Diving Deeper Into ‘We Are the Coca-Cola Company’

Coke is my personal drink of choice. Any time I’m at a restaurant I always just ask for Coke (and may or my not get slightly upset when they ask if Pepsi is okay…). To me it is the perfect afternoon pick-me-up for someone like myself who isn’t a huge coffee drinker.

Coke’s usual advertisements are centered around bringing the world together. The overlaying campaign is “Share a Coke”. Even their Super Bowl ad showed all different people sharing a Coke and a laugh. We have become very used to seeing these Coke commercials on every major platform.

However, Coke recently decided to change up the usual advertisement—and replaced it with a commercial focusing on the entire company and some of the different products that fall under the Coca-Cola Company name. The “We Are The Coca-Cola Company” TV spot was produced by the collaborative efforts of Partners & Spade (Creative), Perfect Sense Digital (Digital), and Universal McCann (Media).

What Worked

These were the parts of this ad that were refreshing…

Brands – This ad features at least eight different brands that fall under the Coca-Cola Company name. I personally didn’t even know that many of these brands were distributed by Coke. Some of the featured brands included : Smartwater, Honest Tea, Powerade, Zico, and Minute Maid. Each of these brands were depicted in their own stereotypical way, which leads me to the next point.

Story – The story is set in Alaska, which is an interesting setting for a company advertisement. It shows everyone from all different walks of life enjoying a Coca-Cola company drink. First showing, Coke being delivered to a local diner. Then showing Honest Tea being enjoyed by a young group camping cliffside, and following that with a firefighter enjoying a cool sip of Smartwater before hopping on the truck to go save some lives. Each of the brands presented had a feel-good moment, showing all the great things that Coke wants you to think they are doing in these smaller communities.

What Didn’t

Here’s where this ad fell a little flat…

Message – The number one problem with this ad is the message. Their idea for this ad was “Thank You for Listening. We’re Listening Too.” with the hashtag #CocaColaRenew. I personally just do not understand what this advertisement has to do with the fact that they are listening? What exactly are they listening to? What was the consumer problem that was answered with this ad?

I decided to look a little more into the hashtag in order to get an answer. (Which, to be honest, is probably the whole idea of the ad…) The tweets did help explain the mission of the ad a little clearer. The whole point of the Coca-Cola Renew Program is to help clean water in rural areas for farmers and their families to use. The issue with this is displayed in some of the tweets I found…

There are many larger cities in the United States and in the world that need their water “renewed”. Communities like Flint, Michigan, have not had clean water in almost four years. But this random town in Alaska needs help too, right?

Some people on Twitter praised Coca-Cola for attempting to help out communities…

Final Verdict

Overall, I really enjoyed the advertisement itself. I think the problem was it worked more effectively at creating overall brand awareness for the Coca-Cola Company than it did at expressing the idea of renewing water around the United States. It seems to me there were almost two separate ads here—one focused on the idea of “We Are the Coca-Cola Company” and the other focused on #CocaColaRenew. And it would be much more impactful, and the message much clearer, if they were each given their own ad.

That’s what I think, but what do you think…