Assessing Coca Colas Launch of Low-Calorie Drink, Coca Cola Life

1.0 Part 1 Evaluation
Coca-cola Company is one of the world largest soda companies which recently launch Coca-Cola Life, with a low calorie drink in Argentina. This new Coke Life or Green Coke has contained around 100 calories per 20 ounces, 250 calories compared with regular Coke. Its product unique selling proposition (USP) is sweetened with combination of sugar and the naturally occurring, no-calorie sweetener stevia and plant bottle. It position them self between Diet Coke and the brand’s classic variety. Green coke are generated which targeting on health (obesity) conscious niche market.

(Green Coke launched in Argentina with natural sweetener and eco bottle, 2013) Coca-Cola’s decisions has been swayed by market demand and if consumers stay educated, critical and vocal, they have the purchasing power to demand more environmentally friendly products such as Green Coke. According to Coca-cola stated in Argentinean website, “With adding stevia for Green Coke, it is successfully providing more delicious taste with a proposed low in calories for consumers.” Besides, Stevia is extracted from plants native to South America.

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Thus, the main reasons that Green Coke first launch in Argentina is due westernized market that is also familiar with stevia because of its long-time use in some form or another on the continent. (Coca-Cola Increases Investment in Stevia with Launch of Coke Life in Argentina, 2013) Also, Coca-Cola has experience uses stevia in other soft drinks, such as US versions of Sprite and Fanta called Select that have just 70 calories versus the regular 140 and 160. Furthermore, Coke Life is packaged by the company’s award-winning Plant Bottle.

It is made with 30% plant material, fully recyclable with feature a green label. It is effectively reducing dependency on fossil fuels – and combined with up to 25% recycled plastic. Coca-Cola continuous to find a sustainable plant material that does not harm ecology and the people from the region. Brazilian sugarcane which is primarily rain-fed and grown on abundant, arable land use organic fertilizers that fit Coca-Cola requirement. One of the Coca-Colas vision is each plastic will be made from plant-based materials and recycled PET plastic by 2020. (Coca-Cola Plant Bottle, n.d.) Thus, Coca-Cola Life continuous put effort in achieving their vision.

In addition, Coke Life advertisement that has been released, the theme that highlighted is drinking Coca-Cola Life to a first kiss, with hazy slow-motion moments between couples as Sixpence None the Richer’s track “Kiss Me” plays in the background (Green Coke launched in Argentina with natural sweetener and eco bottle, 2013). Also, Coca-Cola launched brand campaign which invites consumers to “open their good nature.” “Parenthood is the ultimate test of connecting with your good nature, and we wanted to communicate that in the advertisement” said by Wilhelm. Based on Muhtar Kent, CEO of Coca-Cola, “We’re excited Coca-Cola Life further potential since it has shown great promise in recruiting new and lapsed consumers into the sparkling category, as well as created incremental volume and profitable for our system. This year, we’re planning to expand Coca-Cola Life into other market as well.” (WATSON, 2014) Therefore, Coca-Cola Life was successfully hits high sales and popularity within Argentina market and positive WOM widely spread among Internet.

Strength
The strength for Coca-Cola new product, Coca-Cola Life is sweetened with a combination of sugar and stevia, an extract from the leaves of a shrub in the chrysanthemum family that grows here in Latin America. Besides, Coca-Cola Life is packaging by plant bottle with 30% plant material, fully recyclable with feature a green label. It is consider innovative soda products which successfully capture consumer attentions especially for those who are healthy and nature care conscious. Coca-Cola Company is well-known for best global brand in term of value for $77,830 billion with holding almost 40% beverage market share in the world; thus, when Coca-Cola Life launch in Malaysia, it able to develop trustworthy among Malaysian consumers since majority of the consumers has been consume the original Coca-Cola. Next, combination among powerful advertising and marketing program with strong supply chain network, it guarantee Green Coke able to deliver environmental friendly image and available deliver to their target market in Malaysia. Weakness

However, Coca-Cola Company not presence in snack and food industry but only focus on carbonate drinks. It will force Coca-Cola to faced strong competition from Pepsi Company to fight over the market share since both are similar target market. Also, although Coca-Cola life is using stevia to adding more delicious taste for consumers with naturally occurring, but it still lead the health issues such as cancer risk and DNA damage problems. Opportunity

Nowadays, the phenomenon of Malaysian consumers shows that the demand for healthy beverage has increased drastically. Therefore, it is a great opportunity to launch Green Coke in Malaysia, specifically for Coke fans. It also helps Coca-Cola to penetrate Malaysia market, popularise unknown product such as Green Coke and develop better brand recognition. Threat

Furthermore, consumers become health conscious and reduce consumption on carbonated drinks. This is the main threat Coca-Cola faced since they mainly focusing on carbonated drinks. Also, Pepsi Company is fiercely competing with Coca Cola over market share, thus Coca-Cola has to develop differentiation strategy such as highlight Green Coke uniqueness (USP). Finally, it has to meet Malaysia Government legal requirement to approve Green Coke to be launch in Malaysia.

2.0 Part II Proposal
Integrated Marketing Communication Objectives
The initial integrated marketing communication objective for the new product of Coca-cola Life is product awareness. It is important and a process that enables the consumers to aware about the product Coca-cola Life and the business we are in. Creating brand awareness is allows the target market to understanding more about our product and brand meaning. It is because brand comes first in the mind of customer before a specific product and service. According to Rossiter & Percy, 1987; Rossiter et al., 1991 (as cited in Macdonald and Byron Sharp, 2003), brand awareness has occurred before brand attitude and intention to purchase a product. Hence, this shows that the importance of product awareness to build long term success for Coca-cola Life. Next, the second IMC objective of Coca-cola Life is to imparting the product knowledge to the target audience.

It helps to educate the target market about the health benefits that Coca-cola Life can bring to them. Coca-cola Life using natural ingredient stevia which is green in colour that is an extract from the leaves of a shrub in the chrysanthemum family that grows in Latin America. Besides that, the green colour packaging of Coca-cola Life which has significant difference compare to other soft drink. The green packaging of Coca-cola Life is also designed to be reusable and recyclable. In addition, the IMC objective of Coca-cola Life is to create favorable attitude among their customers. When the target market having positive feeling toward the product, this helps to persuasive the customers to try and purchase Coca-cola Life. It is important to link the product with customer feeling so that they can associate their joy with Coca-cola Life.

Coca-cola Life can connect to customer feeling by emotional appeal in advertisement or other contact point. Lastly, Coca-cola Life IMC objective is to stimulate the desire and create customers’ purchase intention. Coca-cola Life doing different sales promotion and activities to influence the customer to instantly buy and try this new coke. The product information should made available in every touch point and the advertisement must be creative and persuasive to stimulate customer buying intention. Target Market

Coca-cola itself is targeting on mass market. Coca-cola Life using different segmentation to segment their target market for this product. Coca-cola life concerned about life and health of human beings. For demographic segmentation, Coca-cola Life chooses to segment on niche market which is from teenagers till young adult because they like the sweetness and freshness of the coke. Selecting the target market of Coca-cola Life is also correlated with their education level. This will affect target market purchase decision such as product quality, taste, ingredients and flavors. Besides that, the geographic segmentation of Coca-cola Life is target in Malaysia since this is still a new product for the country. Lastly, the psychological segmentation focused on the lifestyle of target market especially target on those who are health conscious. Though soft drink is not healthy, Coca-cola Life is different as it include natural ingredient which would be suitable for the target market.

Message Stategy
Message strategy is used by company to deliver their main idea to the target market which helps to capture attention and also define what the brand is about. Coca Cola Life focuses on young adult segment, so their message strategy must be appealing to this group. An effective message should also able to get attention and stimulate desire response. Message appeal is the way to convey the message, where we proposed Coca-Cola Life to use combination of emotional and rational appeal. Emotional appeal is to bring up the feelings or emotions of the consumers toward the product and hence to enhance consumer preference with product. Coca-Cola Life can relate life happenings to their product message which focus on joy, happiness and love. Emotional appeal is an effective way to communicate the message when customer hardly sees tangible differences among the brands.

This can be applied in Coca-Cola case because it is actually not much difference with its competitor Pepsi. This emotional appeal can evoke liking and positive emotions. Consumer would tend to match their emotion with Coca-Cola Life and convinced to purchase the product. For instance, when consumers are happy, they think of Coca-Cola Life. Coca-Cola Life which using environmental friendly packaging can lead to a sense of self actualization for customer who thinks they are buying the products to help to sustain the environment. This can lead to favorable attitude toward the product. It also motivate consumer to buy the bottle as it contribute to the conservation of our environment. Coca-Cola is merely a soft drink so it uses only emotional appeal to capture the attention of the market. However, Coca-Cola Life is different because it provides additional benefits which make it different from the classic Coke. It offer benefit of customer enjoying the taste of sweetness and also additional benefit of participate in protecting environment.

We combine rational appeal that is focus on showing the product attributes or benefits to influence the customer belief or imparting product knowledge. Coca-Cola Life uses natural sweetener, Stevia as the ingredient and also recyclable plant bottle as the packaging. We will make the idea of a healthy soft drink with pleasant taste in low calorie to be appealing to the health-conscious target group. Hence, it would help consumer to develop positive feelings toward the Coca-Cola Life. We proposed to give up sample with salespeople explaining the ingredients and also event or contest where customer can take a guess of the ingredient of Coca-Cola Life. Official website of the Coca-Cola Life should also include full detailed of the product information so that consumer can gain more knowledge of the product itself. Product information should also easily found by consumer through social network such as Facebook or Twitter. How Coca-Cola execute its message to the consumer is critical.

We proposed Coca-Cola Life to use imagery as the message execution. It contains little information of product and focus on visual element such as pictures or illustration. Coca-Cola Life is a soft drink where it is hardly differentiate its physical characteristics with its competitors. Coca-Cola brand had been highly recognized in the market, so Coca-Cola Life will be focus on visual message like other Coke products did. Coca-Cola Life consistently uses earth-tone color on the logo and green color as the visual message as these colors are implying nature. It can link the product with nature and environment. This visual message will have to be use not only in advertisement but also any customer contact point such as websites, packaging and others to reinforce the message claim. Visual image or photograph that is relaxing can also create a desire feeling of customer towards Coca-Cola Life.

The situation shown in the advertisement or TV commercial should also able to link the attractiveness with the brand itself where consumer can associate themselves with the situation. Our message objectives is also impart knowledge of the green loving attributes of Coca-Cola Life to its consumer. Thus, it is important to include the verbal message. Since visual element is largely focused, we will only show one sentence of verbal message “open to their nature”. It means that consumer is connected to the nature when consuming Coca-Cola Life through its ingredient (natural sweetener) and product appearance (recyclable bottle material) to evoke natural and relaxing lifestyle. A creative advertisement can raise product awareness in the market.

Coca-Cola had been heavily invests in advertising to promote its brand. Coca-Cola Life will also focus on print media advertisement on the newspaper and billboard. Local newspaper and magazine enable Coca-Cola life to target on Malaysian with geographical selectivity. Another popular channel that can be used by Coca-Cola Life would be television commercial since it can reach a broad range of consumers. Previously in Argentina, Coca-Cola Life had released “First Kiss” advertisement that portrayed the affection of young couple. In Malaysia, We will take account of local culture and culture differences to avoid misunderstanding. We will put local culture as the advertising element to better promote the brand in Malaysia. Due to our focus on the young adult segment, internet marketing is best fit for this segment. Our advertisement or commercial can also published in social network sites and can be search through video search engine. Other than this, we suggest Coca-Cola Life to organize creative or special events which can instantly make consumer aware of the product and also create a buzz in the consumer social circle.

Major Selling Idea
One of the major selling ideas for Coca-cola Life is “nature”. Unique selling preposition and inherent drama used by Coca-cola Life to make sure it is efficient and effective. According to Arthur Kover (as cited in Belch & Belch), there is a research showed that what approach used to search for big ideas and creative process. Coca-cola Life implements the unique selling preposition as one of their approach to create major selling ideas. As Coca-cola brand already well-known in Malaysia, it is not too difficult to introduce the new product Coca-cola Life in this new market. The green packaging of Coca-cola Life is new and unique which differentiate from other soft drinks product. Besides that, the natural sweetener which is less calories compare to other soft drinks can be accepted by everyone. Furthermore, the green colour packaging of Coca-cola Life which is more fit to the nature environment.

The colour and ingredients used by Coca-cola Life which is outstanding from other soft drinks able to be the winner of the market. In addition, inherent drama approach had been implemented by Coca-cola Life to create major selling idea. As Coca-cola Life focused on ‘nature’ and ‘life’, the story line of the drama is focus on love, caring among families, friends and others. For example, the previous drama advertisement of Coca-cola Life is talk about a fresh married couple enjoying the Coke Life with joy and good news. Although take care of baby make their life more busy and stress but they feel the love and enjoy very much and celebrating with Coke Life. These couple received the good news of wife’s pregnant again and celebrates with Coca-cola Life. This brings the meaning of life is keep moving on no matter happy, sad, angry or whatever emotion and Coca-cola Life will accompany with you.

3.0 Recommendation
Advertising
As Coca-cola is the one of the top brand in the world, it had been using advertising to promote their products. It had created many popular television commercials in the past which success in gaining attention and get people to talk about it. Same goes to Coca-Cola Life. We proposed Coke-Life to produce television commercial to raise awareness of Malaysian to the green Coke. Television commercial enables Coca-Cola Life to reach mass market and also cost-effective. In the television commercial, it showcases the real life of Malaysian in different ethnics to drink Green Coke happily and enjoying the Coke moment at a few popular nature landscapes such as Redang Island, Mount Kinabalu and so on. Background music that is relaxing and loving would be play throughout the 50-second commercial. The commercial will focus on message to deliver Coke Life is part of our life, and it will relate consumer with love and affection.

We will choose Astro to showcase our advertisement because it achieves high viewership in Malaysia. Nonetheless, TV commercial will create product awareness if it is creative enough and also because it enable consumer to sense the sight, sound and motion. Repeat playing of TV advertisement can leave a deep impression on consumer mind. Hence, it will result a desire response. Coke Life should advertised through print media include newspaper, magazines and billboard. It is because it is low cost and aim at mass consumer market. The print advertisement will uses green color or environmental related image and also nature lifestyle. Most of the ads will be focus on visual image with a small headline of “open their good nature”. We suggest Coke Life to advertise their new product through newspaper such as The Star Newspaper, Sin Chew Daily, Guang Ming Daily and etc.

It is because newspaper is in high coverage and can reach large audience at the same time. There is also short lead time for placing an advertisement and can be placed in interest sections. Besides that, billboard can help Coke Life to advertise its product as it has extra exposure compare to other promotional tools. Coke Life billboard can be locates at specific locations such as highway, roadside, bus-stop or any building in unique eye-catching colour. Billboard can build high impact on people who pass through highway or roadside. High repetition and easily noticed advertisement on billboard hard to ignore and keep reminding target audience the existence of Coke Life.

Internet Marketing
Coca-Cola Life is proposed to fully utilize the internet marketing such as Coke official website, social network and video search engine to achieve the communication objectives established. To raise product awareness, the Coke Life official website should apply a background with green and earth-tone color. Psychologically, a person will always attracted by a sudden change. Therefore, a first awareness is obtained by the small change and simultaneously, Coke can continue catch up person’s awareness through banner posted on the official website that related to the environmental issues and health conscious. By the banner and further detail information shown on official website, consumers were always stimulated for purchase intention. However, certain people may not influenced effectively due to the misunderstanding or ambiguous comprehension. Hence, Coke was strongly recommended for implementing a language option function for web browsers to choose the mother language to be more understanding or even touching by the information provided. Social network and video search engine also play an importance role in the advance technological world.

People, now are unable to escape with the social network or internet every day so it is important for Coke to utilize it efficiently. Coke can also apply those strategies that recommended for the official website in the social network such as Facebook, Twitter, My Space or even blog in order to reach larger population. Thus, Coke can achieve two way communications through social network which may lead word-of-mouth (WOM) referrals or other types of referrals to increase the interest of people to consume Green Coke. However, people may have negative comments on Green Coke but this is a good chance for Coke to show their problem-solving and communication skills for converting negative WOM to be positive and simultaneously build up the persuasiveness for consumers to try it and purchase it. Besides, video on video search engine such as Youtube also critical to create a favorable attitudes of consumers to consume Coca-Cola Life such as the video of Green coke in Argentina (First Kiss).

Nevertheless, the Coke has to modify the video in order to suit the difference culture of Malaysia with Argentina such as the religion or race issues. As a research, most of the malay people love green color and the Green Coke are perfectly suit their preference so that Coke may develop a video that relate to the sharing of a healthier soda drink, Coca-Cola Life with families while Hari Raya Aidilfitri with care and love as the Green Coke emphasize too. Thus, Coke should share some of the video record of their special events to attract those populations that absent in those activities. Sales Promotion

The internet marketing is a good tool due to a lower cost or free cost required. Despite, Coke can also establish certain sales promotion to directly attract customers’ awareness of Green Coke such as sample distributed, contest and events. For the sample distributed methods, Coke is suggested to distributed a small cup of Coca-Cola Life for the target audiences to test by a small designed lorry with interesting and representative lorry banner design which distribute the Green Coke sample with a meaningful and environment protection design cup in certain campus or residences areas as what Milo company had done and success to attract the awareness of target population.

Special Events
Many marketing communication strategy can be implemented for obtaining the products awareness, however, events is a best and effective way to impart the information of healthy, no-calorie sweetener stevia and environmental protection, plant bottle that used for Coca-Cola Life. To further disseminate the information about Green Coke, Coke can launch a small event for consumers to participate in guessing and matching the ingredient used for Coca-Cola Life with also a detail talk provided about Green Coke before ended the events. Coca-cola Life can also organize guerilla marketing such as Share-a-coke vending machine in high crowded place such as shopping mall. Due to high cost these vending machine might cost, this event will only be conducted in one week in Kuala Lumpur first and move to another popular cities. We believe it could be go viral when people sharing in their social circle. Coca-Cola Life is focusing on message on natural lifestyle with joy, happiness and love.

The share-a-coke vending machine allow user to select short phrases such as “I love you”, “ Be happy”, “Sorry”, “Thank you”, “Cheer up”, and also to special recipients such as “My Love”, “Dear Daddy/Mummy”, “My Friend”. The user can select personalized messages by combining different bottles to be lined up into different meanings. For example, “My Love”, “Thank You”, “I Love You”. The selected message will be printed on the green label of Green Coke. Thus, user can share their green coke with message they want to share to their family or friends. This Coke-Life allows people to share what they dare not to share to their friends and family. This can link the emotion side of customers with Coca-Cola Life. The brand will often associate consumer with “love”.

Conclusion
Having an effective integrated marketing communication plan will help Coca-Cola Life to better capture Malaysian market. The IMC plan should design in a way to meet all the communication objectives include raising awareness of Coca-Cola Life in Malaysia, imparting product knowledge, create favorable attitudes and stimulate purchase attention. In order to be successful, the main message delivered must be consistent in all the marketing tools that are proposed toward the young adult target market. We had proposed Coca-Cola Life to use advertising, internet marketing, sale promotion and events. We believe that our IMC plan would work well. It is because Coca-Cola had already well-known brand and Coca-Cola Life can target to niche market. It associates itself with the joy, happiness and love in a natural lifestyle. Sweetness taste of Coke Life and how it can help the environment will connect it to the young generation and motivate them to buy the products.