Coca-Cola GB recently announced it was merging its product portfolio (Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Life, Diet Coke, and Coca-Cola Zero) into a ‘one brand’ strategy.
All the drinks will take on the same branding style and packaging, but with various low calorie or zero sugar attributes presented in the same position on the pack. Each variety will keep its color coding (green for Life, red for traditional Coca-Cola, etc).
Coca-Cola says the move will help spread the ‘enduring appeal’ of its traditional drink to other varieties. But Wegrzyn, co-founder and CEO of BrandOpus, told BeverageDaily.com this risks alienating existing fans.
“Consumers are often loyal to specific brands without even realising it, the look and feel of packaging plays just as big a part in the customer journey and ultimate decision making process as the product inside,” he said.
“Through packaging the brand establishes a significant and differentiated presence, a consistent and recognisable theme that creates a unique image in the consumer’s mind and ultimately results in loyalty."
Wegrzyn explains Coca-Cola’s previous ‘sub brand’ model saw each variant advertising different messages to specific demographics.
“The radicalness of Coca-Cola’s recent move means that all the products now share values,” he said.
“Coca-Cola’s ambitions to create a master brand has been seen by many as controversial step, possibly in the wrong direction. The Coca-Cola portfolio contains a collective of disparate variant products, each of which (particularly Diet Coke) has its own iconic proposition, complete with individual marketing strategies aimed at separate audiences.
“Separate communications have created separate values for each sub-brand, enabling consumers to understand what they are about and who they are for.”
Consolidating variants has consequences for brand design, Wegrzyn says. Consumers must be able to intuitively understand the difference between each product in the portfolio.
The trick, Wegrzyn says, is for variants to strike the balance between being unique, and sharing similarities with the parent brand.
In a similar move to Coca-Cola, Cadbury had already shifted its sub-brands into what Wegrzyn calls ‘flavour variants’ under their master brand.
“This allowed them to create a single, unified ad campaign (you may recall the drumming gorilla) that created a real connection between the master brand and the consumer, positively impacting all the products within the portfolio.
“The difference here is that each product has a very descriptive descriptor. How much easier is it to understand what ‘Fruit & Nut’ means and offers - in contrast with Coca-Cola ‘Life’?
“The use of distinctive colour backs this up: Fruit & Nut is a simple descriptor, as it is its red colour. Life is a non-descriptive name, further complicated by the use of a green colour, which commonly cues a mint flavour (unless a comms campaign intervenes to educate the consumer otherwise).”