I’d like to say that I’m not a big fan of Coke. I don’t drink it regularly, in any of its various formats. But when I do, the first sip, it’s like nothing else. The second sip? Not so much. I’m over it by then. Me? Fickle?
When it comes to branding and creating customer engagement, Coke wins. Every time. While you may not know their current tag line*, you know everything else; The colours, the swirls, the shape of the bottle, and you also have an expectation around what the brand experience is going to be.
The highly successful ‘Share a Coke’ campaign, where you may have able to find your name on a bottle, is an example of brand confidence like no other. Replacing your brand name with the name of a random customer is a crazy thing to do. But it worked. It worked really well.
We still bought it without the brand name. In fact, we probably bought more Coke than ever before, to get a bottle with our name on it, or our friend’s, or Santa’s. Genius marketing. Genius branding — we still knew what it was from the colours, shape and our expectations.
And, we’ll remember that for long time. Have you got an empty Coke bottle with your name sitting on your desk? Many do.
As customers, we expect Coke to do interesting things; things that aren’t quite off-beat but they still surprise and delight.
So, here’s another Coke experience. Somehow it seems more than just an ad. Again, it’s one that will be remembered by those involved, for a long time, proving once again that Coke is one of the few companies in the world that can create a brand experience like this, again and again.
* The current Coke tag line is Open Happiness
