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Coca-Cola Marketing Communications

This is the case study of Coca-Cola, the following parts are 2 Q&A which are extracted from the report. Full explanations can be found in the full report which demonstrated the selected 4 Q&A in detail from the angle of marketing communications. 

​Summary

About Coca-Cola:

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Q1:

Discuss the ethical issues a soft drink brand might encounter in advertising its products to consumers, using examples to illustrate your answer. Your answer should critically assess the potential responses of different market segments.

PART A

Answer to Q1:

A soft drink brand might encounter ethical issues such as manipulation, truth and controversial products in advertising its products to consumers.

Demographics Segmentation

The low education level consumers and young age group consumers like teens might not be able to make well-informed decisions by themselves.

Geo-demographics Segmentation

Consumers who live in hot climate countries might also keep their support of purchasing cold coke due to the weather. They might have little concern about the issue that soft drinks cause. 

Psychographics Segmentation

Consumers who have eco-friendly values or a healthy lifestyle might probably have the strongest response toward the unethical ads, the soft drink brand and its products. They might hold varied activities such as a parade and joint signature to boycott the soft drink brand, to give pressure on society to the brand because the soft drink brand and product offend and break their value of eco-friendly.

Behavioural Segmentation

Consumers who see soft drinks as a way of celebrating festivals might not have much response to the unethical ads because they usually buy soft drinks on special dates only. 

PART B

Answer to Q6:

The PESO model includes four key elements: Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned media. Coca-Cola utilizes both four parts of the digital campaign. The environmental consciousness of people is high recently, and Coca-Cola can launch a campaign to deliver a positive message related to the environment to maintain a positive image for Coca-Cola.

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The campaign can be named " Share a coke, Share a value.", aims to let the public know Coca-Cola cares about the global issue (environment). By interacting with the public and its customers, we want to keep and grow Coca-Cola's customer base and change the negative attitude of the public toward the brand and build a good long-term relationship which connects well with its customers. This campaign can launch together with a new series of sustainable packaging coke.

Paid Media

  • Sponsor the world's eco-friendly events such as the event of tree planting instead of a sporting event

  • online advertisements on Facebook and YouTube to draw its sales and the attention from public

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Strengths â€‹

  • high scale & high control 

  • reliable and easy to manage

  • help them to build a good reputation for its brand by showing its actual support for environmental protection and also catching the public attention toward its brand with the sponsorship

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Weaknesses

  • low trust & high cost

Owned Media

  • Coca-Cola can utilize their website and newsletter to share their customer stories or tips on protecting the environment with its product's packaging.

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Strengths â€‹

  • high control 

  • good for keeping long-term relationships (the content can be kept for a long time to keep attracting customers)

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Weaknesses

  • low trust & low impact if used independently

Shared Media

  • Global celebrities, influencers, social media & a hashtag for the campaign (to encourage people to engage and interact) 

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  • Coca-Cola can donate 5% of the profit of a bottle of coke per post to environmental protection charity based on the number of people who have posted the photo of the coke they purchased with the hashtags on social media.

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Strengths 

  • high trust low cost

  • more powerful and convincing

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Weaknesses

  • low scale low control 

  • Coca-Cola cannot control what the fans and followers do on social media and their own opinions of the campaign. 

Earned Media

  • use the story mentioned in the case study and the campaign to attract public media reports about Coca-Cola

  • Keeping good public relations professionals with the public media

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Strengths 

  • high trust & low cost

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Weaknesses

  • low control

  • requires a long period of time to build a good relationship with public media 

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