A still from the new television advertising campaign for Coca-Cola, featuring a parrot with a persuasive line in verbal trickery
Coca-Cola's new television campaign broke this week on RTE with an advertisement featuring a man at a restaurant bar deciding what to order and a parrot mimicking the sound of a bottle of Coke being opened and poured. If it seems a lot quirkier than the large-canvas, glossy, feel-good Coke advertisements we've grown used to, then it's supposed to.
After a year when company profits dropped and one PR disaster followed another - remember the Belgian contamination scare - Coca-Cola, under its new president, Mr Douglas Daft, is trying to inject new life into the brand. While other brands look to Coca-Cola's world dominance with envy, it is that monolithic presence that is perceived to be working against it in the marketplace. The consumers that everyone is chasing - the elusive and fickle youth market - are increasingly disinclined to be drawn to anything that smacks of big business and, if Coca-Cola represents anything, it represents corporate America.
The campaign that the brand has been running for the past seven years features the simple copy line "Always". The problem for Coca-Cola is that "Always" resonates with a sort of corporate smugness and sense of global ubiquity that works against the more modern and attractive proposition of a cool, niche brand with a personality of its own.
The "Always" advertisements got their last outing at Christmas and the copy line on the new campaign is "Enjoy Coca-Cola" - seen as a more humble, friendly re quest.
The advertisement also features one of the world's most recognisable shapes, the glass Coke bottle, which is set to appear with increasing frequency in all the company's marketing communications.
The drink in the "Parrot" advertisement is poured over ice as a sort of educational reminder. In Britain, studies have shown that half of all Coca-Cola drinks are consumed warm, which apparently greatly detracts from the attractiveness of the product.
The company feels this could partially account for the relatively low consumption levels. Ireland and Britain are way behind other key markets in terms of individual consumption of the drink. The "Parrot" advertisement is part of the brand's international campaign and was developed in the US by one of the company's international agencies, Leo Burnett.
According to Ms Caroline Moran, Coca-Cola's marketing communications manager in Ireland, the new marketing strategy will have a "slow, sustained launch" here due to the high profile position of the brand.
Other advertisements in the "Enjoy Coca-Cola" series have already been seen in other markets and they are currently being researched for use in Ireland.
