TOKYO: Coca-Cola has applied its Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) philosophy to product marketing in Japan, which is Coca-Cola’s most profitable market internationally, according to a senior marketer at the company.
The company’s marketing team uses ‘four buckets’ for media investment in accordance with its IMC strategy, according to Khalil Younes, Executive Vice President of Marketing & New Businesses at The Coca-Cola Company in Japan: paid media (for example, a billboard or TVC), owned media, shared media (which covers any activity under a brand partnership) and earned media.
“At the cornerstone of everything is the media, the consumer, and then how they interact with any form of medium,” he said.
“No matter what, it's going to be falling into four buckets,” Younes explained at Advertising Week Asia in Tokyo recently. (For more on Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy, read WARC’s report: Behind Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy framework in Japan.)
Alongside the four buckets are three “brand pillars” – brand contact, brand experience and brand conversation – that marketing activity runs through; and all three pillars relate to each other, Younes said.
“A brand experience can become a brand contact. A brand contact can become a conversation. A conversation itself (can become) an experience because you're around your friends and you are engaging to discuss this brand and that's an experience in itself.”
Connecting the content with the right medium is “the yin and the yang of Coca-Cola communications,” Younes asserted.
Developing appropriate content is only ever part of the story, he maintained. “(We) need to really think about what the content is that you want people to discuss and have a conversation around your brand.
“That’s only half of the equation because you need also – at the same time – a very strong connection plan when you’re distributing that content. You’re cultivating, curating, and nurturing that content across different media platform.”
For Coca-Cola, the aim is not only to produce “the most amazing content that you can ever create or you can ever nurture.
“I also want to have the most leading edge connection plans in order to find the right consumer, the right time at the right moment and distribute that content to them.”
The company’s marketing team uses ‘four buckets’ for media investment in accordance with its IMC strategy, according to Khalil Younes, Executive Vice President of Marketing & New Businesses at The Coca-Cola Company in Japan: paid media (for example, a billboard or TVC), owned media, shared media (which covers any activity under a brand partnership) and earned media.
“At the cornerstone of everything is the media, the consumer, and then how they interact with any form of medium,” he said.
“No matter what, it's going to be falling into four buckets,” Younes explained at Advertising Week Asia in Tokyo recently. (For more on Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy, read WARC’s report: Behind Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy framework in Japan.)
Alongside the four buckets are three “brand pillars” – brand contact, brand experience and brand conversation – that marketing activity runs through; and all three pillars relate to each other, Younes said.
“A brand experience can become a brand contact. A brand contact can become a conversation. A conversation itself (can become) an experience because you're around your friends and you are engaging to discuss this brand and that's an experience in itself.”
Connecting the content with the right medium is “the yin and the yang of Coca-Cola communications,” Younes asserted.
Developing appropriate content is only ever part of the story, he maintained. “(We) need to really think about what the content is that you want people to discuss and have a conversation around your brand.
“That’s only half of the equation because you need also – at the same time – a very strong connection plan when you’re distributing that content. You’re cultivating, curating, and nurturing that content across different media platform.”
For Coca-Cola, the aim is not only to produce “the most amazing content that you can ever create or you can ever nurture.
“I also want to have the most leading edge connection plans in order to find the right consumer, the right time at the right moment and distribute that content to them.”
Sourced from WARC
