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A Swot Analysis Of Vanilla Coke When It Was First
Posted By: * on 6/25/2005 3:43 AM (CST) 250 Points
I'm Trying to launch a new drink on the market so I wanted to allign it with the way Vanilla coke was launched that include the targert market, market segmentation, swot analysis and other ways they used to launch the product.

Posted by: francisliew Accepted Answer
6/26/2005 10:53 AM (CST)
One of the ways is to target the young, this is where the future lies for many years to come.

Promote it in the mall or supermarket, where there is heavy traffic, let everyone taste a sample of your drink, and get feed-back by asking a few key question, like asking questions for swot analysis.

Good luck to you
 
Posted by: prbypr Accepted Answer
6/27/2005 2:46 AM (CST)
If you're trying to launch a new drink on the market, mirroring Vanilla Coke's entry into the market isn't a good idea.

Look at it this way. Coke is an established brand. Vanilla Coke isn't a new brand, it's a new brand extension.

To launch a new brand, you need to study how another new brand in the same category was launched. Is your drink a fruit drink? A new flavored water? A soda? Check out what's new and see what they did.

Ignore Vanilla Coke.

Good luck!
 
Posted by: stevea Accepted Answer
6/28/2005 7:23 AM (CST)
You wanted the SWOT analysis? In its simplest form it was:

Strengths: It’s Coke.

Weaknesses: It’s not Coke. When it was launched, Coca Cola had suffered a huge backlash with ”New Coke” It nearly brought down western civilisation as we know it because Coke was an established iconic brand and the “New, better tasting Coke” wasn’t the Coke which had made the world a better safer place!!! Messing with the original brand was dangerous.

Opportunities: Well, 3 Billion coke drinkers like something about the company, so if the new product does not eclipse the old, then there will be additional sales to be made on top of the core brand by people who wanted their favourite drink without the hassle of mixing it with a vanilla shot. Research had shown that customers did mix coke with other flavourings. Hence you can see where lemon, lime and cherry came from. The true opportunity was in the convenience of having Coca Cola Inc do the mixing for them.

Threats: Pepsi would do the same. The new flavour would be denounced from the pulpit. An asteroid would crash into the earth. The first one was real and never materialised. The others were mitigated by strongly promoting the original classic and reassuring the customers that the brand was safe, regardless of what the kids wanted to drink.

Segmentation: People with an even less sophisticated pallet exist – ergo – quench their thirst. Promote by extending the franchise on the brand. Don’t attempt to replace the brand. Target the sweet tooth. Placate the dental and obesity lobby by pushing 99% of sales into the diet category.

As to you doing it, take the advice given, don’t emulate Coca Cola. You don’t have a billion or so to get your brand off the ground. It’s hard to think of something novel these days, but if you are in the fizzy drinks industry you must try - then you can develop a unique selling point and occupy a niche.

A good example was a couple of customers of mine (Brothers) from my sales days. They bought an old Jam Factory in Dundee, Scotland which had a nice but unprofitable side line in coloured sparkling tooth-rot, sold in old fashioned glass bottles.

They invested in one of Scotland’s first automated PET bottle making plants and the equipment needed to fill the bottles with a drink.

The Brother with the PhD in chemistry concocted something which probably glowed in the dark and tasted of Ional, but his brilliance was to put it into a 250cc bottle with a re-closable top and distribute it to every corner chop in Scotland which might be visited by a school child.

The inexpensive beverage (If you can call it that) had advantages over a can in that it was cheaper, capable of being re-sealed for consumption during the day and, filled with water on the way home it made a useful weapon in Dundee’s under-age gang warfare scene. And it was recyclable!

The brothers bought themselves a couple of top of the range Porsches and disposed of the surplus PET bottle making capacity to satisfy the rest of the Scottish drinks industry, much to the chagrin of United Glass who had been pondering the PET versus Glass bottle question for about 15 years and were too monolithic to do anything about it.

So, find your niche for 2005 and put down the deposit on the Porsche!

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions
 
Posted by: SteveByrneBranding Accepted Answer
7/1/2005 3:46 PM (CST)
Good input from above, particularly from stevea. Pepsi was sweeter than Coke. Coke made New Coke sweeter. The consumer doesn’t like sweeter in the long run. So one option is a go less sweet. If a segment likes sweeter than old coke, then a segment likes less-sweet than old coke. I would test chocolate (not sweet vanilla) cola that’s less sweet than even old coke. There will be a segment that prefers this product, the only question is “how big is this segment?”

As for all the marketing stuff – distribution, advertising, promotion and the like – it all depends on what your research tells you about consumer attitudes toward “Semi-Sweet Dark Cola with a touch of chocolate”. Good luck and please send the royalties to yours truly.

SteveB


“The new coke was the result of the coca-cola company performing taste tests and finding that their sweeter test product scored better. This was because in the amounts and time period that they gave their test subjects, they did actually prefer the new coke. When the product was released coca-cola soon discovered that when consumed under every day living conditions their new product was an abysmal failure. They soon reintroduced the old coke as "coca-cola classic".”

Source:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=123887
 
Posted by: carrie77 Moderator Response
7/9/2005 6:48 AM (CST)
Hello all. I am closing this question since there has been no activity in over a week. We do this to reward the contributions of participants in a timely manner + to give increased visibility to the newer questions.

Thanks for participating!
Carrie (Production Editor)
 
Posted by: hanyaniashley Member Response
7/16/2005 5:44 AM (CST)
I would like to thank everbody who put their effort in helping me with my assignment.I thank you very much for your help for having time to help me, I hope this will never end as I know there are people like me who need help from you

Ashley
 


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