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Friday, May 19, 2006

New marketing campaign that is interactive, tongue-in-cheek and somewhat weird...

Atlanta, U.S.A : That means dumping the drink's hip-hop image and appealing to teens with a new marketing campaign that is interactive, tongue-in-cheek and somewhat weird.

"If teens have to explain to their parents why it is cool, we won," said Venkatesh Kini, a marketing vice president at Coke who oversees Sprite.

In a commercial, two sumo wrestlers, one in yellow and one in green, are running toward each other in the forest. They collide into a teenager dressed in a disco-style tuxedo, their bellies smashing his face. This is supposed to symbolize the lemon-lime flavor that the Atlanta-based company calls "lymon."

If you watch the commercial slowly, frame by frame, as someone with a digital video recorder could do, other random images are visible, as well as codes that can be plugged into a Web site, www.sublymonal.com.

More than a year ago, amid a prolonged Sprite sales slump, Coke executives began looking at ways to overhaul the brand. They even considered changing the actual drink, but after testing several formulations, decided to stick with the original taste. Instead, they say they reinvented everything about the brand except the product.

"We needed to be bolder and we needed to be edgier," said advertising manager Peter Callaro.

As consumers drink fewer sugary soft drinks, U.S. sales volume of Sprite is down 10 percent from 2001, according to trade publication Beverage Digest. Volume for the lemon-lime category as a whole is also down.

For Coke, this is part of a larger story. The company, which also recently launched new advertising for Coke Classic in the United States, must try to get people excited again about its core products, even as it also researches new drinks for changing tastes.

Though there has been a slight uptick in Sprite volume in recent months, Don King, group brand director for Sprite, acknowledged, "We are not where we could be, should be."

So now there is a new logo, which looks like two interlocking Pac-Mans, one yellow and one green.

"Call it the Nike swoosh of Sprite," King said. "It is going to become the symbol that we think will be enduring."

And there is also a new advertising campaign called "sublymonal advertising," which is a parody of subliminal advertising. One magazine advertisement features a woman with wild eyes and hair standing on end. On the facing page is a packet of lemon-lime-flavored shampoo and the headline, "Sublymonal cranial scrub."

An advertisement that will appear on the sides of buses, including some in Atlanta, says: "Sublymonal message in progress. Obey." Hubcaps will be covered in the Sprite logo.

A cryptic commercial aimed at hard-core fans of the television show "Lost" directs viewers to www.sublymonal.com for more information on the show. This commercial has already aired once, an attempt to create buzz before the more overt spots hit the airwaves next week.

The upcoming commercials, including the one with the sumo wrestlers, have an oddball tone. In one spot, a fashionable woman passes out. Two miniature nurses shock her, using a defibrillator that is attached to a lemon and a lime.

The company will keep some urban, hip-hop marketing so as not to alienate fans of Sprite's past advertising. Sprite is hosting a couture fashion show featuring hip-hop, skater and grunge fashion designers in New York.

John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, thinks a major change at Sprite is a good idea.

"Sprite has lost volume in four of the last five years, so this relaunch is both a positive development and overdue," he said.

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