mattviola26-blog

[mattviola26-blog]

Coca-Cola makes true business decisions

This post is based on the article written by Gillian Friedman in the NY Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/business/coca-cola-tab.html

Coca-Cola has been around for centuries and is one of the leading food and beverage companies. Coca-Cola (Coke) has brand loyalty based on their product taste and now Coke has a chance to keep loyalty or possibly lose these customers for good. 

Coca-Cola has managed to successfully work their way through the COVID pandemic without going bankrupt like other food and beverage brands. Coca-Cola is getting rid of their antique original product called “Tab” and several other smaller products they own. 

Tab and these other smaller brands were not being marketed and were using shelf space Coke could use for other products. My question is, would it be worth losing a few loyal customers to satisfy the needs of new customers? Why would Coke wait so long to get these off their shelves? 

These products like Tab have been using their money to package these drinks, As far as Coke’s marketing strategy for these, they lowered their place and lowered their promotion over the years because it is rare to find these drinks in your everyday stores and you never see a commercial for these. To answer my questions I think it is worth dropping a few customers to succeed in building and concentrating on a more intense marketing strategy. They should use the money save to increase a new product line or improve their distribution and introduce more promotion tactics.

I feel this pandemic showed Coca-Cola that there are many uncertainties in the world right now and shows they need to use their allocations wisely which makes me feel they are making the smart decision to cut these older lines.

https://digitalagencynetwork.com/what-you-can-see-from-coca-colas-digital-marketing-strategy/

This second article shows why Coca Cola has been successful so far in marketing their current brand and will be successful even without the Tab brand.

Coca Cola does not always make you happy but it does mean happy in Mandarin. The Tab market was for the older ages who still enjoy the taste but the new target market for soft drinks are the millennials and younger aged people. commercial shows how Coca- Cola can use their taste to transport you back to your childhood.

How does Coca Cola use their marketing strategies effectively?

To answer that question I took a look at Coca- Cola’s Marketing Uncertainties. Keeping these older brands on their product line was a Low impact and Low Immediacy but it slowly became a moderate impact and high immediacy as COVID-19 came through. They were analyzing this their whole way through but finally realized the higher impact it is having on their sales by having these older brands on their shelf space.

This wants Coca-Cola to be known as a taste to remember of happy times in your life so when you want to have a fun time you buy Coke in the store. Not only are good times spent drinking Coca-Cola, they are also spent with friends and family. Coca-Cola introduced their marketing strategy of the “Share a Coke” with the world and that helped increase brand awareness because they made Coke a personal connection to people. Their promotion of this was a walking advertisement for themselves. I personally have bought a bottle or can of Coke that had my friends name on it just because I felt it was cool to see. Once again we see their Price, Promotion, Place and Product is on the highest level possible. The affordable pricing is attractive, their promotional ideas attract people to buy their product, they can be found all over the world and finally, their product is iconic on so many levels.  

[mattviola26-blog]

Amazon is the new ad agency?

This post is based on the article by Chris Kelly from Marketing Dive. 

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/amazon-ads-have-20-higher-roi-than-average-brand-marketing-study-finds/588672/

Amazon has been the top reseller and online shopping store for multiple years now. Amazon began making revenue from advertising their own products on their website. The Amazon website is known for the wide variety of products and quick shipping. People also use Amazon as the place to find ideas for presents but go searching else where for the gift. This is where Target and Walmart have began to increase sales as they are competing with Amazon prices. Amazon began to recognize the buying behavior and has now began to charge their sellers and companies to pay for ads due to the increase foot traffic. 

My question for Amazon is do they continue to lower prices to compete with Walmart and Target or do they keep creating their own “Marketing Firm”? Most recently following the COVID outbreak, Amazon increased their on website advertising to more than $5 billion in revenue. Not only do they have a successful revenue coming in but their ROI is about 20% higher than other marketing brands. With the success Amazon has had so far I think it is in their best interest to pursue coming an ad agency for products especially as the holiday season is coming up. 

After looking at the Marketing uncertainty, we see this is an immediate decision that has to be made as this is their time to open this type of marketing campaign. They are still in the growth stage but with the newest competition from Walmart and Target may have their company begin to mature. Making this decision may drag them back into the growth stage. Amazon may begin to mature because they are beginning to have pricing pressure and substitute options are becoming more available. 

Amazon has a large customer base with all their contact info and can use this info wisely to send emails with their top products to increase their business or just to increase the business of the products shown. This is a win-win situation for Amazon. If for example, Amazon markets the newest XBOX on their new marketing campaign and sends an email or has pop ups with this product. XBOX pays Amazon money to market their product and these customers can purchase it anywhere they feel is the best deal but Amazon will still profit due to XBOX paying for the ad. This will show their superior in the Promotion side of marketing. They were leading in the price and product but now they are disguised by their competitors, this is their chance to separate themselves by increasing their promotion factor.

[mattviola26-blog]

Apple Continues to Amaze

This post is based on the article: 

https://insights.digitalmediasolutions.com/articles/apple-ios-12-launch-marketing-history

After reading this article by Sarah Cavill, I was able to see how Apple connects their products and marketing strategy with their consumers. This article shows the previous apple commercials that has been the most successful marketing campaigns for not only for Apple but for other companies to take notice. In 1984 Apple released their first commercial over there and do computer called Macintosh. This commercial first aired on TV during the Super Bowl spot which has always been known for the most amount of viewers of any TV show or event. 

Following this iconic commercial, Apple was able to outperform themselves again by releasing a commercial that takes shots at their competitors Microsoft, and IBM. this was the first commercial that Apple has released that shows a comedic side for Apple to connect with their consumers. This shows how a father tries to show a picture on the computer but can not complete the task, so the son goes to his friends house to use their iMac to find the image. Following this commercial was the release of the first iPhone which was a huge success. Their commercial shows the simple use of their product. The commercial uses famous clips of movies of the actors saying “Hello” to show all you have to do is answer with a swipe of a finger. 

I was thinking while reading why was Apple successful with these commercials? Did they get lucky and just have funny commercials or was there a purpose to these commercials?

While reading further into this article, I see how the world has evolved from when it first debuted the Macintosh to now the new iPhone 12. The marketing styles increase and the products innovate each time adding new features and keeping up with other competitors features. I learned further that Apple’s success is not just their pricing, product, promotion, or place; it is all four! Their pricing is evolving, the iPhones are becoming more expensive but also has lower cost options as well. Their products are always adding new features and sometimes even more cameras. Their promotion and commercials are always keeping up with the public. A recent commercial from Apple shows all types of people using their device and the whole world goes crazy if the server was to crash and apps were to disappear. And finally their placement of their product is worldwide. selling over 100 million iPhones in the US and 400 million worldwide shows how Apple has evolved where they can reach.

To summarize my answer: NO Apple did not get lucky, they hired the best people for the job to innovate their brand and marketing to make their product a homerun!

Apple’s Management creates new innovative ideas and continues to expand their Product expansion well. They know the types of products their consumers want and they go and create that product. Some company’s try to diversify too much and creates a sense of “watering down” their current products. Apple knows what they are good at and they stick with that. Apple has very low uncertainty when it comes to their new releases because they do enough Market research that they understand what is wanted. They do have a chance of high impact when a product is first released. Apple keeps up with their iOS updates to make any fixes their consumers dislike which then brings them to Low impact and high immediacy.