Reaching the People

The goal of advertising is to create a connection between Coca-Cola and what people like (Elmore, 2015). Like many companies, Coca-Cola invests billions of dollars into their advertisement campaign to promote the consumption of their products and raise sales. The company uses different mediums to deliver their advertisements. For instance:

• • • Paper
    • Commercials
    • Product placement
    • Billboards
    • Targeted ads
    • Items with the Coca-Cola logo

The way companies have advertised their products have changed in appearance over the decades, but the most common method of advertising is to exploit the consumer’s desire to have something or be something that is depicted in the ad itself. For instance, old Coke ads are generally of women holding a tray of Coke glasses saying something about hospitality is through serving Coca-Cola to your guests. This takes advantage of women’s role in society of being homemakers and good hosts during the time of the ad. Now, many commercials exploit the desire to be accepted and happy, to have friendships, and to be relaxing. For instance, the Share a Coke campaign was targeted toward adolescents to share important life moments with friends. As a result, there was a 7% increase in sales in Australia where the campaign started in 2012 (Gertner & Rifkin, 2017).

 

The change in the advertisement industry comes with new and sneaky ways of incorporating ads into our everyday lives. This is done through product placement in our favorite television shows and movies, through targeted ads that often show up on your social media feeds, and the possibility of subliminal advertising. Advertisements have become such a part of our culture that it often goes unnoticed. This idea of advertisements not being recognized is taken a step further with subliminal persuasion advertisements. Subliminal advertisements are when brand names are flashed at the consumer at a speed that they do not visually register above the conscious threshold. These advertisements can influence consumer behavior dictating what product they choose under certain conditions, and ideally very soon after the message was delivered (Smarandescu & Shimp, 2014). This brings up more questions if large companies should have that kind of influence in consumer behavior as we are supposed to be beings of free will.

Another method of advertisement, similar to subliminal persuasion, is product placement. As we are watching our television shows and movies, we often do not recognize the drinks that our favorite characters are holding so conveniently to show the label of the can or the billboards in the background of a busy city scene. These images flash across the screen making these scenes seem like everyday situations that you should mimic with consumption of the same product. From a business perspective, there are some downsides to utilizing movies as a means of advertising, a main one being that they take a while to produce and get out on the market, but on the contrary, the name or logo of that company is forever imbedded in that movie. The study conducted by Ignacia Redondo and Jorge Bernal also proves that this form of advertisement can be more effective than conventional means of advertisement, especially for those that are already consumers of the product, since they hold the attention of the audience longer, (2016). Coca-Cola is one of the first and most active companies to use this form of advertisement. They have utilized movies to reach different age groups, for example, the movies listed below all had appearances of Coca-Cola in some form according to Redondo & Bernal (2016):

• Children
  • Madagascar (2005) & Beverly Hills Chihuahua (2008)
• Adolescents
  • Easy A (2010) & Footloose (2011)
• Adults
  • The Artist (2011) & The Impossible (2012)

The development of advertisement campaign is extensive. This brings on the question of what future advertisements will look like? And will companies value more? Effectiveness or consumer freedom?

Here is a video of various scenes from movies that also contain Coke’s product placement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJyiPRQJnrA