This pioneering research decodes the real reasons of success of Coca Cola. Using, for the first time, a multidisciplinary approach, including brand communication decoding, motivational research, psychology and affective neuroscience, client workshops and the proprietary tools of BRAND AVIATORS™ I study the fundamental motives underpinning consumer behaviour at the deepest levels of their deployment and help clients around the world build brands that liberate the very forces of life.

1. CRACKING THE
SUCCESS CODE
OF COKE

2. Hi! My name is Constantinos
Pantidos and I believe that
companies could improve
people’s lives even more
effectively if they had
deeper human insight.

3. For consumer satisfaction
to be as complete as
possible, we must take
care not only of the needs
consumers understand
and are able to evaluate
but also and especially
the ones they are not
consciously aware of.

4. While 95% of our purchase decision making
takes place in our unconscious, we tend to
spend a disproportionally high time on
product characteristics and price and
promotions because they are easier to grasp.

5. Instead, this presentation
delves into the unconscious
mind of the consumer, the
95% that really matters,
and makes it possible for
marketers to build
irresistible brands.

6. Biological Value Brain &
Body
Systems
Cognitive
Operations
Psychological
States
Human
Morality
Behaviour
Rewards
Engagement
The
pathways
of human
behaviour
While the models for shaping
brand strategy used by most
multinationals today ignore
the contribution of modern
sciences such as
neurobiology and cognitive
science, BRAND AVIATORS™
use a comprehensive model
having an evolutionary
foundation and a
multidisciplinary approach
enabling marketers to build
consumer propositions that
are impossible to resist.

7. Beneath all the
sensationalisation
of global
marketing
communication, lies
order and pattern,
the source code of
our human
behaviour.

8. Our psyche consists of a code.

9. We are an ordered pattern of fundamental
motives capable of generating life.

10. Having captured our
fundamental human
motives, the irreducible parts
of our nature, all the way
from their biological values,
to the inherent concepts they
imbue into our everyday life,
this model traces emotions
from their roots, and creates
concepts that bear the
freshness of the source.
CONNECT
CONTROL
The wheel of motives™
GROW
CARE
BALANCE
DESIRE
FEEL
SAFE
SEEK
PLAY
CREATE
DEFY
TRANSFORM
TM

11. Motive Main biological
advantages /
survival value
Possible
neurosystems
involved
Examples of
cognitive
operations
Main psychological
states
Main sociocultural
manifestations and
reinforcers
Feel safe Detection of threats,
Dissipation of fears,
Endurance via
rewards,
Creation of
optimism that
facilitates success
Reward systems
(opioid
neurosystems that
induce a sensation of
pleasure and
suppress pain), Fear
dampening systems,
Defensive system
Retrospection,
Reminiscence,
Comfort and
enjoyment,
Believing,
Increasing positive
emotions,
Constancy, Coping,
Resolution of
emotional conflict,
Incognisance,
Anthropomorphism
Stability,
Regression,
Renewal, Nostalgia,
Daydreaming,
Comfort, Hope,
Happiness, Satiety,
Plenitude, Joy, Bliss,
Instant gratification,
Reward,
Perfectionism
Postponement,
Shame, Guilt,
Humbleness, Self-
sacrifice, Narcissism
Belief systems such
as religion, Morality,
Ethics, Mores,
Folkway, Tradition,
Authenticity
Example: the pathways of our motive to feel
safe.

12. Let’s focus on one brand
everyone is familiar with.
Together, let’s try to crack
the success code of Coke.

13. Coke’s success is
almost entirely
based on “feeling
safe”

14. Coke closely follows the pathways used
by our mind to create a sense of safety

15. Functionally and
emotionally, Coke is an
effective placebo. It
activates the systems in
our brain which sustain
hope and faith. What it
promises is security,
happiness and optimism.
Enjoying it makes us smile,
as we experience joy.

16. Safe water, sugar, freshness,
familiarity, provoke the
production of endorphins
(i.e., natural opioids)
connected to our feeling of
goodness.

17. The carbonation in
conjunction with the
spicy, medicinal flavour
strengthens the feeling
of cleansing, clearing
and refreshing.

18. The effervescence and
astringency give a
sharp, cleansing,
medicinal feeling. The
CO₂ also reduces the
feeling of satiation.

19. The raising bubbles work as proofs of happiness.

20. Coldness further enhances
our perception of being
refreshed, of having our
thirst quenched. While
water is a very sensitive
substance, cold water is
less likely to harbour
dangerous substances than
warm or tepid water.

21. Following its functional benefits,
Coke’s communication and
narratives, have many
social/moral (religious)
connotations.

22. Into a confused world, Coke
acts as a carrier of security
which gives us a belief in
progressive improvement
towards perfection. Only this
time our reward and
gratification is immediate, our
instant redemption.

23. Experiencing Coke
dissipates fear, allays
frustrations and
ultimately smooths
out the tensions of
the day.

24. What we really buy is the promise of a solution
to all our problems, an ultimate salvation from
all suffering at that spot.

25. Coke promises safety,
giving us the illusion that
there are more good
things to come. For
instance, the prospect that
some day work may be
abolished and holidays
will last forever.

26. Coke gives us the illusion that
it perpetuates momentaneity.
Always having something
available to put in our mouth
satisfies the sucking reflex that
nature gave us in order to live.

27. Liquid enters our
bloodstream fast.
Coke’s effect is rapid,
immediately felt. The
instantaneous relief
reinforces our
momentary
regression.

28. Making us momentarily
regress into the past,
avoid action now,
postpone the future, Coke
and its narratives of
safety remind us that the
forces of good always
triumph in the end.

29. Coke has the ability to
provide a comfort zone,
a secure domain of self-
sufficiency, an individual
dimension of space-time,
which is familiar and
sanitised.

30. Its cleansing allows us to
resist time and feel refreshed,
renewed and restored.

31. Freshness reassures us allowing us
to express our need to exclude
ourselves from the march of time
and make us unconsciously feel
able to be reborn again and again.

32. Its ritualistic use gives
us the impression of
stability, predictability,
certainty and protection
from change.

33. Its sense of stability,
and predictability
reassures and
consoles us.

34. Coke’s safety factor promises us a touch of
infinity, and the feeling of being able to
retain some of our juvenile elements longer.

35. Coke makes us further
feel that we can stop
time through our feeling
of being renewed by its
immutability,
authenticity and sense
of tradition, its
functional and
conceptual purity.

36. Through the constant
renewal of experience,
we become aware of
living.

37. Coke is simple,
ingenuous, wholesome,
bountiful even childlike.

38. ‘Consuming’
Coke’s narratives
our life becomes
easier, simpler,
more coherent
and ultimately
better.

39. Coke makes us relive our own
childhood, a place as far away from
death as possible.

40. In our collective imagination,
with the openning and
drinking of our favourite soft
drink, we unite with millions of
people drinking their favourite
drink at the same time as us.

41. Because they offer concrete
biological advantages, products
and concepts that make us feel
safe have been baptised by
modern society as moral
products that appeal to our
sense of fairness.

42. Producing feelings that
dampen fear and activate
the reward systems in our
brain, narratives and their
physical incarnations that
promise safety, allow us to
endure uncomfortable
situations.

43. By using them we express our
narcissistic side. Sometimes our flaws,
guilt, and fears are so ‘stubborn’ that
we even need some sharp cleansing
agent to make us reconcile with our
self and withstand the judgements of
others.

44. All highly
successful brands
clearly,
coherently and
consistently
express our
fundamental
human motives,
activating them at
the deepest
layers of their
deployment.

45. CONNECT
CONTROL
The wheel of motives™
GROW
CARE
BALANCE
DESIRE
FEEL
SAFE
SEEK
PLAY
CREATE
DEFY
TRANSFORM
TM
The Wheel of Motives™ can
help us activate the unique
codes of a brand, those that
make people feel most
alive based on a three-
phase methodology. *
-----------
* For the complete theory about
how the fundamental human
motives work please contact the
author or wait until the
publishing of the book

46. Phase 1: Psychographic
‘landscaping’
• Mapping the meaning
people derive from the
category
• Deconstructing the
meaning systems of the
brands in the category
• Tracing meaning-
saturated areas and
fundamental motives
which are catered for
less effectively

47. Phase 2: Brand (re-) definition
• Locating the core of the brand
[based on the fundamental
motive(s) it activates]
• Mobilising the core to give a
unique answer to what
consumers have always
wanted from the category

48. Phase 3: The unique
language of the brand
• Imprinting brand strategy into
our fundamental human
motives, the roots of human
communication
• Translating brand strategy
into Intrinsically Engaging
Narratives™ - tangible and
ownable experiences that
make people feel truly alive

49. To capture the deep
resonances that make
a brand successful,
and its consonances
with the category, a
profound knowledge
of the rich hierarchies
of inherent concepts
of our mind, and their
underground
connections, is
required.

50. In tracing the pathways our mind uses to create reality
and by activating the very forces of life, The Wheel Of
Motives™ offers considerable advantages over the brand
strategy models used by multinational companies today

51. Above all, by fulfilling our
fundamental human motives,
the brand is deeply humanistic
in that it offers holistic, universal
experiences that no longer
satisfy some individual needs
but the needs of the species.

52. BRAND AVIATORS™ are trusted by some of the world’s
leading companies:

53. You may (re-) define your brand
through the human fundamentals if
you intend to:
• Deeply engage people locally and
across cultures
• Develop genuine concepts that
work year after year after year
• Align all brand communications
under one master idea
• Increase the RoI of all your brand’s
activities

54. My mission is to help clients
around the world build brands
that liberate the very forces of
life. Contact me now for a free
discovery audit at
c.pantidos@brandaviators.com
or by clicking on the icon:
BRAND AVIATORS™
Kemp House, 152-160 City Road, London EC1V 2NX
+44 (0) 203 693 3933