$5 Billion Plus

‘Coca Cola’ is the world’s 2nd best known English term (‘O.K.’ is number 1). It is the world’s biggest and best-known brand. It sells 1.4 billion soft drinks per day and makes more than $5 billion profit per year. Yet Coca-Cola is scared. Throughout the west, fizzy drinks are seen as unhealthy; and the richer people get, the more they worry about health, fitness and their appearance. Coke is no longer ‘it’. In 2004 and 2005 Coca-Cola sales were actually falling in America and Europe, for the first time since the brand’s birth in 1886.

The brand may be struggling, but the company itself is fighting fit. The 2006 launch of Coke Zero was a huge success in America and Britain. The idea of ‘Bloke Coke’ showed great marketing understanding in a market where Diet Coke is largely targeted at 20-30 year old women. In the first 16 weeks from its July 2006 launch, Coke Zero sales were £24.1 million, the biggest launch success of any new grocery product for the last 3 years. The success of Coke Zero has reversed the sales drift among men. But what about women?

Autumn 2007 sees the next stage in coca-cola’s marketing strategy: the launch of diet coke plus. Diet coke has been a fantastic success since its launch in 1982. Its 25th birthday has been celebrated in 2007 through a special silver can (very hard to get hold of). Diet coke has been called ‘the greatest extension strategy in business history’. In the UK Diet Coke’s silver can often outsells coke’s red one.

But although it meets the consumer demand for low calories, diet coke cannot offer the positive health benefits claimed by smoothies, juices or ‘functional’ dairy drinks such as Danone’s Actimel. Coke has watched sales of smoothies rising at 100% a year, and has decided to act.

Diet coke plus comes in two varieties: diet coke plus vitamins and diet coke plus antioxidants. As coca-cola puts