Coca-Cola Case Study: Reaching Teens Through Happiness Campaign

This case study explores Coca-Cola's challenges in marketing to teenagers and the strategies employed to overcome these hurdles. Coca-Cola identified that teens, while active on social media, were hesitant to share content due to concerns about social validation. To address this, Coca-Cola launched viral digital marketing campaigns focused on spreading happiness, creating various digital content pieces tailored for different platforms and applications. For example, the 'Happiness Vending Machine' video was developed, showcasing unexpected gifts dispensed from a vending machine, which generated positive reactions and encouraged sharing. Initially, the video was aired on television to gain wider reach, deviating from the conventional approach of moving offline content online. This tactic helped Coca-Cola build greater exposure among teens both in the U.S. and worldwide. Desklib provides this case study along with numerous other solved assignments and resources for students.

Running head: ESSENTIALS OF MARKETING
Essentials of marketing
Name of student:
Name of College:
Authors Note:
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ESSENTIALS OF MARKETING
1. What was the difficulty/challenge or problem Coca-Cola identified in
marketing to teens?
Coca Cola though is the most sought after and well known brands across the world and even
biggest in terms of advertising spending in world had enough experiences to reach their brand
communication to billions of people throughout the world. But it still faced difficulty in
establishing deeper connectivity with very significant segment i.e. teen consumers and Coca
Cola required a cost effective approach to reach particularly to teen ager segments for their
flagship Coke product. According to Aaker., Leslie and Rogier (2010) as teenagers are most
active over social media like for instance in US during 2009-10 nearly 73% teens were using
social network so Coca Cola assumed to use digital social media to build deeper emotional
connections with this significant consumer segment throughout the world. But the difficulty that
was encountered was though teens used social media but they did not shared media contents over
Facebook with their networks or friends as is done in traditional forms. It was found that
although teens found some digital content interesting but were hesitant to share or post these
over their Facebook page as they though their friends might disagree with their choices. So teens
did not preferred risking reputations if they found that their friends did not similarly like a video
or website that they found interesting though and as such avoided sharing digital contents and in
some cases teens were found suppressing their opinions for some contents until their friends too
validated these. So Coca Cola faced difficultly in connecting with teens in complexity of social
validation of contents. Also Coca Cola identified that teenagers did not looked for contents that
were shared through friends rather preferred posting on more popular friend network instead of
posting on their own social pages which made Coca Cola face challenges of social credibility to
reach to more teens based on their perceived behaviour of sharing and liking a digital content.
2. What happened? What strategies did Coca-Cola use to address the
issue?
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ESSENTIALS OF MARKETING
Coca Cola after extensive research and brainstorming came out with a strategy to use viral digital
marketing initiatives by creating and spreading happiness to reach out to more teens and
introduced different digital media activations for different applications to make the campaign
more viral and widespread. With each content Coca Cola attempted to spread happiness to
appeal youngsters so that they could share their piece of happiness with their friends and this
kept flowing to more people.
3. What was the solution? Please describe the different types of
communication tactics Coca-Cola used to gain exposure amongst teens in
both the U.S and worldwide.
According to Aaker., Leslie and Rogier (2010) Coca Cola created various digital contents for
different media and applictions like separate content ‘Spin the Coke” for iPhone and another for
android base. Other contents were designed for facebook/Myspace/orkut, winodws 7 themes
template and video and separate wallpaper, screensavers etc for different applications to reach
and attract different segments of young consumers by crafting a separate piece of happiness
content for each group that can be passed upon to their friends network. Example, Coca Cola
developed a video that showed a unique vending machine placed in a university cafeteria that
though appeared ordinary was specifically designed to surprise people. Coca Cola placed
mysterious cameras to capture reactions when consumers were surprised to find unexpected gifts
coming through vending machines when they expected to purchase a bottle of coke. These
unexpected surpises made consumers happy and they actually shared this happiness with others
around even to strangers without hesitation or fear of social validation.
As happiness vending machine had significant implication on consumers other than traditional
media communications like print, TV ads etc with better retention of video and connectivity with
consumers so Coca Cola aired the video on televesion ads as it found that though video gained
attention but it was not shared to others over Facebook as desired. So to inspire more
connections and large audience views Coca Cola adapted to air the happiness vending video on
TV during the finale of Idol episode which had high TRP ratings other than SuperBowl. Coca
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ESSENTIALS OF MARKETING
Cola used communication tactics differently and moved an online content to offline medium as
opposite to general approach of moving a traditional ofline content to online or internet to make
viral which instantly gathered attention and reached to mass consumers in US and across the
world which was the goal of Coca Cola to build greater exposure.
References
Aaker., J, Leslie., S and Rogier., D. (2010) Dispensing Happiness: How Coke Harnesses Video
to Spread Happiness. [Online] Case M-335. Available
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/gsb-cmis/gsb-cmis-download-auth/352211 [Accessed on 31 Oct.
2018]
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