Week 8 - Chapter 17: Advertising and Public Relations

Diet Coke has topped rival Pepsi for the first time to become the second most popular soft drink in the country behind Coca Cola. This recent news marks a victory for the Coca Cola Company as its sodas now hold the top two spots, beating out its longtime rival PepsiCo Inc.

Coca Cola sold nearly 927 million cases of its diet soda in 2010, to Pepsi's 892 million. Regular Coke remains far and away the most popular soda, selling 1.6 billion cases.

Even by pumping up its traditional image and product advertising with commercials, posters, ads in magazines, newspapers and also online ads; Coca Cola Co. has sold 0.5 percent less soda in 2010 but still more than PepsiCo whose figure fell 2.6 percent. The top 10 sodas in the U.S. just for the sake of knowing, in order of popularity are: Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, Sprite, Diet Pepsi, Diet Mountain Dew, Diet Dr Pepper and Fanta.

Coca Cola has evolved its public relations campaigns with the changing times and has kept up with the modern standards of environmental sustainability. In past years, Coca Cola's PR hasn't really been anything particularly fantastic but something wonderful that is actually worth mentioning is their association with the World Wildlife Fund. They teamed up to promote giving money to a “Polar Bear Support Fund”. The tag line of the campaign is “It’s time for us all to take action. To reduce our human impact on global climate change. To help support the polar bear”. With this campaign, the Coca Cola Company appears concerned for the environment and they are actually doing something about it. The PR campaign has it's own interactive website where you can learn about the polar bear populations. It features interactive “E-Cards” that you can send to people about supporting the polar bears. There is also a section on the site where the Coca Cola company promises to be sustainable and provides a list of “commitments” that the company has in regards to being environmentally friendly.

So for those who were wondering why Coke chose polar bears for those unique commercials, this was why.