Considerations

Politics, business, religion, and culture by Samuel J. Scott and Jeff Guevin

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Coca-Cola’s New Marketing Strategy

August 23rd, 2007 · 21 Comments · Advertising, Business, Food, Marketing

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I admit: I like Coca-Cola. I don’t drink cof­fee that much, and the soft drink gives me a nice jolt of caf­feine in the morn­ing. So, fol­low­ing my month-long vaca­tion, I just bought a twelve-pack while restock­ing my refridger­a­tor. While pay­ing at the reg­is­ter, I noticed the fol­low­ing blurb on the bot­tom of the pack:

Who knew soft drinks could be hydrating?

It’s true. All bev­er­ages hydrate, includ­ing soft drinks. So if you are look­ing for hydra­tion, but want the deli­cious and refresh­ing taste you get from Coca-Cola, don’t com­pro­mise — go for it! You’ll be hydrat­ing your body with each and every sip.

We offer over 80 ways to hydrate, ener­gize, nour­ish, relax or enjoy every drop of life. For more infor­ma­tion on the ben­e­fits of hydra­tion, go to: hydration.thecoca-colacompany.com

I was imme­dately skep­ti­cal. I under­stood the mar­ket­ing strat­egy behind the blub — con­sumers are increas­ingly con­scious of the effects of fast-food and other unhealthy prod­ucts that they put into their bod­ies (see here, along with this and this and this and this)– but I doubted that this method of self-promotion by Coca-Cola was accurate.

The sup­plied hydra­tion web­site dis­cusses the ben­e­fits of hydra­tion and the effects of caf­feine – which, of course, is a drug. But nowhere does it say how Coca-Cola specif­i­cally hydrates one’s body well. Of course, this is not the company’s inten­tion. By merely asso­ci­at­ing the brand name with “hydra­tion” (vari­a­tions of the word itself appear six times in the blurb on the box), Coca-Cola cre­ates the impres­sion in con­sumers’ minds that the soft drink, in fact, does hydrate one’s body.

But, again, is that accu­rate? “Car­bon­ated water” is the ingre­di­ent listed first on the product’s con­tainer, mean­ing that water is indeed the most pre­v­e­lant item in the bev­er­age. How­ever, I won­dered whether there is more to the story, so I did some cur­sory research.

From Anne Marie Hel­men­stine, Ph.D., About.com’s guide to chemisty:

When you get right down to it, the colas and unco­las of the world aren’t good for the body. The acids used to car­bon­ate and fla­vor these bev­er­ages will dam­age your teeth and may even weaken your bones. Soft drinks are devoid of any real nutri­tional con­tent. Even so, they taste great! You are more likely to drink what you like, so if you love soft drinks then they might be a good way to hydrate. The car­bo­hy­drates will slow your absorp­tion of water, but they will also pro­vide a quick energy boost. In the long run, they aren’t good for you, but if hydra­tion is your goal, soft drinks aren’t a bad choice. Avoid drinks with lots of sugar or caf­feine, which will lessen the speed or degree of hydration.

From BodyBuilding.com:

It is dif­fi­cult for the body to get water from any other source than water itself. Soft drinks and alco­hol steal tremen­dous amounts of water from the body. Other bev­er­ages such as cof­fee and tea are diuret­ics there­fore steal­ing pre­cious water from the body.

From Clem­son Uni­ver­sity and the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture:

Although soft drinks are mostly water, they con­tain large amounts of sugar or sugar sub­sti­tute and no nutri­ents. An aver­age 12-ounce soft drink con­tains 150 calo­ries, 9 tea­spoons of sugar, and no nutri­tional value…

Soft drinks, cof­fee, and tea con­tain caf­feine, which is a mild stim­u­lant and can act as a diuretic. This pro­motes fluid loss through uri­na­tion and con­tributes to dehy­dra­tion. Although caf­feine has a diuretic effect, this effect may be tem­po­rary and does not lead to cumu­la­tive total body water deficits.

There is much more research avail­able – try this Google search. But I think we can make some rea­son­able con­clu­sions at this point:

  • Soft-drinks do hydrate the body, but temporarily.
  • Soft-drinks con­tain caf­feine, which is a diuretic and con­tributes to gen­eral dehydration.
  • Soft drinks hydrate the body less well than most, if not all, other beverages.
  • Long-term con­sump­tion is unhealthy because soft-drinks have vir­tu­ally no nutri­tional value.

So, back to my orig­i­nal ques­tion: Is this mar­ket­ing cam­paign by Coca-Cola innac­cu­rate or mis­lead­ing? No, and yes. The company’s state­ment is, in fact, com­pletely accu­rate: Coca-Cola does hydrate the body. But, smartly, the cor­po­ra­tion goes no fur­ther in its spe­cific claims because a high degree of Coca-Cola con­sump­tion, accord­ing to my cur­sory research, leads to long-term dehy­dra­tion and gen­eral unhealth­i­ness over time. The company’s mar­ket­ing cam­paign is not inac­cu­rate, but it is cer­tainly misleading.

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21 Comments so far ↓

  • Brian

    Yeah, I just noticed this advert on the 12 pack yes­ter­day. I am really dis­ap­pointed by this sort of mar­ket­ing. I am a mar­keter myself and this kind of adver­tis­ing dis­gusts me and reminds me why I can not see myself work­ing for almost any pack­aged food or drink com­pany. It is also kind of dis­ap­point­ing that we as peo­ple are gen­er­ally so stu­pid that we fall for adver­tis­ing like this — Coke has the research to prove it with sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance, I’m sure.  

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  • shubhendu

    what is the new stre­tagy of coca cola  

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  • Bhakti

    Every time a per­son looks at an item of food, they make a deci­sion. It is dif­fi­cult enough for many peo­ple to con­trol them­selves when they know that they are con­sid­er­ing some­thing unhealthy. For Coke to make a state­ment like this and give a weak per­son an excuse to con­sume their prod­uct which is def­i­nitely bad for you, this is tragic. Yes, their goal is to sell the most amount of prod­uct pos­si­ble and that is busi­ness, but with a sneaky half truth such as this, it is really shame­full. Call it what it is– high calo­rie, unnec­es­sary snack food– peo­ple will still buy it!  

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  • spmosher

    It’s kinda llke get­ting my carbs from beer if I am look­ing for a carb booster for my car­dio work outs. Carbs help me keep my endurance and sugar lev­els for the burst of speed I need to keep with the pro­gram regimine. I pre­fer pas­tas and other starches, but beer would do just a well, based on this thin rea­son­ing.. and from a com­pany as big as Coke?

    Come on Coke! Aren’t they mak­ing a profit now? Do they have to stoop to this level, and argue­ment so tis­sue thin, it had bet­ter not rain (which is what we should be drink­ing more of). But no.. the stock­hold­ers are hold­ing this CEO and bas­ing his salary on the amount of stock price, so there fore, in order to encour­age more peo­ple to drink Coke, they can now be jus­ti­fied in doing so because of the “asso­ci­a­tion” made to hydra­tion to the brand name Coke?

    Hell, Just print.. COKE and HYDRATION and be done with it.

    This kind of mar­ket­ing is just as bad as some other sins out there we mar­ket.  

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  • Tawni

    I already had a prob­lem with coke before this mar­ket­ing ploy came about– I read it and KNEW I was read­ing some­thing inac­cu­rate– but I just couldnt help but want to let myself give in and believe it– I am hor­ri­bly addicted to coke– In fact, I just blogged about my sad addic­tion to it– And often it is the only thing i drink it a day, for the com­pany to say some­thing like that, it is hurt­ful– espe­cially to peo­ple who may be in the same shoes as me with less edu­ca­tion or abil­ity to know they are being duped– Thanks for the post about it.. at least MAYBE some­one else will take to heart that this is not a bev­er­age you can sub­sist on by itself…  

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  • kayode

    I don’t think cocoa cola can be decep­tive in their advert.all i see here is that coca cola is try­ing to reg­u­late tjhe men­taliy of her con­sumer to buy and which all organ­i­sa­tion do espe­cially when the com­petion is high.advert is all about strong abil­ity to con­vince the con­sumer to buy.
    on the other hand con­sumers also should try to eval­u­ate advert and see which one sat­isfy their minds,since all pro­duc­ers are bent on lur­ing con­sumers at all cost to buy.  

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  • kayode

    to be can­did coca cola did fine by list­ing hydra­tion as the gain you have when you use her prod­uct and which is true.no organ­i­sa­tion will tell the long term effect of her product,as it might be observe dif­fer­ently on consumers.so coca cola is not deceiv­ing is just that the cus­tomers should be help with clear infor­ma­tion on advert  

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  • TCWT

    I guess that this means we won’t be see­ing new Sil­ica Gel Coke on shelves any­time soon. (Warn­ing: Do not eat!)  

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  • charles B.Fisher

    Love thr Sprite Zero

    Can’t have suger the Doc­tor said, sooooo it’s good and the weight I’ve lost is more than good  

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  • charles B.Fisher

    Well the doc­tor said I can’t havesuger s I have0 Sprite, and guess what I’ve lost
    weight. Now the Doc­tor is Like HAPPY. So thanks Guys  

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  • alinaphoenix

    I, per­son­ally, don’t trust sodas at all. Espe­cially diet sodas. Arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers are ARTIFICIAL … and I would argue that noth­ing arti­fi­cial should ever be ingested, no mat­ter how good it tastes. Soda is a bunch of use­less garbage that is sig­nif­i­cantly con­tribut­ing to mak­ing our world both sick and fat. It should be replaced with good old H2O and peo­ple should just shut up, enjoy their water and be healthy.  

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  • Zohaib

    I am a stu­dent of MBA, i ve recieved a project on the 4P’s of mar­ket­ing. In which i ve to ask ques­tions to the man­ager of Coca Cola on 4P’s. Please help me by giv­ing some ques­tions that i can ask to a man­ager of Coco Cola regard­ing 4P’s. Thankyou
    my email address is = zohaib_babar2003@yahoo.com  

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  • John Bell

    First of all, I’d like to say that I don’t work for coca cola or have any­thing to do with them, other than drink­ing their prod­ucts. The blog and the responses still seem to be skirt­ing the issue. The real ques­tion is, does drink­ing a bunch of coke (or cof­fee, or tea, or other water based bev­er­ages) hydrate a per­son. I drink 10 times more diet coke, zero coke or decaf diet coke, than I do water. Do I lose 10 times more liq­uids because of the tem­po­rary diuretic? Your blog does a lit­tle bit of research and then makes some pretty hefty asser­tions about cola cola. I thought all hydra­tion was tem­po­rary (because you sweat, uri­nate, spit, are alive,–whatever). What part of your research indi­cates that most other bev­er­ages hydrate bet­ter than coke. Many soft drinks are caf­feine free or decaf­feinated. Is it only the ones that con­tain caf­feine that we should be wor­ried about? What, exactly, is the nutri­tional value of water? Okay, there are few trace min­er­als, which I sus­pect are in soda as well. Your research, it seems to me, leads exactly to the oppo­site con­clu­sion. Is the mar­ket­ing cam­paign mis­lead­ing? The only way it is mis­lead­ing is if, in fact, coke doesn’t hydrate. Your research hardly proves that.  

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  • usman

    wow that’s greate to say i m big adicted fan of coca-cola soft drinks.i also like it’s new strete­gise.  

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  • Cleaning Lady

    Nice and use­full post, thanks, this is one for my book­marks!  

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  • michaelhenryhersh

    I’m con­vinced soft drinks are an indus­try of death  

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  • Oboulo

    I believe that Coca-Cola has four main KSF’s (Key Suc­cess Factors).

    *The first one of them is that the com­pany has an his­tor­i­cal and a med­ical aspect to it.
    *Coca-Cola was also (and still is) very suc­cess­ful with their com­mu­ni­ca­tion
    *Coca-Cola has been able to really set itself apart as a leader by cre­at­ing impor­tant and mean­ing­ful
    part­ner­ships.
    *Finally, Coca-Cola is also very effi­cient in adapt­ing: their prod­ucts (to the local tastes)  

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  • koyanisqaatsi

    What does “hydrate” mean?

    verb
    2. To sup­ply water to a per­son or thing in order to restore or main­tain fluid balance.

    The Amer­i­can Her­itage® Med­ical Dic­tio­nary
    http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/hydrate

    tran­si­tive verb
    : to cause to take up or com­bine with water or the ele­ments of water

    http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/hydrate

    So, in drink­ing Coca Cola ” you’ll be hydrat­ing your body with each and every sip.” How­ever, that’s not nec­es­sar­ily a good thing taken alone. You can also “hydrate” your body with every sip of Scotch you take until the bot­tle is empty. You can do it for free with every breath you take.

    The prob­lem here is not with any­one mis­lead­ing any­one else, or even with the adver­tis­ing indus­try itself. The prob­lem here is with a school sys­tem that indoc­tri­nates pop­u­la­tions into unques­tion­ing obe­di­ence and accep­tance of any­thing that sounds remotely author­i­ta­tive, and dis­cour­ages (mainly through encour­aged frontal lobe atro­phy) any kind of ques­tion­ing, rea­son­ing or crit­i­cal think­ing. The prob­lem here is that we have all been trained never to actively think (using rein­force­ment tech­niques involv­ing hos­til­ity or ridicule, or both).

    And the upshot of all that? Per­fectly obe­di­ent ranks of Pruss­ian cit­i­zens, con­sumers and can­non fod­der, who sali­vate at the sight of weasel words like “hydrate”, and stretch out their arms and walk funny for­wards mut­ter­ing some­thing about obey­ing when hear­ing “new”, “improved”, “free”, “fresh”, “easy” or “patriot”, “flag”, “nation”, etc.

    If you believe Coca Cola will “hydrate” your body with every sip, you deserve a big glass­ful. The glu­cose will help you remem­ber what­ever it is you have to recite.  

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  • Sam Scott

    Thanks to every­one for his or her com­ments!  

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