A century-old brand is worth your learning.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “TopMarketing” (ID: TMarketing), Author: Ze.
As I said last time, after the failure of the formula innovation, Coca-Cola made the brand a 19th-century “street red product” by tapping the product’s own “addictive” characteristics. While using free drinks to attract people to taste, it also used advertisements to boost it. Sales growth. So in addition to actively exploring advertising formats, constantly updating product packaging, and building a global business model, what surprises can it bring to us in the new chapter? Looking forward to your discovery.
Chapter Two Coca-Cola Brand Strategy: Becoming a Source of Happiness
Legendary recipe story
In 1919, Candler’s son sold Coca-Cola’s formula, trademark, and brand assets such as good reputation to an investment consortium headed by banker Ernest Woodruff for $25 million. The balance sheet shows that the total value of Coca-Cola’s real estate, buildings, machinery and equipment was less than US$2 million.
Among the Coca-Cola brand assets, the most legendary is the mysterious formula that has been kept as the top secret of Coca-Cola. Beginning in 1925, his son Robert Woodruff, who was also the true creator of the Coca-Cola Empire, deposited the world’s only formula in the safe of the Sun Trust Bank. It was released for 86 years and was not transferred to it until 2011. In a 3-meter-high safe at the Coca-Cola Global Headquarters Museum in Atlanta, USA, visitors to the museum will first be monitored by 16 high-definition cameras covering 360°, and detailed information such as height, gender, skin color, and wearing are recorded. Approach this safe.
To this day, there is a story passed by word of mouth: There are only three people in the world who truly master the mysterious formula. Their identities are absolutely confidential, and they will never divulge one third of their hands to others. Coca-Cola also strictly requires these three people not to show up at the same time and at the same place, and not to take the same car, train, or plane, to prevent terrible accidents from happening and leading to the loss of top-secret information.
Although Coca-Cola strives to give the formula a mysterious color, it is not difficult to prepare a bottle of carbonated beverage with a taste similar to Coca-Cola.
Since Coca-Cola came out of Atlanta, its counterfeiters have emerged in endlessly. More and more manufacturers and brands try to produce “Coca-Cola” with different dosages, different uses, and different flavors, so that the Coca-Cola Company even uses legal prosecution. The most famous of these is naturally the blue Pepsi.
Tear upPepsi Cola
In 1894, North Carolina pharmacist Caleb Bradham (Caleb Bradham) invented a cola drink containing pepsin and sold it as a tonic to relieve the symptoms of indigestion. At first, people only knew it was Bradham’s drink. In 1898, Bradham changed its name to Pepsi-Cola (Pepsi-Cola) and began to catch the popularity of Coca-Cola. However, because of the company’s business problems, it experienced two consecutive bankruptcies in 30 years until the 1930s, when New York businessman Gusi bought Pepsi.
Gu Si has run a candy store and a soda cold drink shop. He has seen the great influence of Coca-Cola. He originally hoped to reach a deep cooperation with Coca-Cola, but Coca-Cola refused the cooperation invitation of Gu Si to purchase goods at a lower discount. An angry Gu Si ordered all its stores to withdraw from Coca-Cola and never re-enter it. Then, he bought Pepsi, which went bankrupt again, and deleted the pepsin ingredient to modify the product formula as closely as possible to Coca-Cola.
At this point, Coca-Cola and Pepsi have officially kicked off the 100-year grievance field.
In the early days, Gusi deliberately avoided the identity of Pepsi as a substitute for Coca-Cola. Due to the lack of clear positioning, consumers were unwilling to pay for a bottle of Coke that had the same price and similar taste but was not Coca-Cola. The business was imaginatively bleak. , Gusi even plans to sell it to Coca-Cola for $50,000. When he was rejected by Coca-Cola again, Gus had an instant and found that the cost of selling 12 ounces was not much different from that of 6 ounces. In 1934, Pepsi began to sell 12-ounce large bottles of Coke at a price of 5 cents in old beer bottles. At the same time, it launched a slogan “Spend the same money and enjoy twice as much Coke.” The selling price of 50% off quickly became popular nationwide. In the same year, Pepsi-Cola began to achieve profitability. At this point, we have to sigh, Coke is really a good business.
In the face of the menacing Pepsi, Coca-Cola took up legal weapons and took Pepsi to court for trademark infringement. This lawsuit lasted for several years, and finally settled the “copyright storm” between the two brands through out-of-court mediation in 1942. In the end, Coca-Cola lost the patent right for “Cola”. Any tan carbonated soft drink containing caffeine can be named with the word “Cola”. Pepsi chose a red, white and blue logo to distinguish Coca-Cola.
Someone once asked me, how to let consumers know a product in the shortest time? The answer I gave is two words “tearing force”. Creating disputes with market leaders in this field can not only create topics, attract media attention, and form multiple disseminations, but also cleverly establish relationships with market leaders in the hearts of consumers.
In 2012, JD.com strongly promoted the major home appliance project. Liu Qiangdong used his personal Weibo as a media platform to directly challenge Gome and Suning by publishing 5 Weibo posts. Li Bin, Executive Vice President of Suning Tesco, followed up that evening and promoted comprehensively. Later, Gome and Tmall joined the battlefield and set off a climax of the price war.
This move has not only attracted the attention of mainstream media accounts on Weibo, technology media, and financial media. Traditional media represented by CCTV and CCTV have also joined the reporting camp. The news of price wars quickly penetrated to third- and fourth-tier cities. In some areas that require high-intensity and large-budget advertising to radiate, platforms such as JD.com, Suning, and Gome have all received great attention.
On August 15, 2012, Suning, Gome, and JD.com, which clearly participated in the price war, had a significant increase in traffic compared to the same period on the 14th. JD’s Baidu index reached a peak, five times more than usual.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi’s “Red-Blue War” is exactly the same. The court debate made the two brands quickly gain widespread attention from the media and society. The affected writers, cartoonists and other creators used their powerful creative capabilities to give PepsiCo’s insignificant advertising budget an uncapped communication effect. .
Pepsi used a patent-protected mechanical device to write Pepsi’s reports in the sky, which inspired a cartoonist: a cartoon “Coca-Cola’s anti-aircraft gun trying to shoot Pepsi’s aerial text” turned out to make Pepsi. Established a strong association with Coca-Cola. Two anti-traditional writers Alan Kent and Austin Klum used “Do you know John Pearson?” “” wrote a brisk commercial song-“Pepsi is Good”:
Pepsi is good. Pepsi tastes really good. Twelve ounces is quite a lot. The same five components doubled, Pepsi really benefited. Five points and five points jingle, Pepsi is dripping incense.
Pepsi-Cola made this song into a 30-second radio commercial, which was broadcast on the radio.After getting good results, it was adapted into an orchestral record and sold 1 million copies. Since then, the song has been adapted into marches, waltz, rumba and country songs, which have been repeatedly disseminated and once received the evaluation of “the disaster of the American continent”, just like the “most dazzling clan style” of previous years. , “Little Apple”, “Wild Wolf disco”… With the popularity of this song, Americans remembered Pepsi, and branded the 5 cents 12 ounce label.
At the same time, Pepsi is also trying to buy the patent right of Popeye, hoping to replace the “magic spinach” with “magic Pepsi”. After the failure, Pepsi chose the road that has been successfully practiced: the manuscript re-created the comic “Pepsi and Pete” to tell the story of two police officers who defeated the devil by drinking Pepsi.
It is obvious that all of Pepsi’s ads are desperately trying to establish a strong relationship with the established Coca-Cola, and facts have proved that this strategy is really effective: in 1941, Pepsi’s market share rose to 14% .
However, the leader of the entire soft drink market is still Coca-Cola, with a 46% share. Some people in the media commented: “Coca-Cola is the essence of the American soul. It is a good life partner with real materials, wide spread, and continuous innovation.” This is mainly due to Coca-Cola in the early 20th century, especially the Great Depression. Period, a successful brand strategy.
The Coca-Cola Brand Concept: The Source of Happiness
In 1923, Robert Woodruff succeeded his father as President of Coca-Cola. Under his management, Coca-Cola, which has experienced the Great Depression in the United States, the Second World War, and the globalization after the Second World War, eventually grew into a whole One of the most famous brands in the world.
In fact, when Woodruff took office, he ran into a difficult question: Is Coca-Cola a healthy family drink or a mild substitute for alcohol? This problem stems from the fact that more and more people are starting to pay attention to the side effects such as damage to the brain and digestive function caused by long-term drinking of Coca-Cola, affecting people’s mental status and women’s fertility.
In this regard, Woodruff did not adopt defensive and passive response methods, but repositioned Coca-Cola:
The Coca-Cola drink has no earth-shattering importance-it is just a very inconspicuous thing, just to make people’s lives a little more relaxed and enjoyable.
The Coca-Cola advertiser Archie Lee interprets Woodruff’s concept as: “Enjoy the feeling of thirst at work or entertainment”, and gradually iterates into the famous sentence “The Pause That Refreshes” “.
In the 1930s, the United States entered the Great Depression, and in 1933, alcoholic beverages were finally legalized again, and people could once again spend their hardships through alcohol. Some media once commented: “The abolition of Prohibition is a huge blow to the Coca-Cola Company. Let me ask, when people can legally get real beer and’man’s whiskey’, who will drink’soft drinks’? Obviously, the Coca-Cola Company is going to die.”
However, Coca-Cola continued its growth trend through effective marketing. How does he do it?
First of all, Coca-Cola continued to deepen its “happy” brand image and created the popular Santa Claus image for this purpose.
Coca-Cola, which is cool and refreshing, is a typical cyclical product. It is usually sold well in summer, but sales in winter will drop directly. In this regard, Coca-Cola has also advertised several times, but the effect has been mediocre. Until 1931, the Santa Claus selected by Coca-Cola clearly made a huge contribution to Coca-Cola’s sales that year-the Coca-Cola Company began to treat Christmas as a key marketing node. The whole family gathers together to share a happy Christmas with each other, which fits well with the brand symbol “Happy” that Coca-Cola strives to create. Therefore, Coca-Cola signed a contract with artist Haddon Sundblom to jointly create an image of Santa Claus drinking Coke.
Sambu found inspiration in the famous poem “Christmas Eve”, which portrays Santa Claus as a warm, kind, and human-looking big figure. At the earliest, Sambu used a salesperson friend as a prototype for his creation. After the death of this friend, Sambu looked in the mirror and used himself as a prototype to create. Therefore, there is more or less the shadow of Sambu in the early Santa Claus image. Under the strong request of Coca-Cola, Shanbu changed the image of the green robe and used Coca-Cola’s red and white logo color to design a red coat for Santa Claus for the first time.
So the first image of Santa Claus was born in the “Saturday Evening News”, an old man dressed in a red robe, a white beard, and always smiling. He took off his hat in one hand and held up a glass of Coca-Cola in the other. The famous slogan came out: “The Pause That Refreshes (enjoy a cool moment)”.
Since then, this Coca-Cola advertisement has also appeared in Ladies’ Family Magazine, National Geographic Magazine, New Yorker and other magazines and newspapers, all of which are very popular, and Coca-Cola’s sales have also turned over during the Christmas season. Fan.
More advertising exposure not only makes the image of Santa Claus deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, but also makes red replace green as the main color of Christmas in the United States. Coca-Cola did not protect the IP of Santa Claus back then. The result was that more brands, organizations, and individuals were added to the creations around Santa Claus. Now we can only think of that outfit when we mention Christmas. The bearded old man in red, riding an elk, smiling and giving gifts.
Secondly, Coca-Cola has seized the dividends of the rapid development of film and broadcasting.
Just as the 2020 epidemic hit offline industries, but became an important development opportunity for online industries such as games, e-commerce, and online education, the Great Depression of the 1930s brought vitality to the American film industry. As an advertiser, Coca-Cola has become one of the beneficiaries of the development of the film industry.
Coca-Cola sent a dedicated photographer to Hollywood to design a link to include Coca-Cola in the film together with the film team. It also hired a dedicated agent to distribute Coca-Cola in the film studio-two boxes a month for the main stars, giving all With 5 boxes of on-site production staff, Coca-Cola has also gained a lot of exposure opportunities. Consumers will “subconsciously buy” when they see stars drinking Coca-Cola in and out of the movie.
Not only the bonuses of movies and radio broadcasting were also captured by Coca-Cola. In 1930 alone, Coca-Cola invested a budget of $400,000 on radio broadcasting. In addition to advertising, they also sponsored string orchestra performances, which deeply attracted a generation of people who love to listen to radio.
Third, Coca-Cola began to carry out personalized marketing for different user groups.
For male users, Coca-Cola will cleverly use sexual attraction, allowing the more exposed Coca-Cola girls to pose various sexy poses while drinking Coca-Cola, thereby more effectively attracting the attention of male users.
For female users, especially housewives, Coca-Cola launched six bottles of Coca-Cola that are easy to drink at home, and sent dedicated female employees to install Coca-Cola bottle openers from house to house, and distribute free redemption coupons for new packaged drinks. Coca-Cola also paired food with Coca-Cola in an advertisement for the first time, portraying Coca-Cola as a “good partner for any food.” In addition, Coca-Cola also invited Ada Allen, the host of the “Housewives Broadcasting Club” program, to help bring the goods. Allen once suggested that all housewives who trusted her can use Coca-Cola as a drink for every meal.
For children, Coca-Cola provided them with various school cards, notepads, pencils, pencil sharpeners and other stationery, as well as cardboard scissors with Coca-Cola elements such as miniature circuses, small towns, airports, and Olympic Games. Cut the toy. For some preschool children, Coca-Cola even issued a large number of free exchange coupons, hoping to make them obsessed with the taste of Coca-Cola from an early age.
After continuous large-scale advertising and marketing, by the end of the 1930s, Coca-Cola had become a national enterprise in the hearts of the American people. As mentioned above, Coca-Cola has become the essence of the American soul. This beverage that brings happiness to people has become a part of American culture. It is precisely because of this that the Coca-Cola World War II legend and post-World War II globalization have been achieved.
Chapter Three The Legend of Coca-Cola in World War II
The globalization of Coca-Cola before World War II
As early as when Ernest Woodruff acquired Coca-Cola, globalization was one of the goals of business development. In 1919, Coca-Cola’s new, The United States began to send troops to all parts of the world, a total of 16 million people. Woodruff, who was already patriotic, keenly caught a godsend and issued that special order written in the annals of history: “No matter where our army is, and no matter how expensive the company is, we will ensure that every soldier will only You can buy a bottle of Coca-Cola for 5 cents.”
Through lobbying, the U.S. military and Congress finally decided to send Coca-Cola to the front line as a munitions like chocolate, chewing gum and cigarettes. At the same time, it also exempted the sugar quota, while its rival Pepsi had to buy it at a high price. Sugar, even rushed to smuggle sugar from Mexico.
Due to the transportation problem of military supplies, the original direct export method of bottled Coca-Cola was changed to export concentrates, and local factories were built and canned. So where the US military was stationed, Coca-Cola built a bottling plant there to produce Coca-Cola on a large scale. .
After the end of World War II, the US military withdrew, but these bottling plants were retained and became the local production base of Coca-Cola. Not only that, because of the influence of the US military, under the demonstration of American soldiers, drinking Coca-Cola tends to be popular in the local area. The Coca-Cola produced by the local bottling plant will continue to be spread to various local places through various methods and gradually become popular. Taking Iceland as an example, Coca-Cola, which was originally unknown because of the construction of the US Air Force base and the personal admiration of the Prime Minister of Iceland, gained the approval of the entire Icelandic civilians in a very short time. By the beginning of the 21st century, the annual per capita consumption of Coca-Cola in Iceland had reached 446 bottles-more than any country in the world, including the United States.
According to data, during World War II alone, Coca-Cola built 64 new bottling plants and sold more than 10 billion bottles of Coca-Cola. Compared with this horrible sales volume, it is more meaningful that Coca-Cola began to establish a stronger emotional connection with the American people through the interface of World War II.
Build emotional dependence
I have discussed with many people “Why companies should invest inHow much real money to make a brand? “The answer is surprisingly similar: build trust and lower consumer awareness thresholds.
In my opinion, brand building should be divided into three stages: awareness building stage, trust building stage, and emotional dependence stage.
In the stage of visibility building, the core problem is to solve the problem from being unknown to being known.
The commonly used method is to make potential consumers recognize and gradually understand the existence of this product through repeated exposure of core elements such as brand name, logo, slogan, and product style. Brand marketing often refers to “opening the mind” at this stage.
Because it is created from nothing, simple, direct, and controversial advertisements are often easy for people to quickly generate memories. For example, “No gifts for this year’s holidays, but only for melatonin”, “Hengyuanxiang, Yang Yang Yang”, “Platinum Travel Shooting! Shoot wherever you want!”, “Find a job! Talk to the boss directly! !”, “Before traveling, go to the ant’s nest!”……
At the stage of building trust, many target consumer groups already have a certain awareness of the brand. Therefore, on the one hand, we need to continue to consolidate this awareness and continue to maintain advertising efforts: social psychology research shows that humans will be familiar with themselves The things that are particularly preferred, and the degree of like will increase with the frequency of appearance. Social psychology calls this phenomenon the “exposure effect”, also known as the law of familiarity. On the other hand, spokespersons will be hired to establish consumer groups’ trust in the brand itself through the trust endorsement of the spokesperson.
When it comes to the emotional building stage, the brand needs to reach a closer relationship with the user. It is better than a friend, like a family member. Simply brand exposure and endorsement of the trust of the spokesperson cannot achieve this goal. It also needs the brand owner and their Users conduct deeper communication and establish relationships between similar friends and relatives. This stage certainly requires correct marketing strategies, large-scale advertising costs, and the blessing of historical opportunities.
The process of Coca-Cola’s brand building in the US market is also in line with these three stages. At the end of the 19th century, Coca-Cola was born, mainly through “refreshing! Refreshing! Refreshing!” and “both wonderful coca leaves and famous