Consumer Behaviour and Experiential Marketing: Coca-Cola

Well that’s the Christmas period almost over with for 2015 and we saw lots of brands and companies marketing their products and services through experiential marketing in different ways over the last couple of months. In my next few blog posts I will discuss a couple of different campaigns that we all potentially saw and took part in.

Coca-Cola

First up is the Coca-Cola experiential campaign that runs yearly and has been for several years now, and it is an indication for a lot of people that the ‘holidays are coming’ as soon as they see the icon that is the Coca-Cola truck. Which has been used as a promotional tool for Coca-Cola since 1995.

This year the truck visited a total of 46 destinations in the UK from November 22^nd to December 23^rd, where members of the public were able to get a free photograph with the iconic truck whilst listening to some Christmas classics and sipping on a complimentary can of Coca-Cola.

Firstly this campaign taps in to our sensory receptors. The truck’s lights are all lit up making it look magical for everyone to appreciate and mirror how it looks in the adverts, with Coca-Cola written literally everywhere you looked. These are connecting with our vision senses, creating a memory for the public who came along to this event.

Secondly, sound was used at the event. There were classic Christmas songs being played from large speakers around the truck to get everyone tapping their feet and getting in to Christmas spirit creating a happy atmosphere. As it is seen that aspects of sound affect the way people behave and their feelings towards products and experiences (Soloman, 2006, pg. 43).

Taste, of course the main reason of these campaigns, is another receptor that is used. Everyone who visits the truck (under 12s must have been accompanied by an adult) where all given a free can of Coca-Cola, Diet Coke or Coca-Cola Zero, which you were given along with the Coca-Cola tagline of “Taste Christmas with this uplifting taste”. If you also decided to go for the option of Coca-Cola Zero you were reminded about the fact it has zero calories, Coca-Cola’s way of educating their customers.

There were a couple of methods to receive a free can of Coca-Cola, some visitors found themselves having to perform a little dance along to the music in order to receive their free can of Coca-Cola. This consumer involvement added to the memorable experience Coca-Cola was trying to create.

Another opportunity to get yourself a free can and the most popular way was to get a picture with the iconic Coca-Cola truck. You were handed a can and a unique code, and then sent up on to a podium to get a photograph, which after was edited and then uploaded on to the Coca-Cola website, accessed with your unique code. This created an opportunity for consumer involvement again as it gave the chance for the customer to share their photograph on their social media sites with the hashtag #holidaysarecoming which is promoting their brand, however the consumer is actually doing the promoting instead.

The photograph that the customer receives has a filter added over the top which includes several more Coca-Cola branding on it. Below is the picture I got, as you can see there is 7 promotional signage on it, making it hard for you not to forget where this picture came from.

Below is an example of the picture you recieve:

By sharing the photograph also links to the Self Concept. The picture creates the idea of the customer being in the Christmas spirit and possibly creating a happy family image which can be linked to the ideal self and the looking glass self. It is promoting this image to their friends and family in hope that it portrays an image of happiness and that they are in the Christmas spirit.

Creating this memorable experience will keep the idea of habitual when decision making around this product as this positive consumer involvement, it will encourage the consumers to keep on buying this product so the company can keep putting on events such as these. It may even open up a new market, with people trying Coca-Cola for the first time, it could encourage them to start buying Coca-Cola more often.

Here are a couple of other photographs taken whilst visiting the Coca-Cola truck this year.