People Are So Outraged At Coca-Cola's Holiday Cans That It's Abandoning Them After Just One Month

Is it just me, or this is really that funny?? (and textbook material on ‘brand building, what not to do’)

Coke released this:

And got this:
picture source

I can almost see ‘the confused person’, opening the can, taking a much considered first sip, savouring it, savouring it, and finally concluding that ‘this stuff definitely doesn’t taste the same’…oh dear! Coke, bring back your signature brand colour.

Bring it back fast. And so they are doing exactly that after a month of the failed, silver polar bear packaging. Milk is white and coke is red (on the outside at least). And no more funny business please.

This is a brand we know and trust.

Yes. In (red) Coke we trust.

People Are So Outraged At Coca-Cola's Holiday Cans That It's Abandoning Them After Just One Month

For the love of chocolate…

There is something special about flavours that were introduced to us when we were children. As if they could somehow give us a reassuring comfort whenever savoured again later on in life. Advertisers have long known this of course, case in point is McDonald’s Happy Meals which target children as young as under five’s. While Macca’s use the toys to ‘lure’ (well, they do) the kids in-store, other companies use powerful images in commercials to influence... such as the purple cow.

When I think of ‘my’ childhood chocolate brand, I have a vivid recollection of Milka’s purple cow as it’s grazing peacefully in the pastoral green fields of the Austrian Alps.
And if you haven’t seen the purple cow in its ‘original’ setting yet, make sure to watch one of their classic, 30 sec TVC’s below.

What is the one image that you can recall, may it be for Hershey’s, Cadbury’s, Nestle’s, etc.?

Brand association

Having accumulated a bit of a backlog on my The Economist podcasts, I listened to about four or five of them in a row, on the way to work this morning. In between the podcasts, deep in thoughts about the previous discussion, a brief advertising message, a tag line kept recurring. Something about Conrad Hotels & Resorts...

In my current job I rarely travel for business, especially not outside the country of my current residence (Australia), which is probably the reason why when I woke up this morning, I didn't have a brand recall of Conrad Hotels & Resorts.

But why would I even think of business travel…? But that is exactly what I did. In between podcasts, I caught myself imagining what Conrad Hotels & Resorts look like. I imagined neat and stylish receptions, quick and polite service, businessmen in suits, looking the part.

Why? The answer is very simple: brand association. The marketer chose the environment, and my mind did the rest: it associated Conrad Hotels & Resort with all, that The Economist stand for

Advertising via brand association: it works.

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