The following is a discussion for recreational reading about the humble beginnings and greatness of the Coca-Cola soda manufacturing company...
From humble beginnings to business greatness, Coca-Cola significantly impacted the history of human thought. What started as a small potato experiment in 1886 originally as a formula for medicine under the direction-leadership of Mr. John Pemberton in Atlanta, Georgia. According to the Coca Cola Journey website, Pemberton sold the company “While Coca-Cola was invented and first sold in 1888, the secret formula and brand was bought in 1889 by Asa Griggs Candler, who incorporated The Coca-Cola Company three years later. On 5 September, 1919, a consortium of businessmen led by Ernest Woodruff, Robert W. Woodruff's father, purchased The Coca-Cola Company for $25 million and it went on the New York stock market.(Coca-cola.ie). The Coca-Cola Jerry website goes on further to mention the company originally incorporated on September 5, 1919 in the state of Delaware. (coca-cola.ie). The iconic history of Coca-Cola route to national fame as a recreational soft drink originally infused with a particular type of medicine to help people feel relieved of their life problems.
This medicine, known as morphine or cocaine, was added to the infancy of Coca-Cola soft drinks as a means of increasing popularity and sales. According to author Sara Bellum of DrugAbuse.gov, she wrote a blog post with the opening statement saying “Did you hear the one about cocaine being found in the recipe for Coca-Cola? Well, it’s true. Coca-Cola was invented in 1885 by John Pemberton, a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia, who concocted the original formula in his backyard. Pemberton’s recipe contained cocaine—in the form of an extract of the coca leaf, which inspired the “Coca” part of the beverage’s name.” (Bellum, 2012). (definitely considered the psychedelic drink among people of all ages and walks of life back in the late 1800s and 1900s as “ (2012). Since the company’s inception, Coca-Cola continues thriving through economic uncertainty and keeping investors happy with steady financial growth.
Coca-Cola fried successfully under the most challenging “economic conditions.” The company successfully increased awareness and sales during World War I and World War II. In fact,one of the ways the soda manufacturer floated successfully during challenging economic conditions was serving soft drinks to U.S. troops. An umbrella of the Coca Cola company website goes on to mention “During WWII, a special group of Coca-Cola employees called Technical Observers were asked to fulfill Woodruff's promise. The "TOs" supervised the shipment and operation of 64 complete bottling plants that distributed over 5 billion bottles of Coca-Cola to servicemen and women.”(coca-colacompany.com). Surfacing US troops during world wars, this basically provided guarantees of financial stability to the company because they secured a government contract. Contracting with the US government is somewhat similar to purchasing government bonds, in terms of benefiting from “guaranteed income.” Coca-Cola not only survived because of government contracts, but mostly due to its popularity and longevity since the company began as a well-known soft drink manufacturer.
The success of Coca-Cola also raised ethical concerns about their practices. The umbrella Coca-Cola website mentions verbatim about their ethical governance and commitment to fighting anti-corruption, achieving excellence in business ethical practices, and guideline principles for non-employees and directors. I believe and feel people look at the company as a standalone leader that endured countless economical challenges and victored themselves in reigning over competitors because of their unique approach to keeping themselves relevant through government contracting, billboard, print, and social media marketing, and potential deep discounting through wholesale markets like BJs.com and Costco.com,
Coca Cola takes a versatile approach to their effective marketing strategies. In addition to keeping a solid foot in traditional advertising using television, print, billboard and vintage advertising on buildings, the soda manufacturer employees a unique combination of digital advertising such as electronic advertising at Times Square in New York City. Other effective marketing strategies Coca-Cola employees in their effective strategy to win and retain business is through social media marketing. Social media marketing strategies can be a combination of using Facebook fan pages to deeply engage with their target Facebook fan audience without directly promoting products and resorting to contributing feedback in meaningful conversation with Facebook fans, YouTube video marketing with late fee YouTube video descriptions and links to their website in the video description header. These are some of many social media marketing approaches Coca-Cola uses in their digital promotions.
Paid social media marketing strategies online consist of paid YouTube advertising, paid Facebook ads, paid press releases, and running additional PPC advertising “pay per click,” SEM “search engine marketing” contextual advertisements using Bing Ads by Microsoft, Google AdWords, and sponsored advertising on blogs and websites through sponsored ad networks.
The company demonstrates sincere concern in valuable feedback from everyone with their feelings on Coca-Cola’s “marketing strategies” through a link on the corporate website.(Coca Cola). People who leave feedback are welcome to input their personal information such as name, address and e-mail address, giving Coca-Cola permission to send company and product updates to permission-based e-mail subscribers. This is a great approach to helping Coca-Cola take a better approach to marketing to target audiences.
One unique approach Coca-Cola takes toward domestic and global marketing online and off-line is through a unique tactic known as “one brand.” One Brand is a global marketing campaign used by the company to unify its trademark. The one brand marketing campaign is also known as “Taste the Feeling.” According to author Jay Moye on the Coca-Cola umbrella site, the One Brand-Taste the Feeling strategy employees marketing approaches toward “iconic appeal of the world’s No. 1 beverage brand to Coca-Cola Light/Diet Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Zero and Coca-Cola Life.” (Moye, 2016). The “One Brand-Taste the Feeling” marketing strategy not only covers marketing tactics of all Coca-Cola brand soft drinks, but also includes another unique marketing approach known as “universal storytelling.” Taking a storied marketing approach brings out emotion in people and meaningfully brings people from all walks of life together. Coke employed a successful TV campaign as a glimpse into people enjoying drinking soda as an emotional appeal to everyone, including “stories and feelings,” consisting of people ice skating together, going on a first date, and people enjoying their first kiss. Coca-Cola understands that appealing to people’s feelings is a strategy to increasing financial growth as the end result of their “creative marketing strategies.”
The “Taste the Feeling” approach, to summon up in a nutshell, consists of “visual storytelling through more than 100 images shot by noted fashion photographers Guy Aroch and Nacho Ricci.
The photos, which will be featured in print, outdoor, in-store and digital advertising, use a “Norman Rockwell Meets Instagram” visual style to capture authentic, unscripted moments in a contemporary way, Echeverria explained.” Visual storytelling using images as a means of digital advertising, in my personal opinion, puts the company in a fortunate position to benefit from the free advertising. How so? If Coke optimized the digitalfor Pinterest with in “image hover over button automatically appearing in images,” this organic marketing approach quietly encourages people who have Pinterest accounts to share images. The end result? In increased online visibility for Coca-Cola’s brands, improved search engine optimization through linking Pinterest images back to the Coca-Cola website, and using the energy of people promoting images on Pinterest as a means of free advertising, minimizing marketing spend for Coca-Cola while increasing return on investment for product promotion. The beauty of this is people promoting Coca-Cola images from visual storytelling because their personal feelings are involved.
Audio storytelling is one of the most effective forms of advertising alongside TV, print, digital, and online marketing. People are immediately attracted and converted almost instantly into buyers after listening to an advert. In addition to the aforementioned ways of Coca-Cola advertising, Coke has audio storytelling marketing ploy to their “Taste the Feeling” soft drink promotion. (Coca Cola). The tone of the audio advert encourages users to “taste the feeling,” with accompanying sounds of soda poured over ice in a glass cup. It not only has a positive tone to the audio advertisement, but subliminally commands people to pick up their soft drink and experience the great taste.
Because of their unique marketing strategies to people of all ages from all walks of life, this helps the company understand what works and what doesn’t on a domestic and global front. Where one promotion may work outside the United States marketing a particular soft drink, may not work inside the US. Though some promotions may not work well domestically or globally or vice versa, the company will always be relevant in my personal opinion due to their longevity going back to the late 1800s.
Coca-Cola domestic strengths:
- Invested in their brands and business
- Became more efficient
- Simplified the company (Five strategic actions-Coca-Cola).
- Refocused on the core business model
- Focused on driving revenue and profit growth
Coca-Cola global strengths:
- Marketing to 15 countries alone (Coca-Cola system).
- Focused on price/mix which helped increase growth additionally by 2% and increasing organic revenue by 4% (Coca-Cola).
- Coca-Cola domestic weaknesses
- Potential inconsistency in using organic YouTube promotions and content marketing in YouTube videos to reduce advertising spend and increase ROI and online awareness through using people to share YouTube videos as a means of free advertising on social networks.
- Possibly not using in-image subliminal social sharing marketing mix tactics such as not employing in-image Pinterest sharing buttons to encourage people without asking to share images on Pinterest.com.
- Possibly wasting water during soft drink production
Coca-Cola global weaknesses:
- Focusing on only carbonated drinks on a domestic and global level (Scribd)
- High debt level due to acquisition (Scribd).
- (Industry analysis) - Coca-Cola’s stiffest competitors: Pepsi.com, RedBull.com energy drink, and Snapple.com.
Pepsi differences and similarities:
- Differences - Standalone difference in taste with a different tasting soda sugar and possibly lasts longer than Coke before taste flattens.
- Similarities - Looks identical to Coca-Cola and couldn’t tell the difference if Pepsi was poured in a cup until you taste the difference.
- What makes them a competitor - Taste, price, and marketing to the same demographical audience.
Red bull energy drink differences and similarities:
- Differences - Not in the business of creating soft drinks for people just to have something to drink.
- Similarities - Marketing to young audiences on a domestic and global level.
- What makes them a competitor - Capitalized on the market through Coca-Cola and Pepsi’s weakness of not catering to the energy drink audience and created a great tasting energy drink, earning and retaining repeat business.
Snapple differences and similarities:
- Differences - Complete avoidance of producing carbonated drinks.
- Similarities - Competitive pricing to Coca-Cola when purchased in bulk.
- What makes them a competitor - caters to the soft drink market by producing flavored juice drinks without “soft drink carbonation.”
According to the website Motley fool, they mention in a February 2019 article that “Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) reported strong fourth-quarter numbers, but its stock has been dragged down by its cautious guidance for 2019. Most notably, the company delivered Q4 earnings per share (EPS) of $0.18 versus a loss of $0.66 per share in the year-ago period. The solid quarter, however, was greatly overshadowed by the fact that the company expects full-year organic revenue growth to slow to 4%, down from 5% in 2018. In addition, Coca-Cola expects its full-year EPS to be flat, coming in at the same $2.08 delivered in the past year.” (Kline, 2019). Sadly, people are drinking less silver this year and leaning more toward healthier drinks.
Moreover, this also leaves me wondering how much emphasis they are placing on actual marketing promotions such as organic social media marketing, organic YouTube video marketing, putting permission-based e-mail marketing to work with zero dollars advertising spent, and product promotion consistency on a domestic and global level. One thing Coca-Cola has to take into consideration is staying on top of their A + game when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of their marketing dollars against the ROI of promoted products. In other words, is Coca-Cola completely capitalizing on ROI with a less advertising spend on marketing, in addition to using less water resources to distribute soft drinks? These are some of many things the company has to stay abreast of as a means of sustaining solid profit growth and keeping investors happy.
This might be that era of healthy drink manufacturers capitalizing on the changing history of human thought. People are leaning more today towards thinking about living healthier through healthy drinks and foods. If this is the case that people have considered healthier drinks today over carbonated beverages, it doesn’t necessarily means Coke and competing carbonated soft drink vendors will take deep financial hits in longevity. Make no mistake that Coke, Fanta, Pepsi, Sprite, Dr Pepper, Mountain Dew, and generic brand soft drink manufacturers will always earn a profit. Sometimes they’ll reach peak profits and outdo health drink manufacturers. Don’t take a backseat other times by earning less quarterly profits. And it all results from what people are feeling and wanting in the moment.
A quick 13 year financial report on Coca-Cola:
2005 net income (Q1 2005 $1,002) 2018 net income (Q1 2018 $1,368)
Note: Coca Cola’s net income allegedly fluctuated between 2005 2018 possibly because of what people wanted in the moment, and also due of economic conditions. Additional information on the company’s financial reports are available here. Looking at things from an investor viewpoint, a wise investor would purchase stock in Coke because they always bounce back with increased earnings when least expected and proved themselves to be financially worthy of continually investing money in the company.
Recommendation of specific strategies that Coke might use today to improve its organizational performance (Recommendations for the company moving forward - advice):
- Consider taking surveys from the general public about their feelings toward Coca-Cola moving into the healthy drink market and what flavors they would like Coke to produce in health drinks. Keep a close eye on demographic groups such as age, location, and flavor health drink they choose as a means of implementing organized marketing strategies when introducing new health drinks to the domestic and global market.
- Collect e-mail addresses during surveys as a way of organically building a permission-based e-mail marketing list - A majority of companies use the “lazy bum marketing approach,” and spend unnecessary marketing dollars on purchasing pre-populated duplicate e-mail lists for the purpose of marketing products and services to e-mail recipients in hopes of a quick ROI. Most people nowadays are hip to companies sending mass e-mail messages because they’ve received spam e-mail marketing messages from different companies, and they know the e-mails are generic and only trying to sell something due to good vague wording. Most e-mail recipients already know that they’ve never opted in to any sales message. By Coca-Cola building up their permission-based e-mail marketing list and introducing themselves in the title-subject area of the e-mail and mentioning in the header of the e-mail message that the message they’re transmitting is because they opted in to receiving e-mails after completing this survey, this gives Coca-Cola and advantage of introducing new products and keeping e-mail subscribers overflowed with company updates without spending one dime on paid advertising. This is why it’s important to conduct surveys because there’s something about converting a person on the spot through “face-to-face surveys.” Face-to-face surveys shows a company is sincere and cares about serving quality to their target audience.
- Engage more on social media - In addition to having a YouTube channel, Facebook fan page, permission-based e-mail marketing and digitally optimized images for people to share images on Pinterest.com Coke.com can engage people on a deeper level by taking time to answer questions on social media, and meaningful engagement in conversation without trying to sell the social media user anything. When any company takes time to converse with their target audience without promoting a product or service, this is a subliminal opportunity for companies to engage with the general public in a way that shows sincerity towards consumer satisfaction “as previously mentioned.” Creating and uploading YouTube videos with links in the header description of every new YouTube video increases product awareness, free advertising from YouTube viewers sharing links to the video on multiple social networks, increased product inquiries, and staying one step ahead of the competition through “social media marketing consistency.” One subliminal reason why soft drink competitors possibly take a backseat is due to “social media marketing inconsistency.” Marketing inconsistency is the end result of plummeting quarterly and annual profits, leaving investors to wonder “what in the world is going on?”
Food for thought - recommendations and advice:
- Keep a close eye on competitors and their marketing strategies so you quietly discover their weaknesses.
- Be willing to go above and beyond the competitors don’t so you maintain positive and stable relationships with the target audience.
- Appeal to people’s feelings-emotions through visual storytelling.
- Always be clear on how the product contributes to making them feel good.
- Create unscripted YouTube videos with people sharing their honest-personal feelings on how the soft drink made them feel. (cont’d)
- Advertise in areas competitors don’t such as advertising through screen-printed ads on New York City’s subway trains and buses, Philadelphia subway trains and buses, Chicago and Los Angeles mass transit.
- Taking a less carbonated approach by reducing infusion of saccharin by seeking food - drink sweetening alternatives such as low-calorie aspartame. (Healthline).
References
Bellum, S. (2012, March 1). Coca-Cola's Scandalous Past. Retrieved from https://teens.drugabuse.gov/blog/post/coca-colas-scandalous-past
Kline, D. B. (2019, February 19). 3 Things Coca-Cola's CEO Wants Investors to Know. Retrieved from https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/19/3-things-coca-colas-ceo-wants-investors-to-know.aspx
Mooney, P. (2008, November 11). Coke and the U.S. troops. Retrieved from https://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/coke-and-the-us
Moye, J. (2016, January 19). Coca-Cola Announces New 'One Brand' Marketing Strategy and Global Campaign. Retrieved from https://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/taste-the-feeling-launch
When was The Coca-Cola Company founded? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.coca-cola.ie/faq/when-was-the-coca-cola-company-founded
Coca Cola continues to be one of the most successfully selling soft drinks throughout New York City today.