Unit 3 Individual Product

Nowadays it is rather complicated to find a person living on the Earth who does not know what “Coca-Cola” is. This multinational corporation, which operates worldwide, has won the hearts of millions of customers living on all continents. Coca-Cola is everywhere. It is sold in huge supermarkets located in big cities and towns, it can be found in small local shops who serve only several hundreds of people and also it can be found in the smallest inhabited localities, which have electricity in them to supply Coca-Cola’s vending machines. Everything began more than a century ago, in 1886, when a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia, named John Pemberton invented a “delicious, exhilarating, refreshing and invigorating” drink that claims to be one of the most popular brands now, and the most popular soft drink. At the moment Coca-Cola is operating in nearly 200 countries worldwide and continues to attract even more customers. Coca-Cola was the first to enter the Soviet Union market, where it also received consumers’ recognition.
Being one of the loyal consumers of Coca-Cola, and its soft drink “Coca-Cola Classic” I have chosen this company in order to speak about the reasons of it extensive popularity among consumers all over the world. The main goal of this paper is to speak about the strategies Coca-Cola used and still uses to appeal to the consumers.
How can a company attract new buyers? The answer is rather simple – to introduce new product to the market by means of advertising. Advertising is what makes it possible for everybody to get to know about goods produced inside the country (domestic products) and beyond its borders. Advertising is one of the most significant, powerful and effective tools, which helps to attract customers and, thus, increase sales and profitability of any business. Advertising is itself a profitable business, on which huge sums of money are spent annually. The main purpose behind any advertising is to gain extensive publicity within potential customers, because people will not be interested in buying something unless they heard about or tried certain goods and services. Coca-Cola is one of the few companies that used this tool of marketing to its fullest extent. Coca-Cola’s advertisements have always been very creative, bright and carried certain message to the consumers, making them brand loyal.
Indeed, creation of brand is the essential element of product marketing, which determines product’s success or failure in the market. Brand is a certain image, symbol that identifies one product from another. Coca-Cola created a powerful brand, using red and white colours, which are now mainly associated only with Coca-Cola. Brand is what helps the consumers to identify the product they would like to buy. Three main benefits of brands include profit, ability to register a trademark by means of brand and avoid being copied by some other company, and customer loyalty. It is very important that company is distinguished from others, however, this is considered to be a short-term goal. A long-term goal for any company is to make consumers loyal to the brand. This is rather time and money-consuming process, which involves a lot of hard work and creativity, however, the results of it might be outstanding. When customers become brand loyal the possibility that they might switch to a different product is minimum under any circumstances.
There is no doubt that it is necessary for a company to stimulate the customers by conducting certain promotion campaigns. The main difference between advertising and promotion is that the latter induces consumers to buy something by means of certain incentives. For example, the company put its products on sale after reducing the price, it can offer consumers to buy several products and present one for free, or offer to collect bottle caps and receive some little souvenirs. All of this stimulates consumers desire to buy.
Coca-Cola has been wisely using all of the mentioned above marketing tools, including advertising, promotion, creating a brand and attracting loyal consumers. However, there is another special strategy that the company uses in order to gain wider publicity and increase sales volumes. This strategy lies in the creation and extensive usage of slogans. Throughout the years the company was using the slogans to reflect the benefits of Coca-Cola Classic. Almost every year new slogans appeared and were accompanied by new advertisement campaigns. Some of the most famous slogans are: “Things Go Better with Coke”, “I’d like to Buy the World a Coke”, “Always Coca-Cola” and others. The company invited some celebrities to advertise their product, such as Bob Hope, Bill Cosby (advertisement campaign called “Have a Coke and a Smile”), which added even more success. Coca-Cola Classic has been advertised everywhere – on TV, on radio and in the newspapers, gaining more and more publicity.
Having studied some of the strategies the Coca-Cola company uses I can now understand why I became one of its loyal customers. Coca-Cola created a well-recognized brand for its product; it developed and continues to develop and conduct well-considered, appealing to consumers advertising campaigns; it also once in a while conducts promotion campaigns, which induce the consumers into buying more. Having become a loyal consumer I’m going to keep buying products of Coca-Cola, especially Coca-Cola Classic, as it satisfies all of my demands in terms of what a drink should be. Also, it is necessary to underline the fact, that even though it is quite understandable how Coca-Cola attracts loyal customers, it does not estrange them from remaining loyal, because it only involves strategies that are legal and do not go against human morality. Conversely, I should say that people who develop advertising campaigns and create slogans for Coca-Cola are very professional, talented and deserve respect.

Bibliography
1. Coca-Cola Advertising Slogans
http://www.solarnavigator.net/sponsorship/coca_cola_slogans.htm