Analysis of Coca-Cola's Brand Management Techniques

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Brand Management
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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction........................................................................................................... 3
2.0 How a brand is built and managed over time........................................................4
3.2. Brand Portfolio Strategies....................................................................................8
4.0. Brand extension & leverage...............................................................................13
5.0 Measuring and Managing Brand Equity and Brand Value..................................15
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 18
Reference list............................................................................................................ 19
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1.0 Introduction
The scenario of conducting business operations provide organisations with the
opportunity to develop their internal framework through various tactics of brand
management. The process of managing the value and other intangible and tangible
assets of the brand that the organisation portrays in the business scenario is
identified through the aspects of brand management (Heding et al., 2015).
The study will provide detailed information regarding the methods that help
organisations to build their brand and manage its operations by identifying the
magnitude of developing an effective brand, as a marketing tool. The apparatus of
“brand strategy” and the relation in developing the brand equity of an organisation
are observed in the study. Various strategies of “portfolio management”, “brand
equity” and “brand hierarchy” are analysed in this study. An evaluation of brand
management at a familial and intercontinental scale is performed in the study in
context to Coca Cola UK. Finally, an evaluation of the techniques that measure
brand value is performed in the study.
The study focuses on Coca Cola UK as a leading brand in the beverage industry of
the world. Founded in 1886, the organisation serves 20 brands and 80 types of non-
alcoholic beverages to their target customer demographic. Maintenance of their
brand value through the creation of a varied product portfolio and ensures consumer
satisfaction and relations are implemented effectively in their business operations
(Coca-cola.co.uk, 2019).
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2.0 How a brand is built and managed over time.
2.1 Overview/Definition
2.1.1. Brand/Branding
Brand is a symbol, logo, unique design, word, sign or the amalgamation of all these
factors engaged in portrayal of a reflection for the product to identify as well
differentiate it from other similar product (Tiger et al., 2017).
Brand identity
“Brand identity” is the perception that a customer receive from various thing like
product, person, advertisement and more. It helps an organisation in product
recognition. Brand identity of a product should consist of a consistent message
which are received their audience.
Brand elements
The representation of brand is done with the help of various tangible elements that
helps in creating as well as formulating a visual, auditory, Brand identity and more.
ALL these elements used to brand a product is known as Brand Elements.
Brand promise/Emotions perceptions
A brand promise consists of a statement given by an organisation to their consumers
about what they can expect from their products as well as service. These are done in
terms of tangible as well as intangible, benefits as well as experiences and more.
2.1.2 Brand Equity
Figure 1: Brand Equity
(Source: Schmitt and Zhang, 2017)
Brand equity is one of the marketing terms that help an organisation in describing its
brand value. These values are determined with the perception of consumer and their
experiences with the brand. The brand equity is high when customer highly thinks as
well as prefers the brand. When the customers are disappointed by the brand, the
brand equity becomes low.
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2.2. Stage of building a successful brand
The successful image of the brand helps the organisation in gaining the loyalty of the
customers as well as it increases sales of the organisation. There are six stages to
build a successful brand (Pervan et al., 2015).
Determine the target audience: This stage consist of identifying the target and
meeting the requirement.
Define Brand mission: This stage consists of creating mission statement and
embracing it across channels
Research Competition: This stage consists of differentiating the products and
convincing customers.
Create value proposition: This stage consists of uniqueness, value and benefits
Determine the brand guidelines: This stage consists of visualising elements, brand
tone and strategy
Market you Brand: this stage consist of standing out of crowd, integrating the brand
in every aspect
2.3. The role of marketing in branding
The role of marketing in branding Coca Cola Company is
Defining Vision: the first role of marketing in branding Coca Cola is to create a
vision for the company that answer the entire important question. Coca Cola
Company uses marketing in establishing their vision that is to accomplish the
mission and inspire each other to become best and to provide a great place to work.
It uses their vision for branding. Coca Cola offers variety of drinks that satisfy the
needs as well as desire of customer.
Setting Mission statement: Once the vision of branding the Coca Cola company is
created then it focuses on setting the mission for the company (Atwal and Williams,
2017). The missions of Coca Cola in branding are
 To refresh the minds of people as well as their physical and emotional state
 To inspire flash of confidence as well as exuberance due to the colla borative
association with brand and action
2.4. The importance of branding as a marketing tool
Coca Cola is one of the most recognized brands worldwide. Here are three
importance of branding that Coca Cola use as a marketing tool.
Target an emotion- According to Coca Cola the way customer, perceive soda may
affect the mental health of the customers. Therefore, Coca Cola for good branding
goes far from selling the products for the benefit of the company. Coca Cola try to
make customer feel good when the use their products. Coca Cola try to satisfy,
reassures and provide a healthy drink to their customers.
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Maintain your message- The Coca Cola decide what they want their brand to stand
for and serve their customer according to that decision.
Do not force their customers to change- the Coca Cola brand instead of forcing
their customer try to tap the need, wants of the customer, and design their product to
satisfy the needs of the customers (Upadhyaya, 2017).
2.5. The components of a successful brand strategy
In order to built a strong brand equity Coca Cola have these 3 component of brand
equity Brand awareness
 Brand compliance
 Brand loyalty
2.6. Strategy for Strengthening brand Equity
Figure 2: Keller model of Brand Equity
(Source: Ekinci et al., 2018)
These four levels of the model are depicted below:
 Brand identity- Brand identity of a product should consist of a consistent
message that is received by their audience. Coca Cola brand identity are
design of bottle, message saying “open for happiness”, and have consumer
base of age between 15-25.
 Brand meaning- the Coca-Cola is retailer, corporation, manufacturer, , and
marketer of non-alcoholic drink and syrups.
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 Brand responses- Coca Cola introduces one brand strategy in which it offers
Coca Cola drinks Coca Cola life, Coca Cola zero, and diet coke in order to
give variety of taste and preferences to their customers
 Brand relationships- Coca Cola consist of Behavioural loyalty, attitudinal
attachment, Sense of community, Active engagement.
2.6.1. Brand Extension
Coca Cola has introduced new line for clothing. Brand extension is marketing a
completely new product category. As it is necessary to perform a research before
starting a new brand extension .Coca Cola used to provide soda and drinks product
and now has launches a line of product in the clothing sector Coca Cola has
increased their chances for growth and expansion by introducing this new brand
extension.
2.6.2. Brand Reinforcement
Brand Reinforcement is an activity by which company try to retain the customer,
which had tried their product to make their purchase at a regular basis, and tries to
attract new customers. Coca Cola introduces one brand strategy in which it offers
Coca Cola drinks Coca Cola life, Coca Cola zero, and diet coke in order to give
variety of taste and preferences to their customers (Reddy, 2018).
2.6.3. Brand Revitalization
The brand revitalization is the strategy adopted by the company when their products
reaches the stage of maturity and started declining slowly. Coca Cola has been
facing this issue and has applied some measures to avoid this
 Coca Cola tries to be consistent in order to retain their customers
 Coca Cola tries to avoid the big changes that can spell disaster to their
company.
 Coca Cola consider brand over the product
2.6.4. Overcoming a brand crisis
Brand crisis is termed as a special kind of crisis in which product is termed to be
harmful. The negative event affects the brand or a set of brand. Coca Cola has seen
brand crisis and there are three challenges waiting for Coca Cola
 Battling sugar: The biggest challenges faced by Coca Cola is its sugar
ingredient which causes health issue to people having diabetes and also
causes many other disease
 Digital woes: The advertisements were shown on TV by Coca Cola. With the
increase in the user of mobile, this strategy is fading and Coca Cola needs to
pay attention on their advertising strategy (Bartneck and Bartneck, 2017).
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3.2. Brand Portfolio Strategies
3.2.1. Branded House
There are many companies, which come under the branded house category.
Branded house is applicable when sub brands are not detached from the firm. The
company is the brand here and the other products are its subsets. FedEx is such a
company, which uses the branded house strategy. It has other brands like FedEx
express, ground, freight, critical and networks.
3.2.2. Hybrid
Hybrid strategy consists of both characteristics of “house of brands” and “branded
house”. The idea is to focus on every other brand equally and to make separate
identities of those brands. Pepsi Co is such a company and it has brands like Pepsi,
Mirinda, Mountain Dew, 7 Up, Quaker Oats, Gatorade, Doritos and many more.
Explain the meaning of each and give examples
3.3. Brand Portfolio Strategy of your organization
When the brand strategy combines both “branded house and house of brands”, the
strategy is called hybrid. Coca Cola use this strategy, they have various products
under them, and those have become distinct brands of their own. They have many
brands under them such as, “Coca Cola classic, zero sugar, diet coke, Glaceau
smartwater, Fanta, Sprite, Oasis, Minute Maid, Schweppes, Adez, Honest organic”
and many more. The hybrid structure works for Coca Cola because it enables
coexistence of older and newer products. This helps the organisation to give catchy
names to their products, lets them justify their innovation. This strategy leaves scope
for Coca Cola to merge and acquire other brands. This strategy can introduce loyalty
program by taking serious corporate initiative. The new name enables them to attain
a trademark and they chance of investing in the product increases due to the help
from the master brand (coca-Cola.co.uk, 2019).
3.3.1. Illustrate the example of a specific model of your organization
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Figure 1: Hybrid model of Coca Cola
(Source: Created by the learner)
Coca Cola uses hybrid model to shape their strategy for portfolio. Due to the
characteristics of other models like “branded house and house of brands”, this
strategy gets a better chance to prove its usefulness. This model is implemented by
Coca Cola to obtain competitive gain in the market. They use this model for
strategic implementation of their funds for various products to support those in
time of need. They assess the strength of the product through proper research and
this gives helps them to forecast about the product. The “classic coca Cola, zero
sugar and diet coke” is very popular amongst crowd. Therefore, they focus on these
products more to gain more revenue. The model allows the company to understand
the weakness of any product and the amount of support it will require to become
popular in the market. It points out weaker sub brands and the company is able to
decide if they want to keep that brand as a part of them in future or not. This
provides them a hierarchical structure and the company decides the future of the
brand (M’zungu et al., 2017).
3.3.2. Critically analyze the benefits and draw backs of the different
approaches. Consider arguments on both sides and conclude with your
opinion of the most appropriate approach for your organization.
Branded house helps in shaping a company, which offers various products and
services under the shade of one brand. The efficiency is increased due to a single
marketing strategy and a single brand code is able to cover each offering. The
competitions between brands are eliminated and it helps a company, which is an
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COCA COLA
Coca Cola Classic SpriteCoca-Cola zero sugar
sugar
Diet Coke
Fanta
Glaceau Smartwater Schweppes Classic
Minute Maid
Glaceau Vitaminwater
Schweppes
Powerade
Dr. Pepper Lilt Oasis
Rose’s Oasis Aquashock
Aquarius Hydration
Kia-Ora No Added Sugar Abbey Well
Appletiser Fuze tea Adez
advantage. A huge disadvantage is that the reputation of the company depends on
every other brand under the major brand. House of brands can enable the company
to reach greater number of audience and can take risks regarding new products, as
they have backing from strong ones and it is a benefit. The major drawback is that
it can be difficult to create market strategies for various brands and if the parent
brand is not strong enough, then the sub brands will not succeed. It will be feasible
for the company to take positive factors of both of these models and combine it to
make the Hybrid strategy. This strategy will enable them to combine all the positive
factors and can prove to be very efficient for Coca Cola (Flint et al., 2016).
3.4. Brand Hierarchies use a diagram to illustrate the hierarchy of brands
within your organization.
Figure 2: Hierarchy of Coca Cola brands
(Source: Created by the learner)
The hierarchies of brands inside Coca Cola are evident as they clearly focus on
some brands more. Popular brands like Coca Cola classic, Diet Coke, Fanta and
Sprite do not need much support to survive in the market. Due to the continuous
support from consumers, those brands are already safe in the market. Other weaker
brands like Appletiser, Adez, and Rose’s are not famous and go down the hierarchy
line. Therefore, they need a good amount of support from stronger brands to survive
in the random changing market. Therefore, the company is using various strategies
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to support these products by engaging more audience to use their weaker brands. It
is often visible, that Coca Cola gives discounts on weaker brands to bring it to public
attention. They separate each brand by this method and this helps in differentiating
between various products they offer and the characteristics of it. It leaves the scope
for improving it and can prove to be very beneficial for the company. Therefore, the
brands at higher section of the hierarchy should support brands at the lower section
for overall improvement of Coca Cola (Nguyen et al., 2018).
3.5. Analyze the organization strategies (Marketing strategies, Market research,
Customer communications, promotions, Customer-focused values) for
managing the equity of the brand(s)
CBBE model
Figure 3: CBBE model
(Source: Ande et al., 2017)
Coca Cola is successful at creating a brand identity in the market for many years
and they are very much popular. It is necessary to hold this identity and that is why
they are applying various marketing strategies to increase their popularity in the
market. Numerous amount of advertisement in television, social media and banners
are enabling them to reach to greater amount of customers by huge amount of
promoting. The company focuses on segmentation technique to find proper
customers for them and targets potent consumers according to it. This requires a
huge amount of market research and employees of Coca Cola in this department
are capable enough to find out the necessities of public. Whenever a customer
thinks about a brand, he or she considers the products and imagery of the company.
Coca Cola is giving great quality of products to consumers for a long time and this
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high quality of performance of the company is driving them to the top. Their values
are customer focused and they consider opinion of customers to make new
products. They maintain proper communications with customers and consider their
judgements. These factors are helping Coca Cola to build brand equity in the
market (Uggla, 2015).
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