Coca Cola Design and Branding Essay

The Coca-Cola contour bottle is one of the brand’s key icons and is the symbol of the brand’s authenticity. It was developed in 1916 to create a distinct identity for the brand in consumers’ minds and to protect the brand from being imitated by competitors. Today it represents the very essence of the brand’s identity in the marketplace and remains instrumental in differentiating the brand from all other competing products. The familiar shape of the Coca-Cola bottle and the flowing script of its trademark are the world’s most widely recognised commercial symbols. Coca-Cola is recognised by 94 percent of the earth’s population. The Coca-Cola trademark incorporates a number of elements which have become synonymous with the brand. These include: the Coca-Cola red and white graphics, Brand name written in the universally known Spencarian Script, the famous countour shape of the Coca-Cola bottle. Together, these elements are instrumental in differe ntiating Coca-Cola from all other competing brands. The packaging of a product serves a number of functions. At the most basic level, it contains and protects a product. However, packaging is also an important marketing tool. It is critical in describing a product, attracting consumer attention and differentiating the product from competitors. The Coca-Cola contour bottle is perhaps one of the most unique forms of product packaging. While it was originally introduced as a means of protecting the brand from imitation, it is now the most central part of the Coca-Cola brand identity. The bottle communicates the uniqueness, originality, superior refreshment and enduring values of the brand. A market research survey was carried out to examine consumers’ attitudes to the contour shape. In this survey, consumers described the contour bottle as communicating a variety of positive meanings. It was seen as: a symbol of the ultimate enjoyment and refreshment from Coca-Cola, possesing a sensual look and feel, a symbol of good times, universally known and universally accepted, a symbol which unites consumers around the world, an aesthetically beautiful symbol. So important is the contour shape in the marketplace, that it is now the core element of Coca-Cola’s consumer strategy. This has become known as the ‘Contourisation Strategy’. The objectives of this strategy are: 1. motivate consumers to purchase the Coca-Cola brand over other soft drink brands 2. maximise consumer enjoyment of the Coca-Cola product 3. create a distinct identity for Coca-Cola in the mind of the consumer. Good design makes good business sense, because it translates customer needs into the shape and form of the product or service and so enhance profitability. Design includes formalizing three particularly important issues: the concept, package and process implied by the design. The value of packaging is often seen as a paradox. Packaging plays an essential role in meeting consumer needs and preventing waste by effectively protecting product during delivery. The company is actively working throughout the Coca-Cola system to create solutions by advancing a global sustainable packaging strategy aimed at preventing waste over the life of their packaging. The company’s focus is on eliminating all raw material, energy and water losses across the entire packaging process chain-from the initial resources used to make a package through to the consumer and beyond. Today company’s goals focus on four priority areas foe effectively preventing waste: optimizing packaging effeciency, increasing renewable resource use, recovering packages for reuse and increasing recycled material use. With the issues of environmental protection becoming more important, both process and product/service designers have to take account of ‘green’ issues. The Coca-Cola company strive to be the most environmentally efficient user of high-quality, consumer-preferred packaging in the beverage industry. Their packaging innovation teams continually explore new ways to reduce the amount of material and energy used in their packaging without sacrificing quality or transferring waste. All of their major packages have seen significant material reductions since their initial introductions. In 2008, the Coca-Cola system made progress in packaging tracking and incremental and breakthrough advances in packaging efficiency. They focus the majority of their material reduction innovations on the packaging they use most-PET, glass, aluminum and fountain. Fountain beverages-one of their oldest and most efficient package delivery systems-account for 12 percent of their global unit case volum e. In 2008, they worked to further optimize the packaging efficiency of their fountain beverages by developing even higher syrup concentrations, commercializing a new cold, compostable beverage cup, and supporting commercial copmosting initiatives. Approximately 85 percent of the company’s global beverage volume is delivered in recyclable bottles and cans. To realize their long-term sustainability aspirations, the recovery of these containers and their materials for reuse is critical. The company’s goal is to increase this recovery to 50 percent by 2015. In order to do so, they focus primarily on advancing four core packaging recovery models:comprehensive product stewardship programs in developed markets; recycling cooperative programs in developing and emerging markets; voluntary deposits on refillable packages in least-developed markets; and Coca-Cola-operated recycling enterprises globally. A key to driving recovery is ensuring that market demand for collected materials is strong. The Coca-Cola system helps foster this demand by advancing sustainable technologies that enable greater use of recycled content material in their packaging; purchasing products made from recycled beverage packaging; and enhancing the efficiency of their refillable bottles. The Coca-Cola company has strong supply network design. The company sells the concentrates and syrups for bottled and canned beverages to authorized bottling and canning operations. The bottlers produce the final drink by mixing the syrup with filtered water and sweeteners, and then carbonate it before putting it in cans and bottles, which the bottlers then sell and distribute to retail stores, vending machines, restaurants and food service distributors. Most of the products are manufactured and sold by the bottling partners.The company sells concentrates and syrups to the bottling partners, who convert them into finished packaged products which they sell to distributors and other customers. The Coca-Cola company makes their branded beverage products available to consumers throughout the world through their network of bottling, partners,distributors, wholesalers and retailers-the world’s largest beverage distribution system. The positioning of the product in the supermarket is one of the most important things for the companyâ€℠¢s customers. In retail stores, Coca-Cola puts its products in the most prominent shelf position in refrigerators. There are 10 million Coca-Cola branded machines around the world, such as: coolers, vending machines, and fountains. The company calls tha machines ‘stores within stores’ and ‘interaction points with customers’. The innovation in the equipment that company makes is: a new fountain machine that serves 100-plus different beverages; re-imagined coolers that use classic Coca-Cola design themes and 40% less energy; and fully interactive vending machines with large display screens that are both Wi-Fi and Bluethoot-enabled. The connectivity technologies will let customers download music, coupons, or other promos to their cell phones. Coca-Cola uses an innovative bottling process at its bottling plants. In order to ensure speedy bottling without compromising quality, Coca-Cola’s bottling process involves the following steps: 1. The water is filtered and cleaned with a special treatment system. A sanitiser and 180-degree Fahrenheit water is used to clean all of the equipment while the water is being prepared. 2. The syrup tank is prepared for mixing. 3. Empty bottles are placed onto a conveyor to be filled and stacked. 4. The bottles go trough a quality control process, and examined foe any defects. Approved bottles are moved forward to be rinsed. 5. The bottles are rinsed with de-ionized air to remove any particles. 6. The syrup and water are mixed in just the right ratios, and filtered carbon dioxide is added. The mixture is pored into the bottles according to a predetermined volume. 7. The bottles are stamped with a date and code, and then moved to a fill-level inspector and capper. At Coca-Cola, the bottling line was designed to fill 20 bottles per minute. However, bottling speeds vary significantly depending on the type of product being bottled, equipment, and type of bottles or cans. The good design of the company’s work environment is extrimely important to the business success. The Coca-Cola company provides a safe and healthy work environment through implementation of their Occupational Safety and Health policies and requirements. They think about their employees. The Coca-Cola Company’s Workplace Rights Policy is giuded by international human rights standards. The Policy includes: Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining, Forced labour, Child labour, Discrimination, Work Hours and Wages, Safe and Healthy Workplace, Workplace Security, Community and Stakeholder Engagement. In addition, The Coca-Cola company shows that follows all of the steps for perfect process design. The company has success, because of the creative design product, strong supply netwotk design, high control of the process technology and providing the perfect working environment, because they care about the employees.