There is an old (surely apocryphal) story from too many motivational advertising sales seminars that concerns the protagonist sitting next to, and recognizing, a member of the Wrigley family on a long airplane flight. Protagonist asks the Mr. Wrigley why the company continues to advertise, since the whole world knows Wrigley gum. Mr. Wrigley answers:
“For the same reason the pilot doesn’t shut off the engines once we get up in the air.”
It may be an inexact analogy, but it works surprisingly well on clients in certain situations. (Yes, I’ve used it in a previous life as a radio ad salesman.)
The ads for Coke in Australia around this time of year invariably tend to be of the “If you drink Coke, lots of hot random bikini babes will come up to you and your mates at the beach and you can all go surfing/have a barbeque/go for a drive in your 1950’s Holden”.
I’m only aware of the Coke/Christmas thing through my readings of the history of Coke and their ad campaigns in the northern hemisphere.
The Coca-Cola company doesn’t make or ship a drop of the stuff. All that is done by your local bottler. The Coca-Cola company’s entire charge is to develop and market the brand. That should give you some clue as to the importance of advertising. Coca-Cola is not a soft drink company, it is a company that markets a soft drink.
Not quite true. The Coca-Cola Company makes the syrup, which they ship to bottlers or fountain vendors who then procede to mix it. However, it seems likely that they spend far more on advertising than they do on syrup production, and of course they’re also a holding company for a vast number of other products. So the foremost competency of the Coca-Cola Company, like Nike, is marketing and advertising.
Hence the company advertises because that is about all it can do, outside of licensing.
I’ve heard it said that some advertising is purely gratuitous. And aren’t some companies very successful without advertsing? Maybe I need to watch more TV.
Joe Blow would normally drink 5 CocaCola products a week. But he’s sitting down watching The Big Game of The Week and sees an ad for Coke, walks into the kitchen and gets one. (I am amazed by the number of people who behave just like this. People see the ad, they go get the product. Now.)
Add all the Joe Blows in the world drinking 6 Cokes per/interval instead of 5 and Coke’s sales go up 20%. Coke managers and stock holders are thrilled.
Note that this example has nothing to do with the existence of Pepsi. Coke could be a monopoly and would still need to advertize to increase consumption of its products.
Advertising is set up to appeal to you emotionally. For instance the Cheerio ads. Kids love them they are finger food and relatively good for you. But what we get is the “Dad” explaining to the son or daughter about his cholesterol. You have the cute kid talking in baby talk “what’s that t’ump, t’ump, t’ump.” And of course the wife thinks “Gee if I bought Cheerios not only would I help my husband lower his cholesterol but he’d be magically transformed into a caring man who has deep conversations for his family. Gee Cheerios are more than a food. They are love.”
Men don’t care about Cheerios. Coke advertising because it’s not enough to keep what you have they want ALL of Pepsi’s market as well.
For instance I like Egg Nog but only drink it at Christmas time, cause I associate it with Christmas. Someone see Coke and associates it and says “Pepsi and Christmas isn’t like what I had at Christmas.”
Plus there’s the old saying “Out of sight, out of mind.”
A Sales and Marketing Manager weighing in. Although my education was in engineering my experience is in business.
Coca Cola would never consider this. Most customers are fickle things, and attention wanders. In an ongoing war, if one side pulls back, the other wins. Pepsi could come out with a great slogan or adversiting and people would switch. Hell, if Coke dropped it’s advertising to the level suggested in the OP, and I were the VP of marketing for Pepsi, I would triple my advertising budget and recarve the market share.
An interesting fact of the cola wars is that a few years back (unfortuantely, I haven’t read anything recent) but Pepsi and Coke were neck and neck at supermarket sales, and the huge difference in market share came from fountain sales (restaurants, movie theators, sport events, etc.). Here’s an article quoted here,
The problem would be two-fold. If Coke were to scale back advertising, then it would lose supermarket sales. However, the real killer would be if enough people started to ask for Pepsi, then establishments selling fountain drinks may switch. More likely would be that these establishments would recognize that it would be in their advantage to switch to the company providing more advertising. Once a few major chains were to switch, it could cause a major movement and Coca Cola could find themselves hopelessly behind.
It can become a nasty downward spiral. For example, lowered demand & sales could cause supermarkets to give Coke less shelf space, which could cause lowered sales, which causes Safeway to give them less shelf space, and so forth. Until you get to RC.
Now that I’ve thought about it, would it be fair to say the purpose for Coke commercials is not to remind loyal Coke drinkers about their favorite beverage, but to remind occasional soda drinkers that they might like a Coke also? And that the purpose of all the signs and in store displays is to make sure all those people have no trouble finding it?