The
Battle For Coca-Cola
Rages
On.
Ain't
Nothing Like
The Real Thing, Maybe.
I
Don't Mean To Say
I Told You So, But...
Are
Consumers Smarter
Then We Are?.
The
Four Great Myths
Of Global Branding.
Mr
Bevis Butts Heads
At Mitsubishi
The
Best Laid Plans
Of Mice And Men.
Dare
to Be Great:
The Mad Genius of "The Matrix"
Mitsubishi's
New Marketing Boss
Out
Of The Frying Pan.
Concept Is Stronger Than Fact.
Value
Perception In A World
Gone Mad With "Cool"
The
Future of Advertising
The
Brand
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The Battle for Coca- Cola Rages On. Well, our campaign continues. By your e-mail, it seems unanimous that those who took the time and effort to write, hated the execution ( "From America With Love.") but were intrigued by the strategy. Here's a sample of our reader's input:
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Everybody is dying to get advertiser support and you're saying, "Hell no? Are you on crack? Lonnie, S., Denver I don't believe in advertising-HW |
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Don't let these guys rag on you about "Old School" vs. "New School." The campaigns that you have shared with your readers have withstood the test of time year after year. The junk that passes for advertising today isn't worth remembering two weeks from now? Max D, Austin What guys ?-HW |
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So it was back to the drawing board for the "DoubleThink" team. But not back to Malibu. This time we spent the afternoon working at two tables in a food court of a Vietnamese Super Market in the largely Chinese community of Monterey Park just east of east L.A. Different vibe, different results. This project incited me to increase my position in Coca-Cola stock last week. It will never be a better buy than it is right now. So, my first task, was to become actively engaged, as a shareholder, in increasing the Value Perception of the company's flagship product, Coke Classic by digging up everything I could on the brand. A Shareholders got to do what a shareholder's got to do, right? Armed with a new dossier of global product and market info, our "Double-Think" team worked on discovering and defining the powerful product-based, "Brand Character" inherent in Coca-Cola Classic. We went in to discover the prime motivator that will compel the current Coke Classic faithful into becoming active ( as opposed to passive) brand ambassadors. We went in to uncover "who" rather than "what", defines the true personification of Brand Coke Classic? Our team set out to seek this Brand persona out. And, this is the Brand Personality that emerged. Even with those well known curves, Today's global Brand Coke Classic persona was both decidedly male as well as determinedly female. Gender alone does not define the brand character of Coca-Cola Classic. We discovered that chronologically, Brand Coke Classic is neither vibrantly young or venerably old. Age alone does not define the brand character of Coca-Cola Classic.. Geographically, Brand Coke Classic is a citizen of the world, yet uniquely American in nature. Uniquely American. Our first clue in defining and developing the brand character that best personifies Coca-Cola Classic. The support for our position was referenced by a new study from the Harvard Business Review that stated "What we didn't find was anti-American sentiment that colored judgments about U.S.-based global brands. Since American companies dominate the international market, critics have charged that they run roughshod over indigenous cultures in other countries. Champions of free trade have countered that people in other nations want to partake of the great American dream, and global brands like Coke, McDonald's, and Nike provide access to it." These findings led us to firmly believe that it is this powerful, memorable and universally understood quality of being uniquely American that can and will provide Coke Classic with this exceptional global demand creation opportunity. The opportunity exists to create demand by being uniquely American and stepping up where public policy, years of diplomacy and global media reach have fallen short. The opportunity to create demand by being uniquely American and celebrating on a universal scale, all that is admirable, inspirational and compelling about who we are and what we stand for, as people and as products of those people. There seems to be support for this positioning from our readers overseas.
And the first responses to this weeks campaign from the Ad Industry Press who got an "Early Bird" preview on Tuesday:
We believe that the Brand Character of Coca Cola Classic is that of being American. Not just any American. Not even every American. But a unique personality. Unique in all the world. Judge for yourself. Meet our brand characterization of Coca-Cola Classic, ( with a guest appearance from our Landlord,) click here.
The Most Horrible Day Of My Life. Everybody has bad hair days. Sometimes it goes way beyond that. Like the guy who was managing director at Kantor/ Fitzgerald who overslept on the morning of 9/11 and found himself rolling down the Westside Highway at the very minute Bin Laden's boys parked their jet in his lobby. Or the three porn stars who contracted HIV from the same guy working without a net. My personal best for worst is not nearly as life and death. But it sure made me wish I was dead before the day was out. When I was a kid I had a lot of jobs. But my first real job came when I was 19. At that tender age I ran away from home to join the circus. Well, something like that. I left New York to move to Detroit as the first Art Director for a young startup founded by an auto factory worker and the son of a construction contractor. The company had just changed its name from Tamla to Motown Records. Yeah, that Motown. At the time, "the company," as everybody called it back then, was doing business out of three adjoined bungalows on West Grand Blvd., just a stone's throw from the GM Building. They had one record climbing the charts ("Shop Around" by The Miracles) and their basement 4-track studio was working around the clock to turn-out product for the growing demand for "The Motown Sound." A 19 yr. old working at Motown. How bad can that get? Plenty bad. It was my second week on the job. I worked for Berry Gordy Jr's eldest sister, Esther Edwards ( who would later become the highest paid woman in America) the power behind the throne. It was the day of my first photo shoot and Mrs. Edwards ( always Mrs. Edwards and Mr. Gordy, even until this day) who ran the art department along with ITMI, their powerhouse talent management arm, wanted photos on a new group. Gladys Knight and the Pips. I was instructed to go to the back of the building and bring around Mrs. Edwards powder blue brand spanking new 1967 Caddie convertible, so that Gladys and two of the three Pips could be taken to the location in style. Everything was going great. I slid behind the wheel. Sank two inches into the plush white leather upholstered seats. Turned on the whisper smooth DeVille ignition. Slipped the car into reverse and eased backwards until my first heart attack of the day. You have no idea what a horrible sound the rear quarter panel of a brand new Cadillac can make when it comes in contact with the rear bumper of a Ford pickup truck. Especially, if the only sound anyone can hear for blocks is the rhythm tracks of something called "Baby Love" booming out of the basement studio at "Hitsville, USA" as the Motown complex was referred to. So, since I couldn't hear what I was doing, I kept right on doing it, until I noticed two of the Mail Room guys ( later to be known as "The Spinners") waving frantically for me to stop the car. The look on their faces said it all. They looked at me. They looked down the side of the blue Caddie. They looked at me again and shook their heads, with that unmistakable look of D.O.A. The driver's door opened and the eldest Gordy brother, Fuller signaled for me to get out of the car. He got the car untangled from the bumper and left it running in the alleyway behind Hitsville. By this time I had drawn quite a crowd. Temps, Tops, Vandellas, Marvelettes they were all there to witness my embarrassment. But don't worry. The worst day was young yet. It had a whole lot worse to get. Before I could pull the gouged Caddie around to the front of the building, a large tow truck from the Charles Daglish Cadillac Dealership was backing it's way down the alley. In just the few minutes since I had raked my bosses car, the dealership had been called and a brand new Caddie convertible was sitting out front with Gladys and two thirds of the Pips comfortably ensconced. A company driver was firmly stationed behind the wheel and Frank Dandridge the photographer was signaling for me to hurry up and get into his rental car for the trek to the location. The album was to be the debut release for Gladys Knight and the Pips on the Motown Label. "Just Arrived" was the title and the cover was to show Gladys and the guys sitting in the driver's seats of four brand new Cadillacs still loaded on autoloader rail cars leaving the Cadillac factory just west of Detroit. Everything had been set up through GM's Public Relations Department. The weather was freezing but the sky was crystal blue. We arrived at the designated spot right on time and the Plant manager informed us that the string of autoloaders we were to shoot on were half a mile up the tracks on the other side of a railroad underpass. It seemed that the train crew had passed into overtime before they could deliver the cars to the factory gate and had abandoned their train an hour earlier. To make matters worse, Gladys and her Pips had to be on a 4pm flight to Las Vegas in less than two hours. So we sat. And we sat. Finally, a call was placed to the local office of the Pennsylvania Railroad to find out where the new train crew was. Apparently nobody had told the PRR their train was abandoned and the earliest they could get a crew would be the next morning. This is where a bad day got elevated to the vaunted status of "Worst Day." Frank Dandridge just happened to remember me saying that I had worked for the railroad during the summer months as a kid. He asked, pointing to the massive black diesel locomotives burbling at idle up the tracks from us, "Can you run those things?" Like a fool, I nodded yes. Frank trotted over to the Plant Manager and after a few shrugs from the PM, Frank pointed to the cab of the waiting locomotives. The next thing I know, I'm breaking every rule in the book and every law on the books, releasing the air brakes on the train of twenty or so autoloader cars and notching the throttle into run4 to coax the train towards the factory gates. The rails were still a little damp from an earlier shower so their was a bit of wheel slip. I hit the sanders and notched back on the throttle until I could feel the locomotives gaining traction. Then I opened the throttle all the way to run7 and the 6000hp EMD engines began to thunder forward. I looked up the track and to my surprise I saw the same look of horror on the faces of the two plant managers and the photographer that I had seen earlier, in back of Hitsville. Even one of the Pips was backing away from the oncoming train with a look of dred. I wasted no time dumping the air into an emergency brake application and slamming the throttle shut. I leaned out the cab window to follow their panic-stricken pointing. I looked back to discover that I had made convertibles out of eight brand new Coupe DeVille hardtops. The eight sheered roofs and shattered glass windshields lay on the tracks under the underpass. It wasn't until later that night that we discovered that the reason the train crew had bailed was because the underpass was too low for the autoloaders to clear and the PRR dispatchers had decided to let the train lay dead until a new crew could run it around the underpass via a route with higher clearances. The factory manager saved the day when he called the PRR dispatcher and the police to report that a train had gone "runaway." I didn't escape that easy. When I got back to "Hitsville" I found that I had been given a new nick name as a result of the days events. "JunkYard." The only person in the history of the Motown Record Company to send 9 brand new Cadillacs to the Junkyard in just one day.
Stay Tuned. |
MARKETERS
FROM OGILVY
& MATHER ADRANTS BANK
OF AMERICA
DELTA
AIR LINES And
You. |