With the closing of the Olympics today, I tot it was apt that i write about the last TOP and their marketing efforts. I’ve saved the best brand for the last and its Coca-Cola! (or Coke for short)
Coke is the exclusive non-alcoholic beverage for the Olympics. Having supported the Olympics in Amsterdam since 1928, they’ve been with the games all the way and became the official non-alcoholic beverage in 1986.
This is my favourite drink (Goes best with whiskey) and brand of all time. The brand equity is always number 1 and what they have done for this year’s Olympics has been nothing short of but remarkable.
What I like about Coke is how it ties sports with its brand. While most brands play on the passion of the fans or the excitement of the games, Coke has taken a step back and simply uses its feel good brand to leverage on the optimism that sports brings about.
I quote from this article about Coke’s marketing efforts,
“You will rarely see the Coca-Cola brand around the world in work which shows a lot of athletes running around,” he said. “The tonality of the brand is happy; the tonality of the brand is sharing optimism. There is no competition. The idea is how we can bring the world together in a positive way.”
So with data from market research gathered over the 2004 summer games and 2006 winter games, what’re some of the marketing efforts that Coke has done?
Going with their “Live Olympics” campaign, here’re some of their efforts
1) Like all brands mentioned in the TOP, Coke has an exhibition hall (ok, a 13,000 sq foot center) showcasing its history with the Olympics and their various CSR efforts. This site is expected to attract more than a quarter of a million visitors a day. You can read more about it here.
2) Social media efforts include “Design the world a coke” campaign. It’s basically designing a coke bottle and posting it on your social networking site to display your creative works.
I’m having really mixed responses to this campaign. I agree with Jane who argued that the campaign’s execution was poor. There was no extrinsic motivation for users to go design the bottle and spread the “love” of Coke around. While i realize that Coke’s campaign seems to be in line with harmony and optimism, it seemed by doing mash ups with Yao ming’s bottle was pretty generalized.
Coke as usual has made an impact at the Olympics. While it might already be dominating China, the Olympics was a great opportunity to leverage on its global brand name and reinforce it in the China market.
Who’s to argue, they’ve already achieved Marketing Gold for this year’s Olympics according to this article here. I love this OP Index and look forward to the results after the Games.
While its easy to argue that Coke could have done more, i think a brand of its stature doesn’t really have to do much. Once again, I’m in awe of Coke and the simple message that its brand brings across this Olympics.
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