Aesthetics of Design

Aesthetics of Design

Part I: Coca-Cola 20th Century Design Icon

The world's most valuable brand, Coca Cola, has well over 120 years of history. Founded in the late 1900s by John Pemberton, later bought by Asa Griggs Candler has led the brand to be the world dominant soft drink throughout the 20th century. Everybody always enjoy a refreshing bottle or can of Coca Cola. But how many of you actually know the history of Coca Cola?

Only three UK Brands have gained a place on Interbrand's 2008 Best Global Brands list. In addition to HSBC at 27, BP is in 84th place and Diageo's vodka brand Smirnoff came in at 89.

In contrast, the US has 52 entries, Germany 10, France 8, Japan 7, Switzerland 5, Italy 4, The Netherlands 3, Republic of Korea 2, Switzerland 2 and Canada, Finland, Sweden and Spain one each.

Coca-Cola takes the top spot as the most valuable global brand for the eighth consecutive year, although IBM has leapfrogged Microsoft into second position and Google has entered the top ten for the first time. Last year, the internet search giant was at number 20.

The brand value of the top 10 brands are Coca-Cola $66.7bn, IBM $59bn, Microsoft $59bn, GE $53.1bn, Nokia $35.9bn, Toyota $34bn, Intel $32.3bn, McDonald's $31bn, Disney $29.2bn and Google $25.6bn.

The top gainers from 2007 are Amazon.com, Zara and Nintendo, while US financial services brands including Merrill Lynch, Citi and Morgan Stanley have slipped dramatically down the list.

To qualify for inclusion in the BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands 2008 list, each brand must derive at least a third of its earnings outside its home country, be recognisable outside its customer base, and have publicly available marketing and financial data. According to Interbrand, its methodology evaluates brand value in the same way any other corporate asset is valued - on the basis of how much it is likely to earn for the company in the future. Interbrand uses analysts' projections, company financial documents, and its own qualitative and quantitative analysis to arrive at a net present value of those earnings.

 

In 2008, Coca-Cola EU Group recognised it had a challenge with growing the POWERADE® business in Europe. Slowing sports drink category growth, poor consumer understanding of sports drinks, pressure from cheaper supermarket brands and poor differentiation from the category leader, PepsiCo's Gatorade and other local brands, combined to form a problematic situation. Further complication came from the variation in the precise situation and the strategies employed by individual country teams.

Whilst POWERADE® had been enjoying reasonable volume growth in recent years, it remained an undifferentiated number two in key European markets and was growing off a relatively small base. Management's ambitious targets were unlikely to be met by continuing with a business as usual strategy.

Coca Cola saw an opportunity to take the category leadership position and triple the size of the POWERADE® business. Developing a challenger brand strategy could allow it to differentiate POWERADE® and achieve this ambitious objective. The big question was, how best to do that?

So to all ...