MARKETING
Kimberly Davis
Eat, sleep,
advertise
Coca Cola
There are very few companies which have
mastered the art of marketing, but there
is one that stands out as a leader, says
Kimberly Davis of Sarsaparilla Marketing
F
or a hundred years,
Coca Cola has been
the innovator and
driving force in the
world of marketing.
It all started in 1886, when a
pharmacist named Dr John S
Pemberton created the world’s
most popular drink. At first, he
only sold nine servings a day.
Now, there aremore than 1.9
billion cokes served globally
every 24 hours.
Coca Cola first promoted the
product by giving out coupons
offering free samples of the
beverage. Whilst this seems
common now, back in 1887, it
was considered revolutionary.
From there, the company
started advertising campaigns
featuring its logo with its unique
script font. Of course, back
at the turn of the twentieth
century, advertising actually
worked because people weren’t
bombarded with so many forms
of media. It allowed Coca Cola
to leap forward and become the
market leader, despite numerous
imitators popping up.
From day one, the company
made sure to consistently
promote the message of taking
a break from the busy world to
relax with a Coca Cola. One of the
most popular slogans -“The pause
that refreshes” - first appeared
in the Saturday Evening Post
in 1929, and has stuck with the
company to this day.
In the 1970s, Coca Cola
dominated the market and
reinforced this message further
with the famous advert and
song “I’d Like To Buy The
World A Coke” (now you have
it in your head, don’t you?).
This summer, Coca Cola
launched a new campaign
printing various names on the
back of the labels, with the
message “Share a Coke with
(insert name)”.
This could be one of the most
amazing marketing campaigns
of all time.
It is a fact that the most
powerful word, to any person,
is their name. Whenever any
of us hear or see our name, it
evokes a powerful feeling of
connection within us.
By printing our names on
its bottles, Coca Cola is boldly
connecting us to its product. It’s
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Even more
astonishing,
is the fact
that if we
don’t see our
name on a
bottle, we
seek them
out to fulfill
our need to
belong
making us feel special.
Even more astonishing, is the fact
that if we don’t see our name on
a bottle, it’s making us seek them
out to fulfill our need to belong.
What happens if you can’t
find your name? No problem.
You can go to http://www .cocacola.co.uk/share-a-coke and
actually type your name onto a
bottle, have it custom made and
delivered to your door!
Needless to say, the campaign
has gone viral. Social media
sites such as Twitter and
Facebook are exploding with
people taking pictures of their
names, and their friend’s
names, on the back of bottles
and posting the pictures online.
Coca Cola has ended this
promotion by thanking its
customers via advertising
campaigns that read “Thanks
for sharing a Coke with us this
summer”, and rightly so. The
campaign helped increase
sales by 4.93%.
It’s not just marketing, but
an amazing use of consumer
psychology that makes Coca Cola
one of the world leader, and a
company we can all learn from.
Download Kimberly’s free
e-book “7 Deadly Marketing
Mistakes Destroying Your
Business, Right Now (and you
don’t even know it) now at
www.sarsaparillamarketing.com
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29/08/2014 12:41