coke knows it, but won't do it

market share is down, volume sales is down, the soda segment might be shrinking and yet there's a feeling coke is not doing some things they already know to help their situation.

sure user base shrinkage is an issue and yes, to fix that, brandsell advertising is the way to go to regain back their users and prevent further fall outs from their user-base. but in the philippine market, there are just some things you really can't argue with against consumers that advertising alone is not the solution.

this has been mentioned in WAWAM! before - often times, slow or declining business is a problem of marketing, not advertising. in this case, in my view it’s a problem of both but coke seem to be behaving like it's just a problem of advertising.

the angel tv ad is a good fix to the problem of advertising - it's a very good improvement from their previous campaign. (this will be discussed in detail next.) coke is an excellent marketer when it comes to engaging their consumers from a brand building and connecting with consumers points of view. they're very good at doing advertising that captures the essence of the psyche of their users, spending a lot of time and money on consumer research to enable it to capture consumer insights. they are also willing to spend behind it. they are an ideal client.

take things like these pins that they used in their previous ad campaign for example - it's a small item in their marketing plan and budget, but it makes it obvious how well they know their consumers. and they are very willing at going to that small a detail just to connect with their consumers.

but unfortunately, coke is not doing the other part - that of fixing the marketing problem. they have known about it, but they have become very stubborn by not doing the right things, in this case what the market demands, and that makes it all really ridiculous.

there are two - (a) they need to reduce their prices! value or cash outlay is an enduring and key issue for coke consumption in this market. they have known this for a long time but are unable to have enough political will to get it done.

they have done many tactical efforts to increase the value perception of their brand, almost everything that’s in the marketing books except to actually reduce the price!

they even bought a whole company, Cosmos Bottling, just to make sure price points no longer become an issue for them. well, almost. cosmos was killing coke then - its extremely low price was gobbling up market share and most importantly preventing coke to grow at the rate they wanted it to. coke probably realized they will eventually lose the battle with cosmos, so rather than face cosmos in the marketing arena as a competitor, they bought the whole company instead! brilliant move! (but stupid move for RFM for selling the company, a goose that laid golden eggs!)

but as theire research showed, even when they controlled the pricing and moves of cosmos (they already own it!), not much has changed in the value perception of their brands. they also did a whole slew of other packaging, pricing and SKU moves in the market but all of those were just tactical marketing moves and the negative value perception was still a huge problem for them.

as mentioned in WAWAM! previously, value is a key driver in this market. and as said, value or cash outlay is so powerful in this market that it even has the ability to trump sharon cuneta as the endorser of trio when scrambelicious is launched at a lower price than trio.

the other marketing part that coke is not doing is (b) coke's stubbornness in NOT launching new drinks in this market to directly compete with water, juices and teas. coke has done this in many other markets, especially in europe for many years already. coke has a wide range of drinks in its portfolio that they can sell in this market but for some reason are not doing it.

they seem to be so in love with coke that the feeling I get is that they feel they will be cheating on coke if they launched other brands, much like a married person feeling guilty in having a mistress.