Coca-Cola Olympic Campaign 2012

I. Introduction
The Coca-Cola Company is no stranger to the Olympics. In fact, the brand has been associated with the International Olympic Committee for 84 years, so it is hardly a surprise to see Coca-Cola sponsoring the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London with a huge global integrated marketing campaign - Move to the Beat™, meanwhile, as a visual dramatization of the Move to the Beat™ campaign, The Coca-Cola also unveiled a giant urban artwork, called the Beat Wall which is an iconic image created by internationally acclaimed urban artists to bring Move to the Beat™ to life. According to the Vice President, Global Advertising Strategy and Content Excellence at Coca-Cola, Jonathan Mildenhall, “This is Coke’s biggest ever Olympics campaign.”

1. Comprehensive Overview about the Company
The Coca-Cola Company is the world’s largest beverage company. With 126 years of history in business, it now has about 146,200 employees worldwide, operates in more than 200 countries and markets a portfolio of more than 3,000 beverage products including sparkling drinks and still beverages. Worldwide, the company is No.1 in sales of sparkling beverages and juices and juices drinks, as well as No.2 in sales of sports drinks and No.2 in sales of bottles water. There are 43% of stores in the world carrying Coca-Cola products and about 1.8 billion servings of beverages being sold per day. Nowadays, the Coca-Cola Company has 6 billion customers and is worth more than 68 billion dollars of market value. Every year, Coca-Cola spends about $4 billion dollars on worldwide advertisement, which occupies a huge portion of its costs. The advertisement strategy Coca-Cola implemented has helped the company create around $32 billion dollars in revenue per year.

2. SWOT Analysis
The Coca Cola Company was found in 1886 in USA. It has been developed for over a hundred years. Its long history can really benefit its business since its brand name has been widely spread to the world. Moreover, as one of the largest global beverage manufacturers, Coca-Cola has a high competitive advantage on marketing. However, the company now is threated by the growing concern about health and wellness problem from its consumers, which challenges its sales volume and public image.

(1) Strengths
Coca-Cola is a market leader in the drink industry with a high brand reputation. The brand becomes one of the symbols of American culture. The taste of Coca-Cola is unique and widely accepted by the customers. The company has a secret production formula of its Coke, which make the company be most competitive in the market. Though many other competitors try to create a coke similar to that of the Coca-Cola Company, all of them fail to provide the same taste of Coca-Cola.
What’s more, the excellent promotion strategy helps the Coca-Cola Company a lot. Usually it employs the pop singers and movie stars to be its promoters. Thus wide ranges of people in different countries are being influenced to consume its products. Moreover, the advertisements of Coca-Cola are also appealing, like the 2012 London Olympic Games Champaign which is analyzed in this paper. The Coca-Cola Move to the Beat™ campaign gives the customers a great impression of its Coke, meanwhile, brings customers closer to the Olympic Games and to sport in general.
Apart from all above strengths, the Coca-Cola Company owns huge assets. With brand value of $68,734 million, the strong finance power helps the company invest in product development and research as well as advertisement. More than 230 brands of drinks produced by the company meet different requirements of customers. About $4 billion advertisement budget helps to achieve popularity all over the world. Coca-Cola has a large geographical foot print. The company has expanded its business to 200 countries instead of only focusing on developed areas. It creates large profits in the areas with high growth economics and reduces the business risks.

(2) Weaknesses
Most of the drinks of Coca Cola are harmful to health. Especially the soft drinks may provide lots of calories to the people seriously. Research shows that carbonated soft drinks lead to obesity and calcium depletion, and many parents are not allowing their children to consume the drinks of the Coca-Cola Company frequently. As a result, it will affect sales volume.
Also, the target groups of the Coca Cola Company are mainly the younger people. It usually overlooks the market of the elderly. However, there are potential consumers in the market actually and more profit can be made.

(3) Opportunities
Trying to create and providing more healthy drinks in the market since people nowadays in the world are paying more attention to their health. Most of them are choosing food and drinks cautiously and tending to much healthier ones. Healthy drink markets will have great potential in the coming seasons.
In addition, since the Coca Cola Company only provides drinks nowadays, it can attempt to provide food in the future. The food provided must be paid more attention to health of course. And these kinds of food can be linked to more big restaurants. Also, the company can try to provide ice-cream products which always dominate large market shares.

(4) Threats
As a company with a long history, the challenge for Coca-Cola is to slow down of the product life cycle to avoid enter into the decline stage. At present, there is a trend of consuming healthy drink and many existing drink companies have tried to invent a great variety of innovative drinks. If the Coca Cola Company only insists on providing tasty soft drinks and little healthy drinks, its sales must be affected and the product’s popularity will decline.
Also, since the market size of soft drinks is saturated already, with more competitors, especially its core rival Pepsi, the Coca Cola Company should have innovative ideas in order to make its past customers to stay and grab more future customers. However, under the current economic recession period, the consumer behavior to purchase goods will be affected. Consumers may use the money efficiently to buy daily necessities rather than soft drinks. Therefore economic downturn will influence the sales of the Coca-Cola Company to a certain extent.

II. Situation Analysis

1. Situation
As the longest continuous supporter of the Olympic Games movement, the Move to the Beat™ campaign is the biggest and most integrated Olympic Games program activated by Coca-Cola in the brand's 84-year partnership with the International Olympic Committee. This global marketing campaign is unveiled by the Coca-Cola Company and GRAMMY award winning producer Mark Ronson. It is targeted at teenagers across the globe, uses music to unlock the social side of the London 2012 Olympic Games. Mark Ronson travelled the world meeting up and coming athletes, fusing the sound of their sports with traditional London music to create the campaign anthem.
To bring the Coca-Cola Move to the Beat™ campaign to life, on February 16, 2012, Mark Ronson together with lyrics and vocals provided by 2011 Mercury Music Prize nominee Katy B unveiled of a 25 meter wide by 10 meter tall Beat Wall in the shadow of the Olympic Stadium, East London to launch the Move to the Beat™ campaign in 11 European Markets. And this is also the first time the Coca-Cola brand launched a campaign which has activated the Olympic Games on such a scale outside of the host country. As a visual dramatization of Coca-Cola 2012 London Olympic Games campaign, The Beat Wall tells the story of how the sounds of sport and music were mixed together. It’s painted onto a wall in East London in the shadow of the Olympic Stadium, but anyone can see how it was made and brought to life online at www.facebook.com/coca-cola.

2. Objectives
The mainly purpose of this Move to the Beat™ is to attract more teenagers to the Olympic sports. Mostly of teenagers in nowadays are fulfilled with passion of music and drawing art. The typical and special Move to the Beat™ event wills successfully combining all the three ideas together. The new Coca-Cola campaign in 2012 is targeting at all the teenagers from the world. This event focuses on inspiring teen’s to capture photos and film different videos and sharing it over the Internet platforms. It is a great interaction between the teens and Olympic Sports. Coca-Cola as the mainly sponsor to Olympic sports through the last 84 years have done something significant in 2012. It perfectly connected the sports and the teens over the world.
“Move to the Beat™” - themed global effort, created in conjunction with Mother London, does take the company into ambitious new territory in terms of sheer scale and approach to content creation and distribution. According to Jonathan Mildenhall words, the Olympic game has been improved to a much better level than the past Olympics. Both of the content and commercials achieve a wider and longer range comparing to the past.

3. Marketing Strategy
The Coca-Cola Corporation is focusing on the public relation strategy to conducting the new 2012 Olympic campaign. Public relations is the building good relations with the company’s various publics obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and handling or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories, and events. The special event from the public relations strategy has directly impacted the campaign. Special event is a common public relations tool that refers to the ranging from news conferences, press tours, grand openings, and fireworks displays to laser light shows, hot air balloon releases, multimedia presentations, or educational programs designed to reach and interest target publics. The whole idea of this event is specialized by performing the thoughts into actions. Coca-Cola Corporations has abandoned the traditional advertising strategy instead of using new paths to advertising its event and connecting with the teens. The event is unprecedented. Coca-Cola has also promoted the newest wrapper to the coke bottles in order to collect more participation. The special event’s purpose is the interaction between consumers, Olympic game, music art, and teenagers.
The Coca-Cola Corporation is implementing the integrated marketing communications strategy to improving the advertisement. Integrated marketing communications refers to the carefully integrating and coordinating the company’s many communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the organization and its products. Coca-Cola’s advertising typically involved the Internet platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, website advertising, and other social network tools. It is commonly to knowing that Facebook and Twitter are the popular social network communication tools spread the Internet. The advertising will be more effective through the Internet, it attracts impressive amount of networking users to participate to the special event.

4. Promotional Analysis

(1) Advertising
The campaign advertising involved social networking interaction, including Facebook and Twitter; television commercials; and smart phone’s applications, the new Facebook app, Track the Beat, allows young people across the globe to connect and interact with the campaign anytime, anywhere. Users can collect the different beats of Coca‑Cola’s song for London 2012 and share with friends, as well as access exclusive, behind-the-scenes clips of Mark Ronson’s travels.

(2) Articles
There are many articles and news reported this Coke’s biggest ever Olympics Campaign. To pick 3 of them there are a press kit named “Coca-Cola Launches Move to the Beat™ London 2012 Olympic Games Campaign with Unveiling of Beat Wall” released on Coca-Cola Company’s official site; an news report named “Move to the Beat™ of London 2012” at Coca-Cola Great Britain site; and one news release called “Based on a New Marketing Mandate, Coca-Cola’s Summer Olympics Campaign is a Real Team Effort”, which written by a New York City-based writer and TV critic Christine Champagne. (3) Company Website
When you enter into the Coca-Cola Great Britain official site, you can directly see a big slogan “It’s Games Time!” with red background in a conspicuous position. Click the slogan, it will lead you to celebrate and find out more about Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of London 2012. And there is also a Facebook link below the slogan that once you click “Like” you can share this interesting information on your Facebook page and to your friends.

III. Conclusion
I have no recommendation to this Coca-Cola Move to the Beat™ campaign, since this global integrated marketing campaign have gained a great success and it is unprecedented. Earlier in 2012, the Coca-Cola Company released a marketing mission statement of Content 2020 manifesto, which announced that the company’s intention to forgo a reliance on traditional advertising and to instead focus on producing content with a storytelling bent that is "liquid and linked." Liquid content is creative work that is so compelling, authentic and culturally relevant that it can flow through any medium. Liquid content includes emotionally compelling stories that quickly become pervasive. Similarly, "linked" content is content that is linked to Coca-Cola’s brand strategies and its business objectives. No matter where consumers encounter it, linked content supports the brand’s overall strategy. When content is both "Liquid and Linked," it generates consumer expressions and has the potential to scale quickly. The Coca-Cola 2012 London Olympic Games campaign, Move to the Beat™ is a good example of "Liquid and Linked", which was the biggest ever Olympics campaign in history. Using a pool of television commercials, and a common a digital platform, all the objectives and strategies were linked by the common thread.
The Coca-Cola Corporation has done an excellent advertising campaign for the 2012 Olympic game. The key concept is to promote the special event Move to the Beat™ by letting more teenagers participate to Olympic game. The advertisement through many paths to collect participators, and it successfully combines the passion of teenagers, music art, and the sports. Its marketing strategy has involved and impacted by integrated marketing communications and public relations. The newest wrapper has changed over all the coke bottles. In a word, Coca-Cola’s marketing strategies are always successful role model, and meaningful to the consumers and the world.

References

Christine Champagne, “BASED ON A NEW MARKETING MANDATE, COCA-COLA’S SUMMER OLYMPICS CAMPAIGN IS A REAL TEAM EFFORT”, http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679972/based-on-a-new-marketing-mandate-coca-cola-s-summer-olympics-campaign-is-a-real-team-effort. (Access on July 30, 2012)

“Coca Cola SWOT”. http://www.slideshare.net/javedjassar/coca-cola-swot. (Access on July 30, 2012)

“Coca-Cola Celebrates More Than 80 Years of Olympic Partnership with Largest-Ever Activation”, July 25, 2012. http://www.financialpost.com/markets/news/Coca+Cola+Celebrates+More+Than+Years+Olympic+Partnership+With+Largest/6986659/story.html. (Access on July 31, 2012)

“Coca-Cola's Q2 Earnings Preview: Profits Rise on Thirsty Emerging Markets”, July 16, 2012. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/363408/20120716/coca-cola-company-ko-2q-earnings-preview.htm. (Access on July 30, 2012)

“Growth, leadership, sustainability” http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/index.html. (Access on July 30, 2012)

“Move to the Beat, London 2012 Olympic Games - Unravel Travel TV”, September 30, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNMfGyhOLk4. (Access on July 31, 2012)

“Press Kits”, February 15, 2012. http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/dynamic/press_center/2012/02/global-ads-for-london-2012-olympic-games.html. (Access on July 31, 2012)

“Press Kits”, February 16, 2012. http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/dynamic/press_center/2012/02/unveiling-of-the-beat-wall.html (Access on May 20, 2012)

“SWOT Analysis of the Coca-Cola Company”. http://mba-lectures.com/marketing/swot-analysis-marketing/1079/swot-analysis-of-coca-cola-company.html. (July 30, 2012)

Kotler, Philip and Armstrong, Gary, Principles of marketing. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. 2012.

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[ 1 ]. Christine Champagne, “BASED ON A NEW MARKETING MANDATE, COCA-COLA’S SUMMER OLYMPICS CAMPAIGN IS A REAL TEAM EFFORT”, http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679972/based-on-a-new-marketing-mandate-coca-cola-s-summer-olympics-campaign-is-a-real-team-effort. (Access on July 30, 2012)
[ 2 ]. “Press Kits”, February 16, 2012. http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/dynamic/press_center/2012/02/unveiling-of-the-beat-wall.html (Access on May 20, 2012)
[ 3 ]. Christine Champagne, “BASED ON A NEW MARKETING MANDATE, COCA-COLA’S SUMMER OLYMPICS CAMPAIGN IS A REAL TEAM EFFORT”, http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679972/based-on-a-new-marketing-mandate-coca-cola-s-summer-olympics-campaign-is-a-real-team-effort. (Access on July 30, 2012)
[ 4 ]. “Growth, leadership, sustainability”, http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/index.html. (Access on July 30, 2012)
[ 5 ]. “Coca-Cola's Q2 Earnings Preview: Profits Rise on Thirsty Emerging Markets”, July 16, 2012. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/363408/20120716/coca-cola-company-ko-2q-earnings-preview.htm. (Access on July 30, 2012)
[ 6 ]. “Coca Cola SWOT”. http://www.slideshare.net/javedjassar/coca-cola-swot. (Access on July 30, 2012)
[ 7 ]. Ibid.
[ 8 ]. Ibid.
[ 9 ]. “Coca Cola SWOT”. http://www.slideshare.net/javedjassar/coca-cola-swot. (Access on July 30, 2012)
[ 10 ]. Ibid.
[ 11 ]. “SWOT Analysis of The Coca-Cola Company”. http://mba-lectures.com/marketing/swot-analysis-marketing/1079/swot-analysis-of-coca-cola-company.html. (July 30, 2012)
[ 12 ]. “Coca Cola SWOT”. http://www.slideshare.net/javedjassar/coca-cola-swot. (Access on July 30, 2012)
[ 13 ]. “Press Kits”, February 15, 2012. http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/dynamic/press_center/2012/02/global-ads-for-london-2012-olympic-games.html. (Access on July 31, 2012)
[ 14 ]. “Move to the Beat, London 2012 Olympic Games - Unravel Travel TV”, September 30, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNMfGyhOLk4. (Access on July 31, 2012)
[ 15 ]. “Press Kits”, February 16, 2012. http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/dynamic/press_center/2012/02/unveiling-of-the-beat-wall.html (Access on May 20, 2012)
[ 16 ]. “Press Kits”, February 16, 2012. http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/dynamic/press_center/2012/02/unveiling-of-the-beat-wall.html (Access on May 20, 2012)
[ 17 ]. Ibid.
[ 18 ]. Christine Champagne, “BASED ON A NEW MARKETING MANDATE, COCA-COLA’S SUMMER OLYMPICS CAMPAIGN IS A REAL TEAM EFFORT”, http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679972/based-on-a-new-marketing-mandate-coca-cola-s-summer-olympics-campaign-is-a-real-team-effort. (Access on July 30, 2012)
[ 19 ]. Kotler, Philip and Armstrong, Gary. Principles of marketing. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. 2012.
[ 20 ]. Ibid.
[ 21 ]. Ibid.
[ 22 ]. Christine Champagne, “BASED ON A NEW MARKETING MANDATE, COCA-COLA’S SUMMER OLYMPICS CAMPAIGN IS A REAL TEAM EFFORT”, http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679972/based-on-a-new-marketing-mandate-coca-cola-s-summer-olympics-campaign-is-a-real-team-effort. (Access on July 30, 2012)
[ 23 ]. Ibid.
[ 24 ]. “Coca-Cola Celebrates More Than 80 Years of Olympic Partnership With Largest-Ever Activation”, July 25, 2012. http://www.financialpost.com/markets/news/Coca+Cola+Celebrates+More+Than+Years+Olympic+Partnership+With+Largest/6986659/story.html. (Access on July 31, 2012)