Coca-Cola: Advertising Case Study

Coca Cola

Coca Cola

Adver tising Case Study

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“Coca-Cola is more than just a drink. It is an idea, it’s a vision, a feeling. It is about great connections and shared experiences.

It is one of the truly common threads that bonds the world together.”

Advertising Case Study

Coca Cola

Adver tising Case Study

What’s Inside Case Study

This publication looks at Coca-Cola and breaks down the company and advertising campaigns within the last 125 years it has been trading.

By researching into the theory and design behind Coca-Cola’s advertising, I can present the techniques and ideas that the company have used company to make Coca-Cola one of the most successful, largest and worldwide known brand.

About Coca-Cola P4 - 09

Producing this as a case study provides a full investigation into the world of Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola: Brand Success

Coca-Cola: Product & Brand Placement

P11 - 19

P21 - 29

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Digital Resource Coca Cola

Advertising Case Study

Coca-Cola: A History of Ads P37 - 43

Coca-Cola Vs Brands

Coca-Cola: Ads Case Study

P31 - 35

P45 - 55

Along with this publication and the written case study, you will find a Digital Resource at the back of the publication.

This includes all relevant TV Advertisements that have been included throughout the publication and spoke about in the case studies.

This can be used along side the case study and a way to see the theory in practice.You may see the advert in a different way, once you have found out the meaning behind it!

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Adver tising Case Study

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Within this section, you will find out about Coca-Cola as a company. Looking back throughout the last 125 years of history, this will present to you how the company first started out and the key events that have happened over the years.

About Coca-Cola

Coca Cola

Coca Cola

1886 - 1892

Adver tising Case Study

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Advertising Case Study

It was 1886, and in New York Harbour, workers were constructing the Statue of Liberty. Eight hundred miles away, another great American symbol was about to be unveiled.

Like many people who change history, John Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist, was inspired by simple curiosity. One afternoon, he stirred up a fragrant, caramel-coloured liquid and, when it was done, he carried it a few doors down to Jacobs’ Pharmacy. Here, the mixture was combined with carbonated water and sampled by customers who all agreed - this new drink was something special. So Jacobs’ Pharmacy put it on sale for five cents (about 3p) a glass.

Pemberton’s bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, named the mixture Coca-Cola, and wrote it out in his distinctive script. To this day, CocaCola is written the same way. In the first year, Pemberton sold just nine glasses of CocaCola a day. A century later, The Coca-Cola Company has produced more than 10 billion gallons of syrup.

Over the course of three years, between 1888-1891, Atlanta businessman Asa Griggs Candler secured rights to the business for a total of about $2,300 (about £1,500).

Candler would become Coca-Cola’s first president, and the first to bring real vision to the business and the brand.

1893-1904

Asa Candler, a natural born salesman, transformed Coca-Cola from an invention into a business. He knew there were thirsty people out there, and Candler found brilliant and innovative ways to introduce them to this exciting new refreshment. He gave away coupons for complimentary first tastes of Coca-Cola, and outfitted distributing pharmacists with clocks, urns, calendars and apothecary scales bearing the Coca-Cola brand. People saw Coca-Cola everywhere, and the aggressive promotion worked. By 1895, Candler had built syrup plants in Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles.

Inevitably, the drink’s popularity led to a demand for it to be enjoyed in new ways.

In 1894, a Mississippi businessman named Joseph Biedenharn became the first to put Coca-Cola in bottles. He sent 12 of them to Candler, who responded without enthusiasm. Despite being a brilliant and innovative businessman, he didn’t realise then that the future of Coca-Cola would be with portable, bottled beverages customers could take anywhere. He still didn’t realise it five years later, when, in 1899, two Chattanooga lawyers, Benjamin Thomas and Joseph Whitehead, secured exclusive rights from Candler to bottle and sell the beverage - for the sum of only one dollar.

1905-1918

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but The Coca-Cola Company was none too pleased about the proliferation of copycat beverages taking advantage of its success. Coca-Cola was a great product, and a great brand. Both needed to be protected.

Advertising focused on the authenticity of Coca-Cola, urging consumers to ‘Demand the genuine’ and ‘Accept no substitute’.

The company also decided to create a distinctive bottle shape to assure people they were actually getting a real Coca-Cola.

The Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana, won a contest to design a bottle that could be recognised in the dark. In 1916, they began manufacturing the famous contour bottle. The contour bottle, which remains the signature shape of Coca-Cola today, was chosen for its attractive appearance, original design and the fact that, even in the dark, you could identify the genuine article.

As the country roared into the new century, The Coca-Cola Company grew rapidly, moving into Canada, Panama, Cuba, Puerto Rico, France, and other countries and US territories. In 1900, there were two bottlers of Coca-Cola; by 1920, there were about 1,000.

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1919 - 1940

Perhaps no person had more impact on The Coca-Cola Company than Robert Woodruff.

In 1923, four years after his father Ernest purchased the company from Asa Candler, Woodruff became the company’s president.

While Candler had introduced the US to Coca-Cola, Woodruff would spend more than 60 years as company leader introducing the beverage to the world beyond.

Woodruff was a marketing genius, who saw opportunities for expansion everywhere. He led the expansion of Coca-Cola overseas and in 1928 introduced Coca-Cola to the Olympic Games for the first time when Coca-Cola travelled with the US team to the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. Woodruff pushed development and distribution of the six-pack and many other innovations that made it easier for people to drink Coca-Cola at home or away. This new thinking made Coca-Cola not just a huge success, but a big part of people’s lives.

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1941 - 1959

In 1941, America entered World War II. Thousands of men and women were sent overseas. The country, and Coca-Cola, rallied behind them. Woodruff ordered that ‘every man in uniform gets a bottle of Coca-Cola for five cents, wherever he is, and whatever it costs the company’. In 1943, General Dwight D Eisenhower sent an urgent cablegram to Coca-Cola, requesting shipment of materials for 10 bottling plants. During the war, many people enjoyed their first taste of the beverage, and when peace finally came, the foundations were laid for Coca-Cola to do business overseas.

Coca Cola Advertising Case Study Woodruff ’s vision that Coca-Cola be placed within ‘arm’s reach of desire’ was coming true - from the mid-1940s until 1960, the number of countries with bottling operations nearly doubled. Post-war America was alive with optimism and prosperity. Coca-Cola was part of a fun, carefree American lifestyle, and the imagery of its advertising - happy couples at the drive-in, carefree mums driving big yellow convertibles - reflected the spirit of the times.

Candler would become Coca-Cola’s first president, and the first to bring real vision to the business and the brand.

1960 - 1981

After 70 years of success with one brand, Coca-Cola, the company decided to expand with new flavours. Fanta, originally developed in the 1940s, was introduced in the 1950s, while Sprite followed in 1961, with TAB in 1963 and Fresca in 1966.

The company’s presence worldwide was growing rapidly, and year after year, CocaCola found a home in more and more places: Cambodia, Montserrat, Paraguay, Macau, Turkey and more.

Advertising for Coca-Cola, always an important and exciting part of its business, really came into its own in the 1970s, and reflected a brand connected with fun, friends and good times. The international appeal of Coca-Cola was embodied by a 1971 commercial, where a group of young people from all over the world gathered on a hilltop in Italy to sing I’d Like To Buy The World A Coke.

Coca Cola

1982 - 1989

The 1980s - the era of leg warmers, headbands and the fitness craze, and a time of much change and innovation at The CocaCola Company. In 1981, Roberto C Goizueta became chairman of the board of directors and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company.

Goizueta completely overhauled the company with a strategy he called ‘intelligent risk taking’.

Among his bold moves was organising the numerous US bottling operations into a new public company, Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. He also led the introduction of Diet Coke, the very first extension of the Coca-Cola trademark. Within two years, it had become the top low calorie drink in the world, second in success only to Coca-Cola.

One of Goizueta’s other initiatives, in 1985, was the release of a new taste for Coca-Cola, the first change in formulation in 99 years.

In taste tests, people loved the new formula, commonly called New Coke. In the real world, they had a deep emotional attachment to the original, and they begged and pleaded to get it back. Critics called it the biggest marketing blunder ever. Coca-Cola listened, and the original formula was returned to the market as Coca-Cola Classic, and the product began to increase its lead over the competition - a lead that continues to this day.

Adver tising Case Study

1990 - 1999

The 1990s were a time of continued growth for The Coca-Cola Company. The company’s long association with sports was strengthened during this decade, with ongoing support of the Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup™ football, the Rugby World Cup and the National Basketball Association.

The year 1993 saw the introduction of the popular Always Coca-Cola advertising campaign, and the world met the lovable Coca-Cola Polar Bear for the first time. New markets opened up as Coca-Cola products were sold in East Germany in 1990 and returned to India in 1993.

New beverages joined Coca-Cola’s line-up, including Powerade sports drinks and Oasis fruit drinks. Coca-Cola’s family of brands further expanded through acquisitions, including Limca, Maaza and Thums Up in India, Barq’s root beer in the US, Inca Kola in Peru, and Cadbury Schweppes beverage brands in more than 120 countries around the world.

By 1997, Coca-Cola already sold one billion servings of its products every day, yet knew that opportunity for growth was still around every corner.

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Coca Cola

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Advertising Case Study

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2000 - Now

The last decade marked an increase in Coca-Cola’s efforts to create a sustainable framework for the future. In 2009, the company launched Live Positively - a public commitment to making a positive difference in the world by redesigning the way we work and live so that sustainability is part of everything we do. Live Positively includes goals for providing and tailoring beverages for every lifestyle, supporting active, healthy living programmes, building sustainable communities, reducing and recycling our packaging, cutting our carbon emissions, establishing a sustainable water operation and creating a safe, inclusive work environment for all.

The company has continued to build on existing relationships with global sports events such as the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ and prepare for the London 2012 Olympics Games, and the company continued to nurture our affiliation with the Special Olympics, which began in 1968.

Coca-Cola has remained dedicated to offering quality drinks for every lifestyle and occasion, marketing those beverages responsibly and providing information that consumers can trust. As of 2008, Coca-Cola can count more than 160 low and no calorie drinks in the company’s range, such as Coke Zero and Powerade Zero. The company now also lists the nutritional information on the front of all drinks in Great Britain with plans to roll out worldwide.

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“If all the Coca-Cola ever produced were to cascade down Niagara Falls at its normal rate of 1.6 million gallons per second, it would flow for nearly 83 hours.�

Coca Cola

Coca Cola

Adver tising Case Study

Advertising Case Study

Coca Cola: Brand Success

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Coca-Cola: The Iconic Brand

1. The brand is bigger than the individual.

No one person supersedes the CocaCola brand. There have been multiple marketing directors, brand managers and country managers across the globe for the brand over the years. When each takes up the job, they do not fall into the trap of looking to stamp their authority by changing the brand, its communication or overall message and tonality. These are set in stone and have not changed for many a year.

2. Coca-Cola knows what it stands for.

They don’t change this because it resonates as a human truth and, as long as it continues to resonate, there is no reason to change. Pio Schunker, Head of Integrated Marketing Communications, highlights the guiding principle they abide by: “Coke brings Joy”.

It’s simple and clear, but is also defined a little further by always ensuring that any communication is always “filtered through the brand’s core values of happiness, refreshment, optimism, fun, simple moments of pleasure, authenticity, coming together and uplift.” These values are the pillars upon which the brand is built and they are not negotiable.

3. Clearly expressing these values through the consistent use of core brand assets built up over time.

Coca-Cola is without a doubt the finest exponent of understanding what its core assets are and building these through all communication points. The red colour is consistent and is clearly linked to happiness and refreshment - it’s not a randomly chosen colour. In 1931, the brand took a huge leap and popularised Santa Claus with the CocaCola red colour as a pure embodiment

of fun, coming together and uplift. This is an incredibly bold move that worked, but it was very much a calculated decision, which would have been filtered through whether or not Santa Claus embodied the Coca-Cola brand values.

The bottle shape, sponsorship of the Olympics (started in 1928) and happiness factory are all products of understanding the brand values and identifying new and engaging ways to express the simple statement, “Coke brings joy”. The Coca-Cola logo has

“A brand is a promise.

A good brand is a promise kept.” famously hardly changed since its inception as they rely on the deliberate building of other brand assets to carry its message.

4. Brand personality.

Coca-Cola ads depict human experience in two primary ways.

First, long before global branding was the trend it is today, Coca-Cola was embracing diversity. This can be clearly seen in its long-running “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” series of ads, depicting people from all over the globe joining together in Coke and song.

Further, Coca-Cola has long been available in one form or another in countries all across the world and it’s even rumoured to be the most recognizable brand, logo and even word on the planet (the latter with the possible exception of “ok”).

When Coca-Cola ads aren’t targeting worldwide diversity, they still possess a strong sense of community and overcoming differences and hardship

Coca Cola

Adver tising Case Study

through universal similarities such as a a process very similar to Pepsi’s love for Coke. Click on the image below rebranding project that we saw above. to see a recent Simpson’s-themed Like Pepsi, Coca-Cola would undertake Coca-Cola commercial using this tactic. a branding project that would essentially The second way that Coke has undo the clutter that had made its way leveraged the human experience into the brand identity and strip it down throughout the years is through a strong to a meaningful and simplified version. emphasis on families. Pepsi always stayed aimed right at children but Coke seems In a case study released by San Advertising Case Study toCoca know Cola that Mum does the shopping and to get her you have to use an emotional appeal that makes Coca-Cola not only something that the whole family desires, but something that is literally an integral part of the family’s life experiences.

This occurs all over Coca-Cola’s advertising throughout the years but is never more evident than in Coke’s Christmas ads. Whether its an endearing scene of a father and son watching the Santa Coke truck go by or a family of Francisco design firm Turner Duckworth, polar bears consistently being brought the problem with Coke was clearly together by Coke, the Christmas ads are portrayed that it was too cluttered and aimed right at the hearts of American in doing this it had no significance within consumers. the market and started to fade into the background.

5. Coke Simplifies By now you can probably see that one The Turner Duckworth team responded of the main themes of this article is to to this problem in a drastically different showcase the major design trends in way than the Arnell Group handled the the past twenty years, which are clearly Pepsi refresh (for starters, their logic represented in the brand evolutions of actually made sense and wasn’t a bunch both Coca-Cola and Pepsi. of circles). Arnell did in fact simplify the Pepsi brand, but in the process they In the early 2000s, Coke underwent redefined it into something that it has

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never been before. On the surface, this sounds great but as we saw, the execution felt more like a gunshot to the heart of the brand.

Turner Duckworth on the other hand, didn’t attempt to redefine the most valuable brand on the planet, they simply brought it back to its roots. The result was a strengthening of the core features of the logo and product imagery.

As a designer, you might laugh at the idea that someone could get paid to produce such a simple result.

However, they didn’t stop there. Turner Duckworth realized that the heart of the brand didn’t just lie in the logo itself but something physical that we had all experienced in a very real way over the years: the coke bottle.

This idea of leveraging something physical is very important. We’ve all had Coca-Cola from a can, paper cup and plastic bottle before, but there’s something magically nostalgic about that old glass bottle. Not only did they apply their newly simplified look to the glass Coke bottle, they made the silhouette of that bottle the new brand hero and began using it in new and innovative ways. Below we can see the awesome Coca-Cola aluminium can bottles and the application of the Coke bottle silhouette onto other representations of the Coke brand such as paper cups and door signs.

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Coca-Cola: The Gaze Theory From the very first advertisement of CocaCola; the Gaze theory has been involved as a advertising technique to promote the soft drink and get the attention of the public.

In 1906, William D’Arcy was hired to do the advertising, he made scenes of everyday life, scenes such as shopping and having lunch. In 1910, Coca Cola ran an advert of an attractive ‘American’ woman, that said, “Nothing is so suggestive of Coca Colas own pure deliciousness as the picture of a beautiful, sweet, wholesome, womanly woman.” This is where the use of women to promote and advertise the company began, and to provide an ideal vision of America.

In the 1950’s and 60’s Coca Cola moved on from using just print advertisement and started using photography showing men and women happily smiling as they drank their Coke.

As the company became more well known the women used in the adverts started to become more sexualised, their dresses started to become shorter and some adverts even showed women wearing bathing suits. This relates to the male ego and being a spectator.

The male looks through the eyes of the actors in the film or in this case television adverts. The spectator is able to follow their gaze without feeling any guilt. If the actor from the film or advert speaks out to us then the suture is broken. The audience is then aware of their own gaze and therefore feeling the guilt.

Extra-diegetic gaze is the direct address to the viewer of the television advert, the gaze of the actor in the advert looking out at us. This is often avoided in cinema but used a lot in advertising.

In an older Coca Cola advertisement, a woman wearing a revealing red dress is used to promote the product. The beautiful woman makes the product seem more alluring and desirable, in the advert she gazes upon us, therefore using the extra diegetic gaze, the most common gaze used especially in advertising.

Another example of an extra diegetic advert is the 1970 Coca Cola Raquel Welch vintage advertisement, advertising the ‘New look’ of coke. It is of a woman, dressed all in white with Coca Cola red accessories, sitting in a slightly enticing way, gazing at the viewer. It is supposed to be advertising Coca Colas fashion squares, showing the attractive woman wearing them gives the impression that if you but the fashion squares you will look like she does. I think therefore it is women doing the gazing in this instance.

Freud’s Castration Theory is an alternate theory to the Gaze. This is the fear of the removal of the males penis and would therefore make him at the same level as a woman. Freud believed that from a young age a boy having a penis is normal but a girl lacking in one is a defect. Coca-Cola ran an advertisement which pictured a attractive woman holding a massive Coca-Cola bottle, this could be linked to this theory of castration.

In the advertisement the woman’s lack of penis is a defect and not normal to her, the massive bottle of Coca-Cola is making up for this instead.

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Advertising Case Study

In recent adverts and promotional material the Gaze theory is still present. Coca-Cola Zero have recently used Cheryl Cole within their advertising. Cheryl Cole is known as the nations sweetheart, which makes men want her and women want to be her, this makes the advert for everyone. Scopophilia is the objectification of women as a sexual objects for men to look at. This is shown within the Cheryl Cole advert, she is sexualised by wearing only a suit jacket and the used of the Coca-Cola red within the tie and pocket square, the tie being worn without a shirt is also acting upon sexual connotations. CocaCola Zero is known as ‘Bloke Coke’, within the advert she is dressed in a suit and hat making her more like a male. The background of the advert is made up of a bar of men, but none of them are looking at her, this shows feminism.

The whole idea of the advert is making the males see it as a fantasy and being a peeping Tom, this makes them stay in control and the more powerful gender.

A different advert for Coca-Cola, uses actress Jacqueline Jossa. This advert again works on the idea of sexualising the female for the male gaze. The Coca-Cola red is used within the background and her lips are also the Coke red. This colour connotes lust, passion, love and beauty. The model is looking out from the advert directly at the audience this challenges the male gaze as the men looking at it know she is looking at them, but this also gives the impression that she wants you to look at

her and she knows that you are doing it. The Coca-Cola bottle is placed in her hands in the middle of the advert, she has a straw coming out of the bottle to her mouth in which she has hold of it, this again connotes sex and the idea behind the castration theory, it also plays on the fantasy that the male can have when looking at her in the advert. Even though this would seem it was aimed at only men, it also promotes to women too, because females want to be her, they want to look like her and have other men looking at her.

Two more examples are the television adverts, one showing women acting like men whilst drinking Coke and another showing women working in an office and pretending the elevator is broken so a ‘hunky’ maintenance man comes to fix it. These adverts are extremely different to the adverts used in the 1910-1940’s where Coca Cola targeted housewives, showing Coke as a refreshing drink whilst doing the shopping or having lunch.

Using tag lines such as ‘Lunch refreshed’ and ‘Shop refreshed’. The modern adverts show strong women who can do everything a man can do and how the roles of men and women have changed.

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Coca-Cola: Advertising Throughout the recent years of Coca-Cola advertising, with all the products under the company, they have used celebrities in all different means of media to help promote the drinks.

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Advertising Case Study

Coca cola use many methods of advertisement and the company spends a significant amount of money in order to be seen on billboards, magazines, television and on the internet. Cocacola sponsors many events around the world; events that are sponsored by coca-cola include many social and cultural backgrounds, through sponsoring large events coca-cola not only advertises its product but their name to, this is called institutional advertising. Through their commercials on the television and other sources of media coca-cola focuses on product advertising, the company targets a wide range of market, coca-cola advertises all around the world, in different countries the advertisements will be in the languages spoken in those countries and that is one way of enhancing the targeted market.

Coca cola is known for their innovative and creative commercials, most events on prime time will have coca-cola commercials in the intermissions, the Super Bowl which is one of the events with the highest rating in the United States and has the highest cost for a commercial spot (ranging at around 3 million dollars for 30 seconds) often has coca-cola commercials, when people watching the super bowl see Coca-Cola’s creative commercials they remember how appealing coca-colas products are.

Coca-Cola uses the mediums through which they advertise in a clever way because through their advertising they find a way to be appealing to a large

range of generations, coca-cola has an image which it tries to highlight in most of their commercials, that image is the image of a close friend or relative who is there on the holidays, during the holiday season coca-cola always wishes holiday greetings on their commercials to everyone, images of Santa-Claus drinking coke are also an image booster for Coca-Cola, the brilliant advertising methods of coca-cola is a big part of the company’s global success, when a new coca-cola commercial is aired, rumours travel and soon enough they become a “must see”.

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Coca-Cola: Logo History

1886 – What’s in a name?

When John S. Pemberton created the formula for his new drink in 1886, his partner and bookkeeper, Frank M. Robinson, suggested the name CocaCola, thinking that ‘the two Cs would look well in advertising’. He wanted to create a unique logo to go with it, and experimented writing the company’s name in elaborate Spencerian script, a form of penmanship characteristic of the time.

1887-1890s – Inserting the ‘Trademark’ These two important little words were added to the tail of the first ‘C’.

1890-1891 – Extra swirls For just one year, our logo changed its appearance quite dramatically with this extra swirly script.

Afterwards, the logo returned to its previous font.

1941-1960s – Tail tweaked In this version, the words ‘Trademark Registered’ moved out of the tail of the ‘C’ and were noted as ‘Reg. US Pat Off ’ below the Coca-Cola name.

1958-1960s – A fishy shape This period saw the introduction of the Arciform or ‘fishtail’ logo.

1969 – That famous white wave The Arden Square logo was unveiled to the world.

In this red box, the familiar Coca-Cola script was underlined with the iconic white ‘wave’ known as the ‘Dynamic Ribbon Device’, which is still used to this day.

2003 – Keeping it real With the introduction of the ‘Coca-Cola... Real’ campaign, the logo’s ‘white wave’ was enhanced with a shock of yellow and some floating bubbles.

Logo Development From 1886 - 2011

2007 – A classic design A simple, yet bold, design with a single white ribbon.

2011 – 125 years of happiness Coca-Cola’s 125th birthday logo sees bubbles bursting from our famous contour bottle – a celebration of our past, present and future.

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Advertising Case Study

Coca-Cola:

Bottle History The tremendous success and growth of Coca-Cola encouraged other competitors to try to imitate Coke by offering bottles with slight variations on the trademarked name and distinctive script logo. KokaKola, Koca-Nola, Celery-Cola and Koke were just a few of the products that tried to capitalize on our success.

Working with our bottlers, The Coca-Cola Company asked bottle manufacturers to submit designs for a bottle for Coca-Cola that was so distinctive that it could be recognized by feel in the dark or identified lying broken on the ground.

Alexander Samuelson of the Root Glass Company in Terre Haute, Indiana, designed the distinctive shape, and it was patented on November 16, 1915. The bottle was modified and slimmed down to work with the current bottling equipment and went into broader production in 1916. This contour bottle was the only packaging used by The Coca-Cola Company for 40 years until the king-size package was introduced in 1955.

In 1960, the contour bottle was granted registration as a trademark by the U.S. Patent Office. Today, it is still the most recognized bottle in the world, and the shape is used for packaging from the new aluminium can to the 2 litre family size.

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“If all the Coca-Cola ever produced were in 8 ounce contour bottles, and these bottles were laid end to end, they would reach to the moon and back 2,051 times. That is one round trip per day for five years, seven months and 14 days.�

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Coca-Cola: Product & Brand Placement Advertising Case Study

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Can a TV Spot touch the heart of a generation?

The Coca-Cola Company began advertising on television on Thanksgiving Day, 1950, on the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy holiday special. Over the years, three ads became most associated with Coca-Cola and are generally considered among the best television ads ever made.

Coca-Cola: Television Appearance

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“I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke,” or his hero his Coke and received Greene’s “Hilltop” as the ad is often called, was jersey as a reward was created in 1979 and created in 1971. The song for the ad was first aired in October. However, when it recorded by The New Seekers, a popular aired during the 1980 Super Bowl (which Australian folk music group. Released as a Greene’s Steelers won), the ad became one radio ad in February of that year, the song of the classic Super Bowl ads of all time. was then filmed as a television spot on a The heartwarming ad changed Joe’s mean hilltop outside of Rome, Italy, featuring an reputation forever. international group of young people. The The Coca-Cola polar bears became icons ad was an instant classic with thousands of for the Company as soon as the popular people writing the Company requesting “Northern Lights” commercial aired in the music. A popular recording of the song 1993. The bears were animated by noted with the Coca-Cola references removed production company Rhythm and Hues was performed by The New Seekers using the most current technology to bring and topped the charts in many countries the always thirsty bears to life. Numerous around the world. polar bear commercials have been The iconic meeting between battered produced since 1993; their activities have Pittsburgh Steeler defensive lineman “Mean”Advertising included skiingStudy and skating, while the family Coca Cola Case Joe Greene and a young boy who offered has grown to include playful cubs.

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I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke, 1971 “Mean” Joe Greene, 1979 Northern Lights, 1993 Santa Globe, 2010 Coca-Cola Seige, 2011 Share a Coke and a song, 2012

Which TV shows have you seen Coca-Cola apart of?

The Cut (BBC2) – 31/10/09, 30/10/10 Episodes (BBC2) – 21/2/11 Harry Hill TV Burp (ITV1) – 14/11/09 Katy Brand vs The Wanted (ITV2) – 10/11/10 Trinity (ITV2) – 4/10/09 Waterloo Road (BBC1) – 2/12/09, 16/12/09 Xtra Factor (ITV2) – 11/9/10, 18/9/10

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Coca-Cola: Movie Appearance

You’ve probably spotted Coca-Cola drinks on the big screen over the years, helping filmmakers around the world tell their stories. Often it’s a quick appearance that helps to set a scene; sometimes Coca-Cola takes the spotlight.

It’s a Wonderful Life George Bailey, the down-trodden protagonist of this classic festive favourite, works in a small town pharmacy. In line with Coke’s beginnings in pharmacies across the States, the set features a Coca-Cola fountain and the screen is littered with Coke memorabilia such as stained glass lamp shades and Coca-Cola thermometers.

Dr Strangelove A Coke vending machine briefly takes centre stage when the main character needs to make a phone call to the President. As he instructs his sidekick to shoot the machine for its change, the sidekick replies that he will have to answer to The Coca-Cola Company.

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Which films have you spotted Coca-Cola in?

4,3,2,1, 2010.

Body of Lies, 2008.

Born Romantic, 2000.

Goal Trilogy, 2005-2009.

Green Zone, 2010.

I could never be your woman, 2007.

Love Actually, 2003.

The Wedding Date, 2005.

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Coca-Cola: Santa Claus

Across Original 1951 Sundblom Santa Illustration Below Santa Featuring in today’s modern advertising campaign

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Perhaps one of the most enduring legends of the power of the brand has been the suggestion that the modern version of Santa Claus was a by-product of CocaCola’s advertising. However, depictions of a red-suited and white-bearded Father Christmas have been evident in the UK since the 17th century. In the US, too, the likes of American Civil War artist Thomas Nast drew the figure from the mid-1800s, with no standardisation of colour, features or stature.

Most people agree on what Santa Claus looks like; a pleasantly plump character with a jolly expression and a white beard, wearing a red suit. But he did not always look that way. The image of Santa Claus ranged from big to small, and he wore colours from red to green and even brown.

The variation is because Santa represented a number of stories from different countries.

Below Coca-Cola Christmas Truck ‘Holidays are coming’.

The Coca-Cola Company began its Christmas advertising in the 1920s in an effort to increase sales during the slower winter months. Several different images of Santa were used, but none proved to be popular with consumers until 1931. That year, Archie Lee, an advertising executive for Coca-Cola, commissioned illustrator Haddon Sundblom to paint a Santa that was both wholesome and realistic.

Sundblom looked to the Clement Moore poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” and his own Scandinavian heritage to create the big, red, jolly vision of Santa that the Company used for more than 30 years.

The Company commissioned Sundblom to paint Santa for the last time in 1964, but by then, the popular image of Santa was the Coca-Cola Santa Claus.

The Coca Cola Company has gradually created a connection between its most popular drink Coca Cola and the Christmas season. Various commercials depict the beverage as a season typical item that belongs to the holiday just as the Christmas tree or Santa Claus.

Christmas Caravan, The Greatest Gift and Snow Globes are the most popular TV Advertisements which are shown around the winter season, this is something which the world has become familiar with and now Christmas is known to be here when the Coca-Cola advert has first be shown.

Within the adverts the famous Coca-Cola song is played, this song introduces and reaffirm Coca Cola‘s claim to be a ‘’Holiday Refreshment’’, it even goes so far as to say that it is in fact the Coca Cola Company that truly sets of the Christmas season.

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Coca Cola, Amsterdam Olympic games, 1928

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Brand Placement

Coca-Cola is one of the only brands with the worldwide pr sporting events in the world, and we have been doing it for Chairman Robert Woodruff wanted to find a way to introduce Coca-Cola to the world, so he had kiosks selling Coca-Cola set up outside the venues at the Amsterdam 1928 Olympic Games. This began a more than 80 year sponsorship of the Olympic Games.

The Company has celebrated the Olympic Games in advertising since the Los Angeles 1932 Olympic Games.

The activations at the Olympic Games have grown over the years as the small kiosks have been replaced with pin trading centres and other fan activations. The Coca Cola Company has also been a long standing sponsor of the Olympic Torch Relay leading up to the Olympic Games.

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Coca Cola, Rugby Shirts, 1980

resence and ability to sponsor the two biggest more than 80 years.

While The Coca-Cola Company had been advertising in the stadiums at FIFA World CupTM matches since the 1950s, in 1976 The Coca-Cola Company and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) made history as they forged the first ever sponsorship between an international sports governing authority and a company. This sponsorship was far reaching and included not only the FIFA World CupTM but also youth training and the CocaCola Cup. The Coca Cola Company sponsors not only the FIFA World CupTM but all FIFA tournaments, such as the FIFA Women’s World CupTM and FIFA U17 World CupTM.

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“Studies have shown that Coca-Cola is among the most admired and best known trademarks in the world. In fact, it is documented that “CocaCola” is the second most widely understood term in the world, after okay.”

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Coca-Cola: vs Brands Advertising Case Study

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2 Brands, 1 Product Which Do You Prefer?

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Cola Wars Coca Cola

Advertising Caseand Study Coca-Cola Pepsi-Cola focused particularly on pop stars; notable soft drink promoters.

The Cola Wars are a campaign of mutually-targeted television advertisements and marketing campaigns since the 1980s between soft drink manufacturers The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo.

For Pepsi pop stars such as Mariah Carey, KISS, Tina Turner, Britney Spears, Beyoncé Knowles, Pink, Enrique Iglesias, David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Jim Varney, Elvis Presley, One Direction, Michael Jackson, Brian May, Roger Taylor, Madonna, Spice Girls, Shakira, Amr Diab and Ray Charles were used in their adverts.

Coca-Cola used the likes of Bill Cosby, Whitney Houston, Paula Abdul, Weird Al Yankovic, George Michael, Christina Aguilera, Max Headroom, and Elton John.

Straight away you can see the way each company advertised by the focus of celebrities and pop stars, Pepsi used them within the majority of the advertising and had this as the main focus of the campaigns. Coca-Cola still used the celebrities, but not with such a focus as Pepsi, they would always make sure the product was still the forefront of the advertising with the celebrities being a way to channel into social media.

Coca-Cola Advertising Coca-Cola advertising has historically focused on wholesomeness and nostalgia for childhood.

Coca-Cola advertising is often characterized as “family-friendly”, and often relies on “cute” characters (e.g. the Coca-Cola polar bear mascot and Santa Claus around Christmas).

One example of a heated exchange that occurred during the Cola Wars was Coca-Cola making a strategic retreat on July 11, 1985, by announcing its plans to bring back the original ‘Classic’ Coke after recently introducing New Coke.

Pepsi Advertising Pepsi ads often focused on celebrities choosing Pepsi over Coke,[citation needed] supporting Pepsi’s positioning as “The Choice of a New Generation.” Pepsi generation was created focusing on the user of the drink, never the drink. Coke always focused on the drink. Pepsi focused on the person using it. They showed people riding dirt bikes, waterskiing, or kite flying, hang gliding — doing different things.

And at the end of it there would always be a Pepsi as a reward. This all happened when colour television was first coming in. They were the first company to do lifestyle marketing. The first and the longest-running lifestyle campaign was and still is Pepsi. In 1975, Pepsi began showing people doing blind taste tests called Pepsi Challenge in which they preferred one product over the other, and then they began hiring more and more popular spokespersons to promote their products. In their hope to win the Cola Wars a Concorde was painted blue with PEPSI written across it in white lettering. In the late 1990s, Pepsi launched its most successful long-term strategy of the Cola Wars, Pepsi Stuff. Consumers were invited to “Drink Pepsi, Get Stuff ” and collect Pepsi Points on billions of packages and cups. They could redeem the points for free Pepsi lifestyle merchandise. After researching and testing the program for over two years to ensure that it resonated with consumers, Pepsi launched Pepsi Stuff, which was an instant success. Tens of millions of consumers participated. Pepsi outperformed Coke during the summer of the Atlanta Olympics - held in Coke’s hometown where Coke was a lead sponsor of the Games.

Due to its success, the program was expanded to include Mountain Dew, and into Pepsi’s international markets worldwide. The company continued to run the program for many years, continually innovating with new features each year.

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or

Pepsi Pepsi has always had a young target audience.

Many of their ads were historically targeted at teens and even pre-teens and are injected with fun, sports and most often, music. Pepsi has leveraged all manner of musical celebrities over the years, from Ray Charles to Britney Spears.

When Pepsi wasn’t using musical celebrities, humour was their weapon of choice, again utilizing young kids in the ads. Who could forget the lovable little girl telling the bartender, “I asked for a Pepsi Pal” in the voice of the Godfather?

like Gap, Tropicana and more seek new life through more generic looking designs, often with results so hated by consumers that the companies immediately revert to their old brand image.

Pepsi has since recovered from the public’s hatred of their new brand simply by trudging on. The redesign of their entire line of drinks has stuck with the exception of Sierra Mist, whose strange foggy forest design has already been abandoned for a new look that is actually quite attractive by comparison.

Pepsi Changes Everything In the evolution image above we saw Pepsi roll along with popular design trends as they introduced Photoshop-centric gradients, shadows and highlights. As with every good design trend, this was firmly rejected by the designers of the next decade.

Brand Personality Pepsi’s overall personality has stayed pretty much the same as they continue to primarily use humour and music in their advertising. This year’s Super Bowl featured several humorous Pepsi Max commercials and the Pepsi website prominently features an index of “emerging artists”.

The design community’s eventual response was a full-throttle rebirth of minimalism. Every brand that made their logos look shinier in the late 90s suddenly hit command-z and started stripping their personalities through thin, sans-serif fonts and simple, solid colours.

Even today we are still in this stage as brands

The biggest brand goal change that took place with the rebranding project was the Pepsi Refresh Project, which continues on today.

Through this initiative Pepsi gives grants to people with great ideas for how to improve their community. It’s an excellent project and a great direction for Pepsi. More and more, big

companies are expected to use portions of their mountains of cash to make the world a better place and the Pepsi Refresh Project is doing exactly that.

Coca-Cola It’s interesting to note that Coke also followed the same evolutionary path that we saw from Pepsi, though to a less extreme degree. By 1987 a hint of shading had made its way into the Coca-Cola swoosh and by the mid 90s we had gradients, gloss and water droplets, sound familiar? This was of course followed by a period of dramatic simplification in the early 2000s which was taken even further in 2009.

It’s important to remember that alongside the logo, Coca-Cola has always had an important piece of brand history in its contour bottle, which despite taking many shapes early on eventually found stability and became a major icon for the company that persists even to today.

New Coke Pepsi may have thrown a wrench in its brand, but Coke very nearly killed their product!

In 1985 Coca-Cola underwent a major reformulation that resulted in a supposedly improved taste. The Coca-Cola soft drink was

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rebranded to the simpler “Coke” name and the new badge indicated a fresher, sweeter taste closer to that of Pepsi.

Contrary to popular belief, New Coke wasn’t originally a side project, it was simply the new form of Coca-Cola that actually ended the production of the original formula. Though New Coke led to an initial boost in sales, the public disdain for the abandoning of such a sacred American tradition grew rapidly and three months later Coca-Cola went back to the original formula.

Amazingly enough, the disaster actually resulted in a resurgence of love for the Coca-Cola brand. When Coca-Cola tried to destroy its own heritage, people saw it as an opportunity to stand up for something and built the kind of emotional bonds with the product that can only come from a triumphant battle in the name of tradition.

Brand Personality Though to a degree, Coca-Cola and Pepsi have always been similar in their “fun and young” personalities, the two companies have consistently stayed on separate paths over the decades. On the whole, Pepsi has stuck with its high energy, music and comedy-driven strategy while Coke can be seen constantly gravitating

towards the emotional side of branding.

Coca-Cola ads depict human experience in two primary ways. First, long before global branding was the trend it is today, Coca-Cola was embracing diversity. This can be clearly seen in its long-running “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” series of ads, depicting people from all over the globe joining together in Coke and song.

Further, Coca-Cola has long been available in one form or another in countries all across the world and it’s even rumoured to be the most recognizable brand, logo and even word on the planet.

When Coca-Cola ads aren’t targeting worldwide diversity, they still possess a strong sense of community and overcoming differences and hardship through universal similarities such as a love for Coke What lessons can we learn from the stories of Coca-Cola and Pepsi?

For starters, branding is a fascinating area of design that clearly depicts the shifts in design trends through the decades. Coke and Pepsi are huge players not just in following brand design trends but in setting them.

Further, branding is a dangerous game. Each evolution of a brand can either result in neutrality, which seems like a waste of money, improvement or a decline in the eyes of the public. Both Coke and Pepsi have sought to redefine their brands in major ways in the last decade. Both saw simplification as the answer and sought to remove the clutter that the previous twenty years had piled on.

Pepsi changed everything in a drastic way and took their brand in a completely new direction, even to the point of altering the basic structure and personality of their widely identifiable icon. Though some loved the boldness of the new direction, a huge portion of the media, blog and even public attention given to the refresh questioned Pepsi’s strategies and mourned the passing of the old icon.

Having learned in the past the consequences of drastically redefining a cultural icon, CocaCola reverted to and heavily leveraged the roots of its brand. They perfectly targeted what people see as the core of the Coke image and magnified it by stripping everything else away.

The result was yet another resurgence in the public’s love for the Coke brand and a flurry of design awards and praise from magazines, blogs and various media outlets.

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“Thirsty consumers around the globe now enjoy Coca-Cola Company products 1.7 billion times every single day; about 19,400 beverages every second.�

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Coca-Cola: A History of Ads

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An All-star Rebound to Normal 1933 Delicious Refreshing 1889 Drink Coca-Cola 1900 The Housewife 1910 Drink Coca-Cola 1920 My Hats off to te pause that refreshes 1931 Here we have the very first advertising campaigns which Coca-Cola used to promote its soft drink. As you can see they have focussed on using a female model within the majority of all adverts, others are focussed around family and well known figures/landscapes.

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So Cool, So cooling 1935 Coca-Cola 50th Anniversary 1836 Quality Carries On 1942 The Extra Something 1942 Thirst Knows No Season 1952 Theres nothing like that great taste of Coke 1956 Coke it is 1984 Moving on from the first era of advertising, you can see that Coca-Cola took more of a focus on the actual product itself, putting this as the forefront of the advert, using models and other backgrounds to highlight how the product is integrated into lifestyles.

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Coca-Cola Classic 1986

Coca-Cola Classic - Glass 1997

Can’t Beat the Real Thing 1991

Live life Light 2006

Coca-Cola Classic - Ice 1989

Let ‘er Buck 2007

Always Cool 1993

Open Happiness 2008

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Finally bringing it to the more modern times and looking at Coca-Cola advertising that is fairly recent.

Here you can see how the brand values have started to show throughout the adverts, using the polar bear campaigns, the idea of the soft drink itself and bringing out up to date adverts using animation to keep up with the technology of today.

This collection shows a brief insight and development of Coca-Cola’s advertising over the last 125 years.

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“If all the Coca-Cola ever produced were in 8 ounce contour bottles, and these bottles were distributed to each person in the world, there would be 1,104 bottles per person.�

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Within this chapter we will look at recent Advertising Campaigns Coca-Cola have used; analysing how they have been apart of Coca-Cola’s worldwide dominance.

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Coca-Cola: Ads Case Study

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Coca-Cola: Happy Factory

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Coca-Cola:

The Coke Side of Life

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Coca-Cola: Polar Bears

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Coca-Cola: 125 Years

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