82 August 2018
Ajay. To reach out to the teens, the brand took the Share
a Coke campaign to colleges where on LED screens the
students could post their selfies.Coca-Cola follows a simple rule for media planning- concentrate on its core TG i.e. Teens & First Job-goers.
The brand, in association with its agencies i.e. Greenline
& Lodestar targets routes, markets, hangout joints and
arterial roads to reach out to TG such as colleges and
at-work destination in each city and then take up sites
that give effective and efficient brand visibility.
The brand has two marketing thumb-rules to break the
category clutter i.e. Innovation & Creative. “There is anutmost need to have an innovative outdoors to sort of
break the clutter”, reckons Ajay. While on the second
rule, Ajay emphasises, “Second and the toughest job
where we seek the help of our creative agency McCann,
is to really create a campaign that is very well linked
with each medium with an aim to build the impact
through same core messaging across all medium”.
He elaborated that the same strategy was opted for
Share a Coke where the brand went with one-liners and
unconventional takes on different relationships which
intrigued the masses.Coca-Cola has a deep penetration in smaller markets
such as Punjab where the outdoor media seems to
be delivering the goods. However, the investment
decisions for smaller markets are based upon the
brand’s market share. As Ajay explains, “As we go
down to the smaller cities, we don’t only pick locations
targeting teens but also consider high traffic areas. In
fact, the bigger picture depends on different products
and its communications where we decide whether
we want to have a sheer number of sites or impactful
sites to build awareness. The strategy varies for each
campaign. Also, the OOH media is selected in smaller
cities depending upon the dynamics of markets, its
distribution and brand metrics’; based on that we figure
out if there is a need for OOH or store activation”. lBhawana AnandBRAND SPEAK