she is actually creating content on
COCA COLA ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN 10

the behalf of the Coca Cola brand. In this way, the consumer has become a ‘creative labour force’

of the company (Ibid, 8-9). If the Coca Cola campaign is looked from the company’s

perspective, then it would become clear that any kind of social network can become a tool for the

company to create a valuation of the company. The same consumer may also entice family

members and friends to do the same thing, thus helping the campaign to go viral. This campaign

has helped the company to sell 250 million customized bottles that have names instead of the

brand name on the bottles.

3.0 Media Strategy

3.1 Media Selection

Coca Cola has selected all media sources like TV, print media, radio channels, billboards,

internet, and social media. However, the main media in this campaign were social networking

sites and the internet. Coca Cola knows that social networking sites have become a most famous

and trending media sources nowadays. Every person now owns a smartphone and he or she loves

to update their status on some famous social networking sites like Facebook or twitter every now

and then. So, Coca Cola tried to benefit from this nature of common person and they

manufactured coke bottles having commonly famous names on the bottle. A message

‘#ShareaCoke with’ is also written on the bottle that improvised the consumers to share a selfie

with the bottle having the person’s name on social networking websites.

3.2 Influence of the Media Strategy on Consumers

The media marketing strategy of printing the hash tag on the bottle with the message

really improvised the buyers to convey this message to his or her friends or family members.

Whenever a person sees his or her name on the bottle, then he bought that bottle in an instant and

shared his pick with the friends and family members. This sharing has made the hash tag viral on
COCA COLA ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN 11

the social networking sites and almost every second or third person in Austrial started to do this.

There were many cases when the people were not happy when they did not find a bottle having

their name printed, and that’s how someone can understand the fame of this trend. Coca Cola had

even tried this same campaign in other parts of the world like USA and UK after the huge

success in Australia.

4.0 The Results

4.1 Impact of Campaign

The campaign was really successful and following are some insights of: --

1. Around 100 names were printed on the bottles in this campaign.

2. There were around 1000 impressions for this campaign on Twitter.

3. There were around 235,000 tweets and 111,000 fans who shared the #ShareaCoke

tag on the social networking websites.

4. More than 250 million bottles were sold during the 2012 campaign in Australia

and 150 million in the UK in the year 2014.

5. Around 730,000 customized glass bottles were manufactured by Coca Cola for

this campaign.

6. People were so crazy with the trend that they also shared around 17,000 virtual

bottles having their name.

7. Around 65 stops were visited by the Coke tour van who provided the consumers a

chance to customize the bottles themselves (YouGov, 2013).

Now, let’s see on the sales figure of Coca Cola in figure 2 below: --
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Figure 2. Coca Cola Facebook Fanbase

It has been clear from the above figure that the fan base of the Coca Cola had a sudden

rise after the campaign, so it can be understood that this campaign helped the company to

increase their brand value and therefor sales.

5.0 Personal Views

In my opinion, the campaign is one the best examples of how different social media

channels can be used to increase the brand value of any company; and that too with very

minimum amount of investment from the companies' side. Although some consumers were

disappointed when they did not find the bottle having their name that they can share with their

friends and family members, but it can be accepted as an exception because there are few

limitations in every advertising campaign, which is hard to come upon. Social media has played

in integral part to provide a platform for the company and the consumers share the message and

make a trend. Consumers were encouraged more when they saw a large billboard having their
COCA COLA ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN 13

name on the bottle. This step had further motivated the people to share pictures with the billboard

with other friends and family members. It has become one of the most compelling examples in

the brand advertising and other brands can certainly learn from this example to understand how

personalization works and make it highly effective and engaging. However, many consumers are

quite skeptical about their name being misspelled like what happened in the case of Starbucks

when the staff members had misspelled names of many consumers on the cups of Starbucks

coffee. These types of incidents should be avoided by the companies because it can spoil the

brand name and rapport of the company. People are very sensual to such kind of mistakes and it

appears contrived when a name is misspelled.

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References

Asmussen, H. C. (2014). Share a Coke: An Investigation of Social Media Marketing.

Communication Studies.

Incintro. (2014, October). Coke’s “Share a Coke” Campaign: An Integrated Marketing Success.

Retrieved December 2, 2016, from incitrio.com: http://incitrio.com/cokes-share-a-coke-

campaign-an-integrated-marketing-success/

Jakobson, R. (1960). Closing Statements: Linguistics and Poetics. The M.I.T. Press , 350-359.

Tarver, E. (2015, October). What Makes the 'Share a Coke' Campaign So Successful? Retrieved

December 2, 2016, from www.investopedia.com:

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/100715/what-makes-share-coke-campaign-

so-successful.asp

YouGov. (2013). 2013 Share a Coke Campaign. Retrieved December 2, 2016, from

cdn.yougov.com: http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/u7gltkr717/Share-a-

coke-report.pdf