Coca-Cola unveils ‘one brand’ global marketing drive in Asia Pacific

Top Coca-Cola officials celebrating the Asia Pacific launch of the ‘one brand’ global marketing approach in Hong Kong last evening. From left: The Coca-Cola Company Vice President, Global Creative, Connections and Digital Rodolfo Echeverria, The Coca-Cola Company Asia Pacific President Atul Singh and The Coca-Cola Company Chief Marketing Officer Marcos de Quinto – Pic by Marianne David

By Marianne David in Hong Kong

The Coca-Cola Company yesterday in Hong Kong unveiled its ‘one brand’ global marketing approach in Asia Pacific repositioning Coca-Cola as a “simple pleasure” and bringing the focus back to the iconic brand.

The new strategy unites all its variants – Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Light/Diet Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Zero, and Coca-Cola Life – under the iconic Coca-Cola brand positioning for the first time in one global creative campaign, ‘Taste the Feeling’.

The Asia Pacific launch followed the global roll out in Paris on 19 January.

Emphasising that “Coca-Cola has always been a simple pleasure,” Coca-Cola Chief Marketing Officer Marcos de Quinto told the launch event in Hong Kong that Coca-Cola has been consistently locally relevant, given its presence in 207 countries, one billion consumptions and being the second most recognised word.

De Quinto also underscored the message that Coca-Cola “is for everybody,” pointing out that it was an affordable and unique pleasure.

“Coca-Cola is a big brand due to its simplicity; that’s very important. Our humbleness has been the secret of our success. We are going back to this essential truth … Our new strategy is to have one brand with several different variants instead of four different brands. Big brands do not create sub brands, which only create barriers,” said de Quinto, who went on to outline the company’s emotional approach to marketing.

The ‘one brand’ strategy features the product at the heart of the creative, celebrating the experience and simple pleasure of drinking a Coca-Cola and underscores the company’s commitment to choice, allowing consumers to choose whichever Coca-Cola suits their taste, lifestyle, and diet.

The Chief Marketing Officer added: “Every day, millions of people around the world reach for an ice cold Coca-Cola. The new ‘one brand’ approach reinforces our commitment to offer consumers choice with more clarity. This is a powerful investment behind all Coca-Cola products, showing how everyone can enjoy the specialness of an ice-cold Coca-Cola, with or without calories, with or without caffeine.”

The strategy will also reinforce TCCC’s commitment to help control sugar overconsumption by removing brand barriers to low/zero calorie variants, he added.

The ‘Taste the Feeling’ campaign will roll out at various times across all markets globally in 2016 and will come to life through a number of elements, including 10 television commercials, 100+ campaign images, a new visual identity system, a new music anthem and audio signature and a shareable and customisable interactive digital experience.

The creative campaign is anchored in the fundamentals of the Coca-Cola brand – the Spencerian script, the red disc and the iconic glass bottle – but with a modern take, featuring authentic and real moments with the product at centre stage, asserted The Coca-Cola Company Vice President, Global Creative, Connections and Digital Rodolfo Echeverria.

Echeverria stated that the campaign was all the more special because it had already been tested in 19 countries globally and was a true global campaign since it featured the same campaign globally in terms of advertisements.

“The communication objective is to communicate the ‘one brand’ Coca-Cola marketing strategy through a global integrated campaign using simple but powerful storytelling that celebrates the integration of product benefits and brand values,” he added.

Commenting on how the campaign will be rolled out in Sri Lanka, Coca-Cola India and South-West Asia Vice President – Public Affairs and Communication Ishteyaque Amjad told the Daily FT that a bouquet of work would be adapted for different parts of the world, including Sri Lanka.

Asked about any investment planned for Sri Lanka, The Coca-Cola Company officials assured that Sri Lanka would continue to see more investment coming in but declined to give specific details.

Amjad told the Daily FT: “Like every year, we will come out with our annual result by the second week of February. We are now in a quiet period so we’re not in a position to talk about any forward-looking statement in line with statutory limitations we have; however, our growth plans remain intact.”

Meanwhile, citing an example of how the company has been very insight- and local-connect-driven in building the Sri Lankan franchise, Coca-Cola India and South-West Asia Vice President – Marketing and Commercial Debabrata Mukherjee stated: “If you look at the work that has happened in Sri Lanka on the brand front, we actually launched the ‘Say it with a Coke’ campaign in Sri Lanka, with 60 different manifestations. We’ve kept the Sri Lankan consumer up close and centre in all our plans.”

The 10 television commercials created for the new global campaign were produced by Mercado-McCann, Sra. Rushmore, Santo, and Oglivy & Mather New York. The spots give the viewer momentary, but intimate glimpses into everyday stories, feelings and experiences that people share while enjoying an ice-cold Coca-Cola. At the close of each commercial, the family of Coca-Cola trademark products unite as one under the famous red Coca-Cola disc.

The new campaign features 100+ campaign images shot by noted fashion photographers Guy Aroch and Nacho Ricci capturing people from around the world enjoying ice-cold Coca-Cola in a variety of everyday moments. The new campaign imagery will be used in print advertising, out of home billboards and in-store as well as digital media.

The shareable and customisable interactive digital experience is made up of different GIF scenes that reflect feelings associated with drinking Coca-Cola set to the ‘Taste the Feeling’ anthem. The experience allows users to pull a GIF scene directly from the microsite, personalise the scene with real-time feelings, and share it on social platforms with #TasteTheFeeling.