Coca-Cola Brand Audit
1. Introduction
According to Alison et al. (2021), brand audit helps to determine customer perspective and interaction with the business, it also extracts insights comprised of strength and weakness to unleash brand potential and opportunities. This report will function as a preamble of thorough brand study of Coca Cola comprised of detailed review of the company, goals-vision-mission, brand strategy and positioning with a thorough brand exploratory to justify brand’s strengths and weaknesses. Lastly, a global brand management recommendation will be included basis detailed understanding of the business extracted by the brand.?
1.1?History of Coca Cola
1.2?Mission/ Purpose
To refresh the world. Make a difference (The Coca-Cola Company, 2022). The Coca-Cola Company develops its business with a growth mindset, believes in continuous learning to improve its business, evaluates the way people work, and achieves, maintains and innovates the world on a daily basis. We are fostering a culture driven by the desire to refresh and make a difference. (Coca-Cola Company, 2022).?
1.3?Vision
Together for a bright future, the brand has been loved and made sustainable (The Coca Cola Company, 2022). The company's goal is to provide people with beloved brands and beverage options so they can be physically and mentally refreshed. And it must be done in a way that leads to a more sustainable business and a better shared future for consumers, business partners, employees, and communities and the environment (The CocaCola Company, 2022).
1.4?Performance
The Coca Cola Company has been growing consistently at a rate of 25% since last 10 years and pandemic year was not even an exception. The net operating revenue became USD 33 Billion last year with a market capitalization of USD 235.9 Billion (The Coca-Cola Company, 2022). It also distributed to 30 million retail customers last year with a consumption of 1.9 Billion servings per day (The Coca-Cola Company, 2022). Above all, the brand coca cola itself contributes 30% of the entire company business with a 40% market share holding as a market leader and a revenue of USD 10 billion (The Coca-Cola Company, 2022). Even, the newly added portfolio coke zero had a growth of 31% last year (The Coca-Cola Company, 2022).
2. Brand Inventory
2.1 Global Branding Strategy
2.1.a. Brand Hierarchy
The packaging of brand Coke was changed for the first time and the trademark was registered to launch its first ever advertisement on 1945 (Britannica, 2018). In the year 1982, the company first time introduced a new line under the brand coke which was “Diet Coke”- originally named as Diet Coca Cola (Britannica, 2018). Later on, the company kept it strategies as a House of Brands but transformed all the brands into branded house. Coca Cola itself became the highest contributing branded house with strong distributing network and local standardized approach. In order to achieve so, they started forming Bottling Investment Group (BIG) in every country and started adopting local tastes under brand hierarchy.
2.1.b. Brand Relationship Strategy
Coca Cola is considered as the master brand of the “branded house” approach for this particular brand as it is serving as the anchoring point and all other brands e.g. Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Flavored Coke are based on this (Earl, 2012). Because of the other beverages e.g. Fanta, Sprite the company also possesses “house of brands” approach. Therefore, as a whole the company is having a hybrid brand relationship approach whereas the brand “Coca Cola” clearly has ‘branded house’ approach.?Hence, it has number of pros and cons in terms of relationship strategy are shared below.
2.2 Global Brand Positioning?
2.2.a. Brand Positioning
For building and showcasing any brand in their respective target market, companies require a well-defined positioning plan (Hooley, 2016). Companies have to spot distinctions to gain a competitive advantage, and they are supposed to understand their consumer needs before providing a value to them which is their unique proposition (Kotler, 2016). Coca-Cola as a brand stands as thirst-quenching and refreshing (Edrawsoft, n.d.). The brand's main goal is to satisfy the target market. Coca-Cola is also associated with enjoying daily chores with family and friends (Edrawsoft, n.d.).
2.2.b. Positioning Map
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2.2.c. Points of Parity (POP) and Points of Difference (POD)
Points of Parity is the attribute of a brand which is associated with competition in the market and can justify themselves to the customer that, they are no less than the competition (Quey, 2021). On the other hand, Points of Difference is the unique proposition a brand communicates to customers to prove themselves better than the competition in the market (Quey, 2021). The key competition across the globe for Coca Cola brand is Pepsi. However, as a brand Coke being branded house holds the highest market share in the market worth USD 87.6 billion (Statista, 2021). The POP and POD strategies has made this possible are discussed below in a table format.
2.3 Brand Elements?
2.3.a. Brand Identity
The above picture states that, Coca-Cola is highly adaptive and up-to-dated in terms of visualizing their brand identity towards customer. Hence, they keep changing their, logo, brand slogan and marketing campaign strategy which has brought them success throughout last 135 years.
2.3.b. Target Audience
Target and Segmentation for the brand Coca-Cola varies from country to country as the brand’s core positioning strategy is “glocal”. However, bird’s eye view of global target marketing seems like below.
3. Brand Exploratory
3.1 Brand Salience
Coke being one of the oldest brands of the world is highly reputed and mostly penetrated household brand (The Coca-Cola Company, 2022). The brand is present across 200+ countries since last 135 years which reassures its awareness towards customers. According to Interbrand- the most prestigious brand awards across globe, Coca-Cola is the 6th most popular and reliable brand (B&T Magazine, 2021).
3.2 Brand Imagery
All throughout last 135 years Coca-Cola always established the brand image for mass people. It has established its stance as a partner of happiness, bringing joyful moments, being social and having a lot of fun. Apart from that, it has always connected sports all across the globe basis customers demand by nationality. In order to do so, it has always been an integral part of biggest sports events like, Football World Cup, UEFA Euro, Champions League, Cricket World Cup etc. In addition to that, USA being the country of origin, it started its steps there from local market targeting customers and selling it at nearby stores has expanded its channel to 200+ countries adopting “Glocal- globally local” strategy. Below are the few excerpts of the campaigns and advertisements run by Coke throughout last 135 years.
3.3 Brand Judgements
It's always been more difficult to keep clients happy and loyal enough to buy only one brand on a regular basis in today's market. However, as the brand becomes more attractive as a collection, customers are now increasing their loyalty (Cocacolabranding, 2016). For the customers, credibility is another important bet of judgements which includes innovation, trustworthiness and likability. Hence, Coca-Cola always positioned themselves as no longer just a simple drink, rather they make every moment more special and memorable. For instances, their campaign “taste the feeling” made customers to celebrate with friends and family which ultimately churns out to create strong emotional bonding with proper self-respect. Thus, Coke has finally become the most penetrated household brand and placed a strong position on customers top of mind.
3.4 Brand Resonance
Emotional branding aims to be a long-term tool for integrating connections and deeply touching customers who view the value of their brand as their personality. The way a corporate brand reflects emotions not only influences the purchase decisions and awareness of customers, but it also affects the way the corporate brand reflects actual information about product quality (Cocacolabranding, 2016). In addition, the brand message must be consistent and harmonious across all communication channels so that it is aligned with the company's core values and allows customers to grow into those who want to be unique (Cocacolabranding, 2016). With these strong brand communication strategies, Coca-Cola is able to hold a strong customer base which has helped them to become 6th most popular brand (vs Pepsi 29th) across the world (B&T Magazine, 2021). This proves that, how strong resonance Coke has as a brand. In order make it clearer and more precise, I am sharing a customer-based brand equity model of Coca-Cola below.
4. References
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