The reason why marketing communication from Coke always strikes a cord

Coke has done it again. Its yet again come out with a great piece of communication that strikes a cord with people across the globe, that too at the time of a global pandemic. I'm quite sure you've loved advertising content from Coke over the years, but have you ever wondered why other brands have not been able to replicate the same success.Before we look at the reason lets also look at the most common presumptions . Hypothesis 1: Coke has better marketers: The marketers work for the Coca-cola company, which suggests, if the marketing content from the brand Coke is great because of its Brand Managers it must also be equally good on all the other Coca-Cola brands.Therefore brands such as Minute Maid, Sprite, Mazaa, Kinley etc must also be able to churn out great content as frequently as Coke. As an observer of marketing communication, you would know that it's not the case.Let me go a step further, even Diet Coke doesn't churn out as engaging a communication as Coke. Hypothesis 2: The Brand Coke has the best Creative agency

Coke, currently, works with different creative across different regions. These creative agencies in turn work on many other brands as well within and outside of The Coca-cola company. If the creative agency were the reason we should see such great marketing content coming out of many FMCG companies.The other point to notice is that the creative agencies at Coke haven't been the same throughout the journey of the brand. Fact: Its the Brand Coke is an established iconic brand with a very strong and well defined Brand Key. As a result any marketer that works on the brand doesn't need to do a lot of re-think or re-creating, in fact most likely you need to just keep the ship in order. The legacy of Coke ensures that its Brand Key is not tinkered with and communication remains consistent through the decades. The other factor that works for Coke is that the brand doesn't need to explain the product. Allow me to explain a little bit in detail. Every advertising concept is based on three fundamental pillars. a) Accepted Consumer Belief or Consumer Insight b) Benefit c) RTB ( Reason to Believe) (For details on Brand Positioning frameworks read this article ) The fact that Coke is an established brand with a very well known product benefit and absolutely no reason to explain the reason to believe in the benefit, allows it create communication solely focused on the insight. The insight is engaging, the relevance that you feel, the association, its all part of the insight. No body wants to know about the product, no body wants to see a hard sell. Everybody wants to listen to a relatable story. Most other brands need to establish the product truth and need to earn the right or the credibility to tell stories. In the absence of a Benefit and RTB a sharp insight based communication can easily be wrongly attributed to the market leader. This could spell disaster for a competing brand because despite spending millions in advertising money awareness or consideration for the brand is unlikely to see a spike. I'm in no way trying to take away the credit from the brilliant marketers of The Coca-Cola company or the creative agencies. It is without doubt that there needs to be a great working relationship established between them to be able to produce such great output. As a matter of fact they're probably trying to solve for the biggest problem ever faced by the industry, the anti-sugar narrative. I just want to highlight that while you might appreciate the brand Coke as a consumer its worth admiring as a marketer as well.