Thursday, June 9, 2016

Coca-Cola: Pop Culture Icon



We all know about it. The red and white logo, the family and friendship-inspired commercials. Coca-Cola is a brand known to all, unless you live or lived under a rock.

But how did it get this way?

Nowadays, you can walk into a store and find Coca-Cola merchandise. Tank-tops, T-shirts, towels, candy, socks, anything. Anytime I see the color red, the back of my mind associates it with Coca-Cola.

I find this very interesting, because the fact of the matter is, Coca-Cola is just a soda. It tastes near identical to Pepsi, despite the age old argument. So why is Pepsi not so big of a pop culture icon as Coca-Cola?

One reason could be just the fact that the ads that they have used were more successful. Coca-Cola's ads mostly focus on the fact that if you drink Coke, you could gain popularity, you could be a good friend, you could be all these things and something you're not. However, is this the reality of the product?

No.

In fact, this soda is more likely to have negative long-term effects, versus those positive ones used in promoting. For example, a common thing I have been seeing around lately is a large inflatable can of soda that is obviously done to imitate the style of Coca-Cola, which instead reads Diabetes. it appeared at the international day at McClatchy, and somewhere I got a flier for it. I found this interesting, too, and it can probably be related back to the question of where Coca-Cola's popularity came from: Why did they use Coca-Cola, and not Pepsi? Why not Sierra Mist, or root beer?

This (hypothetical) answer is simple.

Coca-Cola is a very old brand. It has been around for so long, so many people are already familiar with the name and are more likely to tell others about it so that they can buy it too. As these people are spreading word of this classic soda, the advertising agents are building specially-targeted commercials in order to appeal to people's sense of diversity and companionship. The campaigns done by Coca-Cola further support this; for example, the #ShareACoke.

More to report.
-M




No comments:

Post a Comment