MARKETING PROJECT

The Coca-cola company claims that it has been the biggest launch of the group for 20 years. It hopes to improve its previous missed launch with its water in 2004 and it hopes to be successful because of the huge investments in advertising campaign. For example, in United-Kingdom, the amount of advertising spendings is about €12 million and a sampling of 4 million bottles.The main target is men who are between 16 and 24. Indeed, Coca-Cola light is not really successful with this kind of segment because this product suffers to a female image. This segment is careful about its weight but usually does not really like to buy light version of a product. That is why Coca-Cola Zero was created. The group directly wants to compete with consumers of Pepsi Max.

Besides the taste of the new product is really not far from the genuine one and Coca-cola emphasizes this caracteristic in its campaign. Even if a big part of the campaign was based on street and viral marketing destinated to make the product famous, to generate an effective word-to-mouth, the company has obviously launched TV commercials and a print ad campaign. Some examples…

As we have seen it in the previous article, one of the priority of Coke, after make the new product known, was to make a website known: zerocontrainte. This website is not an official website for the Coca-Cola Zero. It was only created for presenting the product before its launching thanks to an actual attrative way. Indeed it has a great design with a good harmony between packaging, the spirit and the image of the product and the target. You can find a presentation of the product but also goodies as wallpapers for your computer. These wallpaper are really well designed and have an actual young spirit. It is a microsite.Obviously there is an official site : cocacolazero.com. This website is really more developped than the other one. It keeps the same design but it is really more interactive with several funny games. It reaches once again the wanted target: young men.Besides there is a sort of short scenario destinated to send the link to friends, such as a marketing virus, really as viral marketing where the origin was street marketing… Finally, Coca-Cola has done more than launching an official site and a microsite. It has also launched a “right-false blog”: blog. It wanted that people think this blog comes from some citizen. The aim is creating an other source for knowing coca zero. But the Internet users have noted this fact and denouncing the brand on the Internet. Coca-Cola has not really admit that but maintains it “more officially”.

The firm has obviously launched its new product thanks to an advertising campaign thanks to print ads, TV commercials… But it has also used the street to make Coca-Cola Zero famous. The company has worked with Stella, a famous advertising agency of Publicis group, for launching the product in France. The first plan of teasing was done on january, with a marketing operation using 28000 event supports set up on pavements and on saling points of Vidéo Futur, Score Game and Citadium. Indeed the main target of the brand is men who are between 16 and 24. But one of the main goal of this kind of campaign was to emphazise a website. Because it is easier to present and promote a product on the Internet and to make it really attractive thanks to many means. In fact, the Coca-cola company has used street marketing to continue with viral marketing…

            Street marketing is means for communating and promoting which is the oldest. It could be a simple flyer which is broadcast in the subway or it can use an actual interactive way.We could identify this concept thanks to “buzz marketing”. This marketing does not use a special media but use every distribution network in order to make people speak about a product. It is a sort of sauvage ad which is broadcast to and thanks to the consumer. The main aim is reaching an important word of mouth around the product, we can also call that “Viral marketing”. This kind of advertising is usually used for cheap communication strategies and with innovative broadcasting means. The “Buzz” is based on a surprising effect since the means used have to be continually renewed for making people speak about it.   For example, we can think as example to the brand Budweiser and its sloggan “Whassup”. The firm had created a website with several videos that people can download. Internet users were becoming the aim vector since they sent the website link to their network, family, friends, colleagues. An other example is the Volvo’s short film: the film was broadcast on TV but if you want to know the end you have to visit a website. With the boom of the Internet, mail boxes were a wonderful way to send to million people website links, ads, pictures, sloggans, short films… But this method is not really organized and not really effective.That is why today firms are more aware on the demand, they really look for understanding what is this evolution of the demand and how to reach it. 

You can find many examples by following this website link: actu-buzz , and other examples of innovative buzz ads: Gillette , Ferrero .

I have chosen to present a product and not a more general theme. Indeed there are many marketing concepts around the new COCA-COLA Company’s product: Coca-Cola Zero.

This new Coke uses many new concepts for its promotion, particularly street marketing. I think it could be interesting to see some examples of the “Zero campaign”. Besides what is more interesting to see is the means used to promote it, to understand how the company have decided to target consumers.

The actual aim of this presentation is not to present Coca-Cola Zero or to promote it, but knowing better what are new marketing concepts and this Coke is one of the best example of an application of a new wave…