Dive Brief:
- Coca-Cola rolled out new bottle packaging that includes removable wristbands that potentially offer entry to some of the largest music festivals in target area Romania, including Transylvania's Untold Festival, according to Adweek.
- The wristbands were created by agency McCann Bucharest and have eight distinct designs. Consumers can scan the wristbands with a mobile app to find out if their's is a winner.
- According to McCann, the campaign has reached 75% of Romanian teenagers and produced an 11% spike in sales. Consumers that don't win are still collecting and wearing the bands as fashion statements, per Adweek.
Dive Insight:
As Coca-Cola looks to rework its approach to digital marketing, tying physical packaging to mobile and digital experiences are proving to be a strength that drives both sales and awareness in what's proving to be a hard time for soda brands. Coca-Cola recently leveraged Google Cloud technologies to develop digital signage for grocery endcaps, with an aim to better personalize messaging to shoppers based on their smartphone data.
Coca-Cola's main competitor Pepsi is also eyeing more promotions that tie together digital and physical marketing elements, including by embedding Snapcodes — Snapchat's variation on QR codes — into summer packaging of its limited edition Pepsi Fire flavor. Coca-Cola ran a similar scan-and-earn mobile promotion around the March Madness college basketball tournament that served as a sort of preview for a revamping of its digital loyalty program expected to fully roll out in July this year.
The changes to the loyalty program have been reflected at the corporate level as well, as Coca-Cola has been undergoing a major executive shakeup that's seen the departure of Global CMO Marcos de Quinto and, more recently, SVP of strategic marketing and head of media operations in North America Ivan Pollard, who was noted for reinventing the brand's media buying model. The restructuring has a focus on consolidating marketing, customer and commercial leadership to be more simple, and Coca-Cola is additionally trimming 1,200 jobs worldwide.
