Nike and Coca-Cola Brands

Abstract

Nike's brand message communicates about striving to succeed in any commitments. The company exploits the emotional marketing approach to convince customers to trust and become loyal to the products. By focusing on influencing the customers emotionally, Nike has emerged as a well-known brand worldwide, outshining brands like Adidas. Through partnerships with iconic individuals in the sports arena, the Nike brand messages foster the need to strive to succeed in sports using their products.  Across multiple social media channels, Nike spreads the same message, "Just Do It". The second brand considered in this paper is Coca-Cola. The brand spreads the same message of togetherness, happiness, and refreshment from the advertisements on Youtube and other social media channels. Coca-Cola uses dynamic messaging approaches to promote the brand, retaining and spreading the same message to customers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nike Brand

The company's brand advertising strategy portrays a loud message about the journey of a hero. However, there is a conspicuous twist in Nike's brand as the customer is portrayed as both the villain and the hero. Nike's advertising approach is one of the most dominant examples of successful emotional branding in contemporary society (Stoeva, 2017). The customer loyalty displayed is exceptional due to the emotional branding approach evident in the advertisement videos on Youtube and other social platforms. The strategy employed by the Nike advertisements aims at establishing a powerful brand that is capable of inspiring various customers' loyalty through the exploitation of their emotional thoughts about the products. Ideally, it is an ancient tale, a story of a heroine or hero, challenged by a great enemy, and after enormous efforts and struggle, emerges successful. Somehow, one could easily buy the idea that the strategy used by Nike has been operational for a long time and has prompted considerable customer loyalty visible across the world.

It must be stated that Nike's advertising approach is not the only one that employs the approach of a hero archetype to cause customer loyalty to the brand. Many other companies have been applying this advertising approach but have not been very successful as Nike.  The most evident tale is a humble origin who decides to challenge a significant evil and goes against all the odds to emerge a winner. Nike's advertising method selects a common hero tale and exploits it to increase awareness of their products. Rather than promoting customer loyalty via talking about an external enemy, the company pays attention to the internal foe, peoples' laziness (Stoeva, 2017). The company is aware of how much people struggle to defeat their laziness. For instance, in the wee hours of the morning, when the alarm goes off, it marks the start of a battle. When people select how long they are likely to run, the challenge continues. This is how Nike succeeds in promoting its brand. The company knows that as much as some people may have external foes, every person has that personal internal weakness they desire to defeat.

Nike shares the same message across its social media platforms to promote its brand effectively and gain a competitive advantage over other companies in the same industry. As a result, Nike has the highest number of followers on social media, outshining well-known brands such as Adidas (O'Neill, 2017). Notably, irrespective of having followers across the world, the company's content strategy and use of inspirational quotes and hashtags from icons in the sports field facilitate the sharing of information about the brand. Furthermore, it is clear that across all the social media platforms belonging to Nike have the common slogan "Just Do It" is highly pronounced. This ensures that the company can disperse the same information about their brand across the social media ad; this has proven beneficial.       

Through consideration of the Nike brand across various channels, various lessons were learnt about the branding approach. First, Nike has built its strapline and brand successfully. The company is very confident about its brand, and more often than not, it uses the logo minus the actual name. From this, it is evident that businesses must strive to create their recognition via consistent messages and imagery. Secondly, creativity is evident across various Nike advertising social media platforms. Nike strived to develop its brand differently and persistently till it became largely recognized. For instance, in the Olympic games in 1996, Reebok was the official sponsor, prompting all the participants to use the company's sportswear. However, when Nike came in, they ensured that the players did not only use their products, but the stadium was also branded and had the company's official logo in place. Lastly, it was also noted from various channels like Facebook and Twitter that Nike's brand awareness had been made strong through the associations employed.

The company facilitates its branding by associating its products and values with iconic athletes from across the world.  Indeed, the public cannot vaguely believe that wearing the products from Nike will make them better. However, by associating the brand with elite and successful athletes, the public believes that the Nike brand products are essential for better and longer performances. By considering their content and advertising approach, it is right to believe that Nike is one of the strongest brands in the world today. This is because the company has maximally exploited the social media advertising opportunities to make the products viral, hence high sales. However, it is important to note that, despite the success of Nike's branding strategy, more has to be done to make the company even better. This can be achieved through increasing the number of endorsements the company makes and should cover all icons from third world nations to exploit this vastly growing market. Furthermore, to promote the brand further, the company should emphasize its mission to increase innovation and inspiration to all athletes through its brand.

Coca-Cola Brand

The materials used in the marketing campaign of Coca-Cola have been designed to suit the messages they are supposed to deliver. Professionals perfectly design the sounds, words, and images used to play the same role. The Coca-Cola advertisement video considered for this assignment on Youtube brings forth several messages to the intended audience. First, it is easily learnt that Coca-Cola is the best beverage to satisfy peoples' thirst. Therefore, the brand tries to inform that it is the best drink in the market, fully quench thirst.

It should be noted that, however, this stand has been criticized by marketing authors and scientists, doubting the ability of the drink to quench thirst fully and the brand's adverts indicate (Prafull, 2018). Ideally, the thirst developed for the Coca-Cola drink varies fundamentally from water's natural thirst from the advertisement. Thus, it is evident that Coca-Cola's thirst is largely a want and not the typical thirst common to everyone.  On the same note, the advertisement portrays the message that some style is attached to drinking Coca-Cola.

Keller and Kotler indicate that the most successful marketing messages institutions present attempt to provide solutions to problems potential customers might be experiencing (Prafull, 2018). This can be deemed as a need and a problem that demands a means of satisfaction.  Particularly, some individuals target to fulfill the yearning of willing to be deemed as great through attempting to be trendy and stylish and ensuring that they associate with successful, famous, and established icons. Coca-Cola has exploited this tenet by paying iconic personalities deemed successful in associating with their products in the public space. Therefore, it is true to underpin that people partly purchase Coca-Cola products as part of their efforts to fulfill their desire to be stylish and trendy. Lastly, the Coca-Cola advertising message indicates that drinking the company's beverages is a lifestyle aspect. Therefore, the company strives to convince customers that their drinks are part of their day-to-day living requirements.

In the contemporary world, communication is important to any company and determines its competitive position in the market (Castañeda-García et al., 2019).  Consistency of the message communicated via different online tools is important to the success of any business. Across the advertisement channels used by The Coca-Cola Company for advertisement, message consistency is evident. Although the ads slightly differ, they all present the same message of refreshment, togetherness, and happiness across online channels like Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. The company has consistently used tag lines like "Have a Coke and a Smile" to promote the beverages in several advertisement campaigns. Various lessons were learnt through considering the Coca-Cola brand in different advertising channels.

First, it portrays the need to establish liquid content. In online social media platforms, the ability of people to share ideas is enormous. Coca-Cola brand exploits this ability by creating content messages that beg viewers to share, promoting the brand significantly. Another important lesson learnt is that Coca-Cola is a brand that prioritizes the creation of conversations across social media platforms. Consumers indeed create more ideas and stories than the company does, which is an important consideration in promoting the brand. By considering the Coca-Cola brand across numerous channels, one can easily develop various perceptions about the brand. First, it is a dynamic brand in that it tells varying stories on different social platforms.

However, it must be understood that the main theme of the messages conveyed is retained. Besides, the brand is creatively oriented and expresses its intentions and aims confidently. The brand's messaging approaches unusually present thirst, claiming that the beverage can fully quench thirst is an overestimation. A revision of this tenet should be considered to make the message conveyed more practical.  In contemporary society, consumers are becoming more informed about their purchasing power, and the Coca-Cola brand messaging can be revised to suit this concern. This can be achieved if the company commits to interconnecting its message and core values in a way that significantly matters to customers.