Val Brown: Coca-Cola Gets Small with Precious Packaging

Last Updated on Monday, 8 March 2010 06:15 Written by Daisy Harley Monday, 8 March 2010 06:15

I’m a sucker for great package design. I’ll buy products I neither like nor need if I am seduced by the aesthetics of the container. And though I haven’t drunk soda in years, diet or otherwise, I am smitten with Coke’s mini bottles and cans — sexy, sophisticated, arresting little pieces of pop art. When I happened upon a bottle in an upscale deli, I “oohed” unexpectedly, taken in by the sleek, aluminum contours, ice cold and super smooth to the touch.

Visually, both the can and bottle are strong on uninterrupted swaths of color. The mini bottle is encircled by the logo but devoid of any other text save what’s required by law. The logo takes a back seat on the can which, in a brilliant bit of whimsy, features a drop shadow image of the iconic contour bottle — the diminutive logo on it is almost not needed, so recognizable is the shape.

Strategically, I imagine Coke is trying, like many food brands before them, to offer a low calorie alternative to their normal products. And also like others, instead of changing their product they are reducing portion size. The bottle seems destined for a nightclub or spa crowd, the cans for kids, women and the diet conscious man who prefers regular Coke (though Diet Coke is also housed in these gems). And for the refrigerators of design obsessed people like me.

As a brand marketer, I appreciate Coke’s newest effort to stand out in the highly competitive beverage sector. Though the Coca-Cola company boasts a lot of billion dollar brands, the market has grown increasingly competitive in recent years, with new products coming to market with amazing speed. Gone are the days when Coke just had to worry about Perrier (the first fancy water we ever drank); the cola wars of the 80s and 90s may now seem like kinder, gentler times.

A trip to the refrigerated beverage section can now produce choice anxiety: waters — plain old spring, fizzy, flavored, oxygenated, caffeinated, coconut; energy drinks; fruit based drinks; iced teas — black, green, kombucha; and the hard to classify aloe. It is a constantly churning market, and though many of these products launch as small local and regional players with weak distribution, some gain momentum and are snapped up by the big boys, where wide distribution and key placement in national chain supermarkets can pose a threat to many of Coca-Cola’s products.

So these bottles and cans are a very good move. They’ll join the list of other soft drinks that please my my eye — San Pellegrino’s Limonata with its country lemon motif and delightful foil cover; Fuji water’s little trip to the islands whenever I buy one; Martinelli’s old time apple juice bottle.

So along with body lotion that makes me itch (housed in a marvelous bottle I must dust occasionally), and a unique, beat-up biscotti tin that holds odds and ends, there now sit inside my refrigerator a few jewel-like cans and bottles of Coke.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/val-brown/coca-cola-gets-small-with_b_490379.html

Ari Herzog: McDonald’s and Coca-Cola Among Early Online Marketing Adopters

Last Updated on Sunday, 31 January 2010 11:45 Written by Daisy Harley Sunday, 31 January 2010 11:45

Note: The below is an amended version of this story from AriWriter.

It was March 2006 when Fernando Sosa and Thomas Middleditch rapped a video in the streets of Chicago about their love of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets. Maybe you know this story.

The video was filmed by Matt Malinsky, with a McDonald’s franchise in the background. The company had nothing to do with the citizen-generated video; their only involvement was they made the food product which the two 20-something fans liked so much they created a rap.

The video saw tens of thousands of views on YouTube in the first year. Arnold Worldwide, an advertising agency based in Boston, was tipped about the video and, after consulting with the burger-and-fries empire, it was decided to adapt Sosa’s and Middleditch’s rap into a TV commercial. The media gulped it down, TV viewers raced to the stores to buy McNuggets, and one of social media’s earliest case studies was born.

Here’s the original video with over 2 million views today:

Here’s a version of the TV adaptation, with over 579,000 views since July 2007:

If you don’t know it by now, companies will fail online if they do not go where their customers go. Companies will fail online if they do not engage with their customers, from customer service to brand management.

Unless your customers are not online to begin with — which you’ll never know if you don’t look for them or ask them directly — there’s no way around this tenet of online marketing.

Companies will also fail if they don’t reward their biggest fans.

What Sosa, Middleditch, and Malinsky are to McDonald’s, Dusty Sorg and Michael Jedrzejewski are to Coca-Cola. Maybe you also know this story.

When Dusty wanted to click a button and be a “fan” of Coke on Facebook, he ran into a brick wall. There was no page. So, the out-of-work actor and his writer friend co-created a page, filled it with useful content, and — to the astonishment of both Facebook and Coca-Cola management when they learned of the page — observed 3 million people voluntarily opting to be fans in 7 months. The duo were not alone in wanting to fan the company, hindsight showed.

Coke executives flew the guys to their Atlanta headquarters, treated them to a company tour, and met with them… leading to the pair continuing to administer the Facebook page (aided by a Coke representative), and undoubtedly to a monetary tune. You can befriend Coca-Cola on Facebook here.

If you were in the beverage manufacturer’s shoes and saw what they saw, how would you react to an unofficial Facebook page with fan statistics you would want for yourself? What would you do? If you were Arnold or McDonald’s, would you have capitalized on the citizen-created video? Do you even look if anyone’s created a video about you?

More on Facebook

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-herzog/mcdonalds-and-coca-cola-a_b_443882.html