Coca Cola has achieved brand positioning as a refreshing, everyday part of life through consistent branding and marketing over 130+ years. It was initially marketed as a patent medicine but is now positioned as refreshing and for sharing moments with family and friends. Key factors in its positioning include maintaining a consistent 5 cent price for 70 years, innovative packaging, and widespread promotional campaigns like "The Pause That Refreshes" and more recent "Open Happiness" campaigns. While Pepsi positions as encouraging living in the moment, Coca Cola's positioning focuses on being an integral part of everyday life. Coca Cola also differentiates through its product line, culturally tailored drinks, focus on water purity and quality, and flexible business

1. Brand Positioning and
Differentiation
Sara Amjad

3. How did a tonic turned into world’s
biggest selling beverage?

4. Brand Positioning

5. Brand Positioning
• Positioning defines where your product stands
in relation to others offering similar products
and services in the marketplace as well as the
mind of the consumer.

6. Coca Cola – First Brand Positioning
• Patent Medicine
• Cure to headaches and fatigues
• Tax imposition in 1898 and Coca Cola’s change
of category

7. Coca Cola – 2014 Brand Positioning
• USP: Live on the Coke side of life
• Refreshing and thirst quenching
• Cultural value
• Family
• Friends
• Everyday life joys
• Consistent and high quality

8. Factors Involved

9. Factors involved in positioning
• Price
• Packaging
• Promotion
• Distribution
• Competition

10. Coca Cola - Pricing
• 5 cents a glass
• Price remained same for 70 years
• Pepsi
• World War I and II
• Taxation
• Prohibition
• Ingredient shortage

11. Coca Cola - Packaging
• Glasses at soda fountain
• First contour glass bottle design developed by
The Root Glass Company in 1916
• Packaging innovation, 1955:
• 6.5, 10, 12 and 26 ounce versions

12. Packaging Evolution

13. Packaging – Brand Positioning

14. Promotion
• Let the word spread
• Awareness
• Reminder
• Keeping up with the competition

15. Coca Cola – First Advertisement
• A full page published advertisement in The
Atlanta Journal on May 1st 1889, proclaiming
the ownership of Coca Cola
• “…sole proprietors of Coca-Cola ... Delicious.
Refreshing. Exhilarating. Invigorating.”
• Though he didn’t received the ownership until
1891 but the word was already spread by that
time

17. Coca Cola – First Campaign
• The first slogan
• The pause that refreshes! (Frank Robinson)
• Let the word travel across the nation
• Free Sampling; Try it, Like it and Buy it Later!
• Merchandising;
• Posters, fans, clocks, calendars, notebooks and
bookmarks

18. Free Sampling Coupon

20. Coca Cola – 2014 Campaign
• Open Happiness, The Coke Side of Life
• Branded Content
• Share-a-Coke Campaign

23. Branded Content

25. Competitive Analysis - Positioning
• Pepsi’s Positioning:
“Live for Now” which invites and inspires Pepsi fans to live each moment
to the fullest through a breadth of global, pop-culture platforms, including
relationships with music and entertainment.
• Coke’s Positioning:
An integral, crucial part of people’s everyday lives. It creates intimacy with
its consumers by evoking memories and experiences with the brand and
their unique selling proposition “live the Coke side of life”. It invites people
to create their positive reality and to aid that creation, Coke is the
happiness in the bottle.

26. Brand Differentiation

27. Coca Cola – Brand Differentiation
• Symbol of Joy and Fun
• Product Line
• Culturally Tailored Products
• Water Purity Standard
• Organic Soda and Beverage line
• Snack Food Line
• Customize Vending Machine

30. Coca Cola - Competitive Advantages
• Market leadership
• Business partnership
• Collaborative Customer
Relationship
• Channel Marketing
• Multi Segmentation
• Client Value
Management
• Go-to-market Strategy
• Full Operating Potential
• Flexible Sales and
distribution models
• Managerial Expertise
• Sustainable
Development

31. “We sell moments of happiness, for
cents at a time, more than 1.7 billion
times a day and more than 200
companies.”
Muhtar Kent, CEO, The Coca Cola Company