Brand Marketing is Overrated. Coke Proves It
Every time that I point out that brand marketing is irrelevant, somebody brings up Coke as a counter-example. According to them, the fact that the Coke brand is recognized the world over proves that brand marketing is an essential tool.
My viewpoint is that brand is always a reflection of product and service. Good product/service=good brand. Bad product/service=bad brand. I'm right and they're wrong. And Coke proves my point, not theirs. Let me explain.
First, I am NOT saying that brand is unimportant. Brand -- the emotions that people associate with a product/service -- is very important. I'm just saying that most of the activities that are under marketing's bailiwick (advertising, PR, etc. ) don't have much effect upon brand.
The argument that uses Coke as proof that brand marketing works is based upon the notion that Coke's product and service are exactly the same as every other cola product. It was brand marketing that made Coke popular, rather than, say, Shasta or Royal Crown. (Pepsi is a special case, as you're just about to see.)
Well, it turns out that's not true. Coke (and Pepsi as it happens) can, in fact, be scientifically proven to be better than their competitors' products.
As Malcolm Gladwell points out in his must-read book What the Dog Saw, Coke and Pepsi have fromulae with "high amplitude" which means that the flavors are so well-blended that the human taste bud can't pick out specific flavors. That's not true of other brands -- a fact that emerges when the different products are tested.
So Coke is OBJECTIVELY a better product than Shasta. Brand marketing has nothing to do with it, as evidenced by the failure of New Coke, which (unlike the original version and its variations) tasted like a cheap cola and flopped despite massive marketing expenditures.
So now we come to service, which (as in most cases) has to do with the sales model and sales approach. Turns out that Coke (and Pepsi) are the masters of securing shelf-space. They fight tooth and nail over each outlet, each inch of shelf space. They both have huge armies of sales reps who conduct this battle.
Coke is better at it than Pepsi, which is why Pepsi has a lower market share, even though both their products have high amplitude.
Why, then, does Coke continue to advertise? Clearly, they think that spending on advertising is important, but I suspect that the REAL audience for the advertising isn't the consumer, but the channel, who believes that there will be pull-through from demand.
Even so, I don't think that very few people decide (for instance) not to eat at Taco Bell because they serve Pepsi rather than Coke. But I believe wholeheartedly that a spreadsheet showing ad spends helped Pepsi make the case to Taco Bell that Pepsi would be a reasonable choice.
Still think brand marketing is responsible for Coke's success? Why, then, has there never been a brand extension product, in the 100-plus year history of Coke? If brand marketing were so powerful, surely you'd see at least ONE brand extension -- the apotheosis of theoretical brand marketing.
But you don't, because the Coke brand is an artifact of the product, with a market share that's an artifact of the service (sales model). Case closed as far as I'm concerned.
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