Coca cola - swot analysis

MARKETING AND PROMOTIONAL STRATEGY

Coca cola

The country in which my promotional plan is going to be set is India, because I feel there is a real need to improve on the promotion of my product. Ever since coke was thrown out of India in 1977 for not revealing its secret recipe, it has been struggling to regain a foothold on the subcontinent. “The guardian 2000”

I am first going to use SWOT analysis and analyse Coca-Cola both internally and externally in terms of it’s marketing strategy.

STRENGTHS

Strong brand name
Co-operate identity
Global distribution
Innovation

WEAKNESSES

Not no1 in India
Advertising was not clear and was misunderstood in India

OPPURTUNITIES

Possible growing demand
Expansion into new market
Developing a global brand

THREATS

Competition-Pepsi
Legislation-health scares like France and Belgium.

I am going to decide on the following things:

Who should receive the message?
What image do we want to send out of Coca-Cola?
How much will it cost to get the message out to my consumers?
What actions the receiver will take?
How to control the whole process once implemented?
Determining what was achieved.

My target group is not going to be a specific age but aimed at the whole country from youngsters to the elders.

My objectives are going to be SMART:

Specific
Measurable
Accurate
Realistic
Time specific

My campaign is going to be successful because I will be making sure that my consumers are aware of Coca-Cola. I will be reaching my audience, which at the moment is being dispersed in India. I will keep reminding my consumers about the product, this will encourage existing consumers to re-purchase the product and may attract new customers. I will show the Indian audience that coca cola is better than my competitors including Pepsi, this may encourage consumers to switch purchases from another product like Pepsi. Most importantly I will develop and improve the image of Coca-Cola.

PRICING

Coca-Cola may be the no1 brand in soft drinks in many countries but in India it is the second most consumed soft drink after Pepsi. “It is something of an irony, then that in a ragingly hot country like India, most people do not drink cola. There is no mystery here: they are simply too poor. When the price of a 300ml bottle of cola went up last year from eight to nine rupees (15p), sales slumped. Even among those who buy cola, consumption is low. India’s per capita consumption of soft drinks is only six bottles a year” the guardian 2000. India being a third world country cannot afford to spend too much on a bottle of soft drink and at the moment coca cola is charging nine rupees for a bottle of coke which proved to be a mistake which showed when the sales figures slumped. So taking this in consideration I will put the price of coca cola down to seven rupees which is a drop of two rupees currently, but I feel that this will be an advantage in the long term to coca cola because currently Pepsi is dominating the soft drinks market in India not coca cola so we need to pull the customers towards coke and once they become a regular coca cola drinker we can slowly raise the price up so the sales figure is not affected greatly. We cannot raise the price of Coca-Cola even before we’ve attracted majority of our target audience and that’s the mistake Coca-Cola currently has made in India.

I have made a creative brief for what is required by Coca-Cola.

CREATIVE BRIEF FOR COCA COLA

What is required?

A campaign that can be used across India with minimal adaptation.

1. What do we expect this advertising to do?

To value coca cola’s performance more highly and so stops them being attracted to other soft drink brands. Also to increase the belief in the products intrinsic value. Make it look more attractive than Pepsi.

2. What insight do we have about our audience (their attitudes, moods and needs)?

Coca-Cola needs to be insight and the audience must be told loud and clear that Coca-Cola quenches the thirst.

3. What single-minded response do ...

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CREATIVE BRIEF FOR COCA COLA

What is required?

A campaign that can be used across India with minimal adaptation.

1. What do we expect this advertising to do?

2. What insight do we have about our audience (their attitudes, moods and needs)?

Coca-Cola needs to be insight and the audience must be told loud and clear that Coca-Cola quenches the thirst.

3. What single-minded response do we want?

Coca-Cola: -life, taste and enjoy are just what I want in my soft drink.

4. What intrinsic qualities of the brand is the best stimulus to evoke this response (emotional or rational)?

Coca-Cola is good value because it’s the best soft drink and is firmly founded on a life, taste and enjoy. We shouldn’t assume this; we need a new conviction in a context that is in tune with our younger more pragmatic audience.

5. Initial ideas to explore

We need to use “it’s delicious, refreshing and fun” to demonstrate vividly our product qualities.

PROMOTINAL OBJECTIVE

Reach all my audience

To be no1 in India-ahead of Pepsi

To increase sales by atleast 20% by beginning of 2004

Use of communication system e.g. TV, billboards etc.

Brand positioning should be no1 in India

To make sure that the corporate image is not affected by incidents such as France and Belgium again.

PUBLIC RELATIONS

Before I plan or introduce anything I will introduce an organisation within the company which will combat any weaknesses and react to threats, because I don’t want another incident like France happening again where coca cola took it’s time in responding, eventually, only a short statement of apology appeared, eight days after the initial reports of illness. The department within the organisation will have to react to such incidents in a way that will build a positive image about Coca-Cola, which is very important.

I am going to use the method AIDA that is a method used to consider advertising. It suggests that effective advertising will raise:

Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action

So that consumers buy Coca-Cola.

AIDA reminds me that we are dealing with a process that takes place in the mind of consumers, it is not only that advertising, which we are researching but how it is perceived by the consumer.

ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING ON TELEVISION

Creative advertisements can attract attention and have a great impact.
Advertisements can demonstrate Coca-Cola in use.
Can reach a vast audience.
The message can be reinforced by continuous advertisements.

DISADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING ON TELEVISION

Relatively expensive initial cost.
The message is short lived.
consumers may not watch commercials
There may be a delay between seeing the advert and visiting the shop.

To advertise in India I am going to hire bollywoods new sensation Hritick Roshan who has only appeared in three films but he is already a superstar on the subcontinent, “inspiring adulation from teenage girls and-it is said-less than maternal feelings from their mothers” The guardian 2000 and also hire Sohail Khan, the reason for me choosing two actors and not one is because currently coca cola recruited bollywood’s hottest new actor Hritick Roshan, but Pepsi hit back with an advertisement which ridiculed him, starring Shah Rukh Khan who is another of bollywood’s top actor. Coca cola’s actor was a Hindu and Pepsi’s was a Muslim actor, and knowing that the religious topic is a very sensitive subject in India it became a religious issue, so by me choosing two actors one being a Muslim and the other being a Hindu it should put the religious issue to ease and calm tensions down. I have kept in mind my budget because Hritick Roshan is a highly paid actor whilst Sohail Khan is a newly introduced but highly recognised actor, so he will not be that high in price due to him wanting to work next to such a famous actor and just starting in the bollywood business will not have or expect very high salary. In India, when people see their filmstars with any product it usually becomes a trend.

My main aim will be put into the advertisement because TV plays a very big part in people’s lives in India, from the slumps to the mansions everyone has a TV to pass time with and they worship the bollywood actor like gods, so by having bollywood’s hottest actors will improve the chances of people actually absorbing the information. In the advert I will aim most of my attention to the products unique selling point rather than the actors personally. I will also let my audience know that it is affordable in price with it now being seven rupees. I will show the Indian audience that it is a MUST drink product, you cannot not drink coca cola, make them feel that they will be missing out on the wonderful experience if they don’t drink coca cola.

My advert will be shown during late afternoons because that is India’s prime time for watching TV, they usually go out in the evening, just sitting in café’s or outside talking till late so I will be attracting most of the audience between 5-8pm. I will be showing the adverts atleast four times between the dramas that are played on India’s most watched channel Sony and Zee TV on each channel they put their most watched dramas between these times as well so this shows that between 5-8pm is when they most attract the Indian audience and it has the highest watching rates so it is definitely the best time to put my advert on.

When my advert is complete I will pilot it before it goes on television to see if I get the feedback that I’m hoping for. The advert which I will launch will be showing a shooting going on in my advert where Hritick Roshan and Sohail Khan are fighting and then the shooting is cut so both the actors sit together and have a glass of coca cola, so this shows how coke refreshes you after you after a hard days work, how it creates friendship and is part of the experience of special times, it will show how it bonds people together.

ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING ON POSTERS

national campaigns possible
most groups covered
seen repeatedly
excellent for short, sharp messages

DISADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING ON POSTERS

limited amount of information
difficult to measure effectiveness
weather and graffiti can ruin the poster.

Another communication channel that i am going to use is billboards in India for those who cannot afford televisions and also it will be an advantage with those people who have televisions because it will always be in their sight.

"posters appear in a variety of locations and tend to carry short messages. this is because motorists and pedestrians usually only have a few seconds to consider them. an effective poster is likely to be large, attention grabbing and placed in a site where it is highly visible to large numbers of people."Hall, Raffo, Jones". keeping this in mind i will put up my posters.

on the billboard it will have the official red and white writing with the words enjoy, life and refreshment written on it, both in english and gujrati.

I will put my posters on the billboards, which are situated on busy roads, and main ways which are used by many people so my posters are not going to waste. I will also have them on billboards outside restaurants and cafe's so that I am always reminding my audience of coke.

ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING ON THE INTERNET

relatively cheap and easy to set up
can be targeted
can be easily changed

DISADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING ON THE INTERNET

limited audience
Possible technical problems of connection. Viewing, ordering, maintaining.

Coca-cola already has a website set up, www. Coca cola.com. I feel that at the moment the coca-cola website is confusing, there is too much writing on one page without giving clear instructions about what to do. Also they have a lot of headings but there is nor enough information under each of them so really once again it confuses you. I will sort the website out by having the right amount of headings with the information that needs to be under each, I will also not have too many tables on the introduction page to confuse people about what to do. Their is also the use of too many colours which is not necessary, use of colour is good but having a theme of a few colours is better otherwise it just ends up looking cheap and not serious enough. I liked the fact that on the website their was the part where you could play all the coca cola adverts, its interesting so I feel that that is a part on the website that I will leave just the same.

THE LAW

there are legal restrictions, which mean that some products cannot be advertised in particular media. Consumers sometimes complain that advertisements either mislead or exploit.

THE TRADE DISCRIPTION ACT, 1968 is the most important piece of legislation in the control of advertising. The law states that products must correspond to claims made for them in advertisements. It is therefore, illegal to include ingredients on a label, which are not present.

Under the MONOPOLIES AND RESTRICTIVE PRACTICES ACT, 1948, the OFFICE OF FAIR-TRADING and the COMPETITION COMMISSION have been powers to investigate anti-competitive behaviour by firms. Such anti-competitive behaviour may be in the form of high levels of spending on advertising.

PACKAGING

“For many years, coca cola was produced in glass bottles. Because of the high costs of distributing bulky bottles, they had to be manufactured close to where the bottling took place. Today, this is no longer that important since new packaging methods have revolutionised the process.

Advanced bottling and canning technology makes coca cola cans and bottles very light but extremely strong. The company has invested a lot of time and money in research and development to ensure the most effective life cycle impact of its packaging.

But in India they still have the glass bottles, which once empty, is cleaned and refilled. I will introduce plastic bottles in the big city of India and see how they do. Because at the moment when you buy a bottle of coca cola you pay an extra five rupees for each bottle and once you have drank coca cola and returned the bottle back to the shop owner you get your five rupees back so you cannot really just walk off with the bottle of coca cola, the shop owner does this because he/she get a percentage of money back when they return the glass bottles to be recycled to the suppliers. So, if I introduce the plastic bottles then the Indian people might consume it more because they can drink it on the move without having to worry about returning the bottle back to the shop owner.

Packaging is the appeal of coca cola, it often plays a key role in marketing. My packaging helps my consumers to identify coke especially as the colours, logos and design on the packaging is used as themes in my advertising. Packaging therefore provides a unique promotional oppurtunity providing a constant reminder of the product.

Distinctiveness is very important when coca cola is competeing with rivals and that’s why it’s bright colour red and white is going to stay the same because it stands out from all the competitors.

BRANDING

A brand is a product name which is designed to differentiate the product in the market place. As coca cola is a world wide name it is not going to be new to anyone in India. Coca cola is a short distinctive name. The distinctive bright colour of coca cola makes the product stand out from the rest of the soft drinks, it stands out on the shelves. That is why making drastic changes to the colour or the name would be a disadvantage to coke.

Popular brands have often been supported and developed by CATCHLINES. These phrase which seek to strengthen the identity of a brand. Coca-cola's catchline is "life tastes good".

PUBLIC RELATIONS

I believe that public relation is concerned with the systematic development and maintenance of mutual understanding between coca cola and its audience.

“another way of looking at public relations is to say that it is concerned with developing and sustaining a positive image of the company and its products. Public relations is sometimes thought of as a supporting activity to marketing and advertising, but it is much more than this.” success in advertising and promotion.

Public relations will be a long term objective, I will send free messages to various groups through the activities coca cola undertakes in order to improve its reputation and maintain coca cola’s positive image in majority of the countries and then change negative feelings into positive feelings.

BUDGET

In everyday language a budget is the amount available for spending. In business a budget is a target. The marketing budget is the quantified plan for the marketing department . for my marketing budget I have 30,500,000 rupees.

First I set a marketing strategy, followed from the corporate objectives, this helped me decide on the budget needed to carry out my strategy. If it was too expensive, I took a cheaper approach, but overall their was no real problems with the budget.

My budgetary cycle: