Locally cold, globally cool

Like I commented here,  my reaction to Coke’s latest TVC is one of its own iconic tag lines – Thanda Matlab Coca Cola. The ad, which tries to showcase that Coke, in the festive season of Diwali brings family, friends and even strangers together, left me absolutely cold. While the earlier Hrithik commercial was far from impressive, its tag line – Jashn Mana Le, I thought, would’ve been a great fit here, wonder why they didn’t continue the thought.

Coke has, in the past, done some great contextual stuff. I recently came across an old ad of theirs that used the premise of Grand Theft Auto, and did a neat twist to the character, who does good deeds instead of bad ones, and says that ‘Give a little Love and it all comes back to you in the Coke side of life!’ That seemed to be taking forward the theme of an older ad – “What goes around comes around”. I wonder why the ‘Coke side of life’ has not been utilised here. Actually, even this old Xmas ad of theirs was well worth aping.

Meanwhile, Coke’s on to a lot of good things otherwise. I recently read about its efforts to go green. This  TVC, which aims to spread awareness of the fact that Coke is made without any artificial flavours. is a part of this effort. They recently launched a range of sustainable tees, made from its recycled PET bottles, and in the recently concluded Olympics, distributed it to athletes. They also partnered with the Olympics organising committee to make sure that all PET plastic bottles collected from all official venues were fully recycled into valuable reuses. Read about more efforts here.

Coke has also launched The Design Machine, which ensures that its image in markets, across all brands,  around the world reflects the core strategy as far as POS materials go, but allows enough flexibility for localisation. This should allow them to get the perfect mix of glocalisation. You can read the details here.

And its not just the real world, but they seem to be doing some interesting stuff virtually too. Coketag is a widget that allows users to package and share links across the web. This can be a “blog, work, interests, team, band or whatever you like or care about”. Once the links are shared, you can also track its popularity. The widget can also be shared on Facebook. A good widget to facilitate connecting and sharing, another aspect of ‘the coke side of life’ (via Startup Meme)

All the above activities are in line with Coke’s position as a market leader. With the advances Coke is making in glocalisation, we can hopefully see the good work happening in other markets being adapted contextually in India. Or we could make better ads here 😐

until next time, the green side of life..