Blog Highlight – Unveil the dynamic marketing strategy of Coca-Cola in 2024, blending personalization & digital prowess to drive brand growth.

It wouldn’t be too difficult to admit that whenever we’re thinking of a cold beverage, coke would be the first to pop in our heads. Talk of worldwide acclaim for a beverage and the first name is Coke, no joke. The colossal recognition is due to targeting everyone in the market as a potential consumer. The perfect segmentation is a major reason why they turn heads even today.

Coca-Cola’s Marketing Blueprint for 2024

While the marketing chief of Coca-Cola remains ignorant to political advertising, it would be fun to decipher how the company would procreate their actions in the coming year.

Investors should not be expecting the brand to copy bigger brands in disputed advertising. The presidential election would be held in 2024 and it reflects in how important a year it is for the brand. Being an inclusive brand, they just want to stay away from recurrent political issues as figured.

Looking at their turntable, Coca-Cola’s safe marketing approach occurs as they notice stock cost aftershocks across other popular brands.

Coca-Cola wants to be known as a simple beverage, a mere soft drink, something that is instilled in the minds of millions effortlessly! They are confident in their repertoire and how they have built a kingdom not in a day.

So if we look at some marketing channels for the brand, they have enabled an undifferentiated targeting strategy. The recent days have found some localization of products for more acceptability. Personal marketing channels involve directly communicating with the audience whilst non-personal marketing involves offline and online media like events, promotions, campaigns, television, newspapers, posters, emails, PR, billboards, social media, magazines and so on.

Let’s quickly catch an overview of the prevalent marketing strategy for the brand using the 4p’s:

4 P’s of Marketing for Coca Cola

Product

Out of about 500 products from the brand offered globally, they ensure different sizes as well as packaging for their product line.

Some infamous examples of bestsellers include Minute Maid, Diet Coke, Coca-Cola Life, Sprite, Fanta which led to the generation of significant profits.

Pricing

They have been sticking to the same price point for approximately 73 years now!

But in the presence of competitors like Pepsi, they had to tweak the flexibility of their pricing strategy. However, that does not mean huge rise or huge fall or unreasonable pricing. They acknowledge how consumers would eventually doubt the quality of the product and switch to alternatives.

Place

Vast distribution network across Eurasia, Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America and Africa.

Promotion

Different promotional tactics for surviving the intense competition.

They spend over 4 million dollars annually for promoting the brand, utilizing international and traditional advertising mediums.

Marketing Tactics

For starters, they announced a global contest for designing the bottle! The logo is written in a Spencerian script and is unique as opposed to the competitors, originally inspired by cocoa pods. Way to make an impression. It does not end here, the Share a Coke campaign in 2018 across fifty countries has been deemed successful. Celebrities marketing the product through scripts in different languages as per the zone, local culture or market was solid thinking at that time. Localized positioning ironically gets you internationalized!

Trendsetting is a part of their game and they would collaborate with known names to stand apart from the get-go. Sponsorships with Olympic Games, NASCAR, American Idol amongst other events initiated meaningful partnerships. It not only helped the brand reach fans, athletes or officials worldwide, but made a resounding impact in general.
In an era of online communication and social media, Coca Cola reaps the benefits out of technological advancements by actively incorporating digital marketing policies. It is found across the platforms of Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat for posting videos, images or more through email or digital marketing, SEO and so on.

Growth Strategy

Getting back to what they would do in 2024,

First, we have to have an insight into their polished growth strategy.

1. Compounding Quality Value

Their purpose has been underlined as “Refresh the world and make a difference”, allowing them to orient their business and only drive forward despite crises. They have noted the key objectives for having an upward growth trajectory, namely winning consumers, gaining shares, maintaining the system economically and strengthening shareholder impacts.

2. Optimizing Brand Portfolio

Their portfolio is streamlined to 200 from 400 master brands. It subsequently allows global categories to identify the greatest category and country combinations driving effective returns on their spend. The aspiration has always been to achieve a promising scale and potential that would grow their consumer base or drive margin accretion.

3. Networking

Networked organization techniques are back to change their game! They have to strike the right balance between intimacy and scale. The creation of global leads and clear decisions would modernize innovation and marketing. Coca-Cola also enables platform services for elevating data, insights and analytics for top and bottom-line growth alike. This would reduce duplication, drive sales, facilitate accountability and speed execution!

4. Build the Brand

World Class Marketing

Checking consumer passion points to make a superior-tasting product.
The new operating structure would shift to television experiences, creating global solutions by partnering across geographies and functions.
In a better position to communicate with customers and induce end-to-end engagement. The aim is to add new drinkers through impactful messaging or co-creation!

Efficient Resource Allocation

The model would have to combine commercial prioritization through advanced analytics, driving leverage through sales.
Looking back at one area fueled by the pandemic would be to act within resources as available, whether its people, money or time.
The decisions start from the level of the enterprise itself, and the company invokes a learning spirit throughout
They have driven a methodical algorithm around category-country combination which gives them the confidence to generate greater return.

Digital

An integrated platform ecosystem creates massive value in the digital world.
Combination with cutting-edge tools, would digitally facilitate effective marketing, strengthen brands, and improve execution.

Implementation of Strategies by Coca Cola

The organization’s international success is dependent on the extreme ability to thrive in a marketplace. They have immensely transformed in the last years by putting bottling operations in the hands of capable and strategy-addicted partners!

For instance, deriving learnings from reusable performances in Latin America in terms of driving demand for refillable and affordable PET packages, drives positive results from a transaction, value, and revenue standpoint.

As collection rates are high in Germany, refillable were utilized for expanding premium packages for indoor occasions, where they created a returnable and sustainable glass bottle, driving efficacy across metrics.

But these have been planned since ages, What more? What next?

UEFA Euro 2024 has added Coca-Cola as the latest global partner!

The Giants would officially serve as the tournament’s beverage sponsor! The extended partnership to be covering the championship has presently gained all ears. Fans can buy various Coca-Cola products such as sports drinks, ready-to-drink coffee, water, fruit-based drinks and beverages. The deal also involves exclusive pouring rights at fan zones, fan villages, across the 10 host stadiums. It should also include digital rights alongside LED pitch-boarding exposure.

Coca-Cola has played a big role in the tournament by uniting people and giving fans innovative and unforgettable experiences.

Sports carries a shared passion and universal language, while bringing together people from diverse backgrounds.

Additionally, the organization’s current pacts include the ones with reputed names like Engelbert Strauss, Atos, Lidl, Vivo and Alipay as a global sponsor.

The heritage would only be built on further.

It doesn’t stop there, it only gets better.

The soft drink connoisseur in all respects COCA COLA, a world partner of the IOC or “International Olympic Committee” has become the official sponsor for Paris 2024 “Olympics Torch Relay”

An already persistent and present name in 8/10 households, they have a crucial role to play by contributing to the Olympics that also resonates and signifies deep-knit emotion. The brand will also involve itself in the recruitment process, where they would select youngsters from the different underprivileged sectors of Paris to take part in the event.

Paris 2024 solely hopes to visit all French departments and overseas in the Torch Relay. Apparently, 60 of 101 have signed up so far in the mainland. The event would end at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games which is scheduled for July 2024.

Coca-Cola is privileged and honored to be a part of the movement owing to bringing together athletes from all parts of the world. They not only represent their respective nations, but also pursue dreams to be a legitimate part of history.-

Fast forward 2024- What’s the worst that could happen? Looking at threats ahead.

Challenges Ahead

Despite having several expectations from the brand, simply for how large it is and how large it has been, it can be presented with uncertainties or risks. These can arise due to unfavorable geopolitical or economic conditions, such as the influence of the war between Ukraine and Russia, inability to innovate further, excessive competition, modified retail landscape, loss of customers, threats to business expansion in developing markets and so on.

The brand can also be unable to manage the consequences of their productivity issues, fail to attract or retain a skilled workforce, have their supply chain disrupted with increased raw material, commodity, transportation, packaging and energy amongst other input costs.

Failures can be induced by business partners or third-party service providers in fulfilling responsibilities, bargaining agreements can be dissatisfactory. Bottling partners can experience or report work stoppages, strikes, labor shortages, health concerns, and so on.

Coca Cola has to keep note of consumer shopping and product preferences, quality and product safety, in accordance with perceived consequences of certain ingredients like non-nutritive sweetening agents or derived substances.

Increased income tax rates, unfavorable resolution of disputes with tax including the IRS or Internal Revenue Service, associated tax issues, introduction of new taxes can pose threats.

There can be additional label requirements, laws added on beverage containers, and limitations on marketing the products.

Failure of compliance with data protection and privacy laws, achieving sustainability targets, accurately reporting progress can be other concerns.

The environmental influence of plastic amongst other packaging materials, water scarcity or poor water quality, increased food product demand alongside reduced agricultural productivity.

Marketing Strategy of Coca-Cola for 2024