Lo1 - Coca Cola - 'Share a Coke' campaign analysis.

The target audience for this campaign is of A,B,C1,C2 & D digital natives / teens and millennial's, which would therefore be males and females aged 8-40 years old, this is due to the fact that the company (Coca cola) had successfully established that this was the primary audience in which consumed their product the most via statistics from previous campaigns / sales, however the company felt as though they weren’t persuading their audience enough to keep buying the product, therefore this campaign was designed to meet their primary target audience eye-level to make them feel a connection towards the product / brand by creating personalized bottles. However, this created a secondary target audience as people of all different ages share different names therefore the campaign was relevant everyone that had their names on bottles.

A key message of the campaigns was that these new bottles were a way of connecting with your friends and family etc. due to adverts that consisted of ‘share a bottle with…’ as this connoted that by buying these bottles it was a talking point for you and another person due it it being something that you would be sharing in common, however I think the purpose of this campaign was more to gain profit and not necessarily to give out a significant message.

The main element that helped engage the audience within this campaign was the use of people’s names due to the fact that it made the adverts personal to the audience, even if the audience didn’t see their name on the adverts this use of people’s names still worked in engaging the audience as it made people want to find their own name, therefore successfully working to meet the audience more eye-level and tempt them to want to buy the product with their name on or buy one for someone else as a present.

The layout / design of these adverts had elements that made the adverts more eye-catching and engaging for the audience such as the fact that there is a lot of white space, this makes the key elements such as the coke bottle, logo and slogan significantly stand out as there is nothing else to look at but these elements on the adverts, therefore getting the point straight across to the audience due to the contrast between them and the background, this was successful as the adverts for this campaign were distributed over media such as billboards and posters therefore this use of a layout was good for people to just glance at as they were passing / driving by and instantly understand the context of the advert.

Some adverts also consist of a hash tag reading #shareAcoke, this is one of the main elements that made this campaign so big as once people found a bottle with their name on it they posted it onto different social medias using this hash tag, this became a trend and therefore made more people want to buy the bottles so that they would post their own bottle to the internet, more than 500,000 posts were uploaded to this hashtag before 2014 and Coca cola gained over 25 million followers due to this campaign alone. 

The company also came up with websites as a part of this campaign that would allow people to pre-order / create personalised bottles with their own custom name on it, this was a huge success in engaging the audience due to events such as Christmas coming up where personalised gifts are perfect to people, therefore many were custom bottles were ordered / created online to give to people as gifts, these bottles were also very cheap which made it able for people of most classes (A,B,C1,C2 & D) to be able to do this, helping engage a mass audience, however people also wanted to order their own bottles also due to the fact that posting a picture of your own bottle online was something that people had just stared doing, as a result of this hundreds of custom coke cans were printed across the country and more than 6 million virtual coke cans were created and shared online by September 2014.

At first the majority of names denoted within the adverts and on the products were very stereotypical / common boys and girls names, e.g. Matt, Kate, Josh. This was done to help the advert be more relevant to more people as these were only the adverts and therefore they needed to use names that may appeal to a large majority of people, however due to the target audience the names used within the adverts and on the products are stereotypical to people within that age range (8-40), meaning not may names that stereotypically elderly people would have were denoted.

This campaign was released in the UK in 2013-2014 after it being a huge success in Australia, due to the timing of the release Coca Cola were able to take advantage of the fact that Christmas was coming up whist this campaign was being distributed, therefore they decided to market the product as something that would be a good Christmas present as a part of the campaign, this  was successful as the company marketed the product as a 'personalised' gift in which are a very popular type of gift to get someone around Christmas, it was also popular as the product is cheap to buy but also would have slight sentimental value despite that fact that it is just a drink.

Secondly due to Will and Kate's royal wedding being a year or two previously Coca cola decided to also use this to their advantage to try and imply that by s buying a personalised Coke bottle for someone you like you might end up being together like Will and Kate due to the relevance and hype still around the wedding, this advert is also trying to imply that by drinking the product you're like 'royalty' therefore due to a majority being younger and more impressionable this may make them want to buy the product to seem like Kate or Will as these celebrities will be seen as ideal selves due to their place in society. 

The producers of the campaign decided to distribute the advert over traditional media channels such as on billboards, posters, leaflets, newspapers and magazines. This use of traditional distribution is significant to helping attract the right target audience as everyone is able to see these advertisements due to them being in public areas, therefore helping reach everyone included within the target audience, the adverts were also distributed over modern media channels such as social media’s like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter, on websites and digital posters, this use of distribution over social medias will help the adverts reach a digital native audience. This is important to helping attract the right target audience as 8-19 year olds will have been brought up using technology, therefore helping reach this part of the primary target audience due to people of this age typically being on social medias a lot and having them with them all all times due to elements such as Iphones being portable. It was important that both traditional and new media channels were used to distribute the advertisements for the campaign as the audience targeted consists of a fairly large age gap, therefore various platforms needed to be used to help the advert reach those of different ages as they have grown up with different technologies, therefore the adverts needed to be suitable and reachable for everyone included. 

Legal issues such as intellectual property rights would have to be used due to elements such as the Coca cola logo and slogan to ensure that no other company can steal / use them without the companies permission. The copyright, patents and design act may also have to be considered during the production of the campaign due to the iconic red and white house style colours on the adverts as they instantly imply that the advert is about 'Coke' due to the popularity of the brand, therefore other brands may attempt to market their product using these colours to try and replicate Coke's product to instantly gain popularity, this act will ensure that the company have the right to take them to court if anyone tried to attempt to blatantly do so. Ethical issues that would have to be considered during the release of the campaign would be being inclusive of a variety of different name especially due to the fact that a large part of the target audience is younger as they may be more sensitive / feel excluded if they don't see their name anywhere which could make them feel like they aren't good enough etc.. to overcome this problem Coca Cola created websites that allow people to personalise their own bottles with their own custom names on in case they don't have a common name.