Coke Zero & Battleship Partnership

Name of Company/Competitor: Coke Zero

Name of Campaign/Spot: They've Come For Everything

Date Launched: 3/24/12

Description: Two men in a boat are relaxing, enjoying a Coke Zero when a robot like battle ship comes out of the water and demands all their Coke Zero

Media Details: TV

'Battleship' brings out big guns for promos

Coke's clout helped enlist barrage of retail partners

Universal's "Battleship" is ready to set sail with the Coca-Cola Co., Subway and Kraft enlisting to serve as the actioner's primary promotional partners.
Combined with Chevron's ExtraMile convenience stores, Cisco, Hilton, Nestle Confections & Snacks, the U.S. Navy, and the USO, the marketers will spend $50 million on campaigns that tie in with "Battleship's" release in the U.S. on May 18.

Plans include TV spots; radio, print, online and in-store ads; in-theater promos; art on packaging; and live events.

Most of the companies' products are prominently featured in the film that's loosely based around the Hasbro boardgame.

Coke Zero is the focus of Coca-Cola's campaign and already has launched a "Battleship" TV spot that the film's director, Peter Berg, helmed.

The spot bowed during the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship on CBS. Coke Zero is the official "fan refreshment" of the NCAA.

Although Coke Zero, a low-calorie brand that targets young males who don't want to drink Diet Coke, also backed Paramount and Skydance's "Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol" in December, that campaign rolled out overseas, whereas Coke Zero's "Battleship" ads also play in the U.S., giving Universal more marketing firepower.

Coke also is helping to get "Battleship" in front of more moviegoers through its relationship with some of the film's other promo partners.

For example, Coke's clout helped entice retailers to build high-profile displays featuring Coke Zero alongside products from Kraft, including its Wheat Thins, Triscuit, Ritz Bitz, Chips Ahoy!, Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids -- especially leading up to Memorial Day in supermarkets. It will be the first time Coke Zero has launched a marketing effort around the holiday.

Coke's beverages also are served inside Subway restaurants, continuing its cross-promotion with other "Battleship" backers.

"It's very helpful to have Coke as an anchor because they're so strong at retail," said Stephanie Sperber, prexy of Universal Partnerships & Licensing, which brokered the brand deals. "It expands the reach of the film and our partners."

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Celebrity Sighting! Stacy Kiebler wearing "Always One of a Kind" Tee

Stacy Keibler wore a DrPepper “Always One of a Kind” t-shirt on the way to a friend’s house in West Hollywood.

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Coke to focus on events, loses faith in 30-second spot

Coca-Cola looks to focus its TV ad spending on so-called DVR-proof events, while buttressing them with 360-degree campaigns.

With ad-skipping rampant, the company has lost faith in the effectiveness of traditional ads in comedies and dramas, save for the Super Bowl, “American Idol” and other programming that consumers watch live and talk about the next day around the Coke machine.

“The 30-second spots on television (are) no longer the way to do it,” said CFO Gary Fayard at an industry event. “You still do 30-second spots, but if you’re like me, most of the television you watch, you record and when you then watch it, you skip over all the ads … (but) you will watch certain shows live because you want to be able to talk about them tomorrow when you go to work.”

Still, even as advertising is concentrated in live-oriented events and sports, Coke is planning a major Olympics initiative this summer -- a traditional spot can no longer stand alone, Fayard said. Links and integrated campaigns will use social and digital media -– as Coke did with Super Bowl ads this year -- and opportunities for consumers to take some ownership of brands and pass along endorsements is crucial.

“A ‘like’ is not good enough -- you want a ‘share,’” Fayard said, “because consumers today believe … they own our brands. They are the ones that talk to each other … about which brands live up to their promise and which ones don’t, so having that integrated campaign across all the different platforms is critically important.”

Coke plans to continue to ramp up its investment in marketing as it sees positive results and continues with its 2020 vision, hoping to usher in a massive revenue increase by the turn of the next decade. Coke has spent $11 billion globally in marketing over the past two years, with an additional $6 billion or so coming from its 275 bottling partners.

“Our brand health scores are the healthiest we’ve seen in decades, and they continue to improve across the board,” Fayard said.

Coke will also sponsor the European championship soccer tournament this summer along with the Olympics.

Speaking more broadly about Coke’s future, Fayard said projections that 1 billion more people will enter the middle class globally over the next eight years -- with a similar number moving to cities from rural areas -- should prove a boon for the non-alcoholic beverage industry and, by extension, packaged goods businesses.

“No matter how bad the financial crisis has been,” he said, “wealth is still being created and will be created over the next eight years.”

Coke has 15 brands generating $1 billion a year or more in revenue.

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9/10 call social media new form of entertainment; young people want texting in movies!

In an exclusive study, THR and Penn Schoen Berland reveal Facebook and Twitter's influence over what entertainment users watch, reject and write about.

There’s a sea change afoot in how Americans discover and consume entertainment. That’s the finding of an exclusive poll by market research firm Penn Schoen Berland for The Hollywood Reporter.

Nine of 10 respondents view social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook as a new form of entertainment, and more than half say social media sites are important tastemakers in determining what to watch and buy. Perhaps more surprising, 80 percent of television viewers visit Facebook while they watch.

“Social media is the connective tissue that enables consumers to multitask during their entertainment experiences by connecting with others and sharing their opinions,” notes pollster Jon Penn of the findings, based on a survey of 750 social network users ages 13 to 49. And film moguls, take note: The poll found that a majority of 18-to-34-year-olds believe using social media while watching a movie in a theater would add to their experience, and nearly half would be interested in going to theaters that allowed texting and web surfing.

“Millennials want their public moviegoing experience to replicate their own private media experiences,” says Penn.“Having dedicated social-media-friendly seats, or even entire theaters, can make the moviegoing experience more relevant and enjoyable for them.”

Other interesting findings from THR's poll:

• 88% of people consider visiting and posting on social networking sites a form of entertainment.
• 70% of consumers have listened to music by an artist based primarily on what a friend posted on a social networking site.
•  79% of respondents always or sometimes visit Facebook while watching television.
• 98% of all social networkers are Facebook members, while only 56% of social networkers are Twitter members.

 Source

Dr Pepper Snapple Group among brands with revamped facebook pages

(Reuters) - Facebook's efforts to make its social network a friendlier place for businesses and popular brands are off to a strong start, the company said.

Eight million brands, from carmakers to rock bands, switched to Facebook's new Web page format 10 days after the revamped pages were introduced at a splashy launch event in New York last month, according to Facebook.

Some businesses say new advertising offerings that take advantage of Facebook's latest Web page capabilities are helping them reach a broader audience on the 845-million-member social network.

"If there's a specific message we want to drive, we know this guarantees we'll get in front of them," said Steve Baer, director of strategy at Code and Theory, a New York digital marketing agency that recently ran a paid promotion for Dr. Pepper using Facebook's new ads.

Facebook's moves to cozy up to big consumer brands is key to its efforts to boost revenue as the company prepares for an initial public offering that could value the 8-year-old company at up to $100 billion.

One of Facebook's most important challenges is convincing businesses to spend money advertising on its service rather than simply using the social network as a free promotional tool, analysts and industry observers say.

Facebook is aiming its new advertising services at well-known brands like Dr. Pepper, which has amassed more than 11 million "fans" of its Facebook page, but which hasn't done a lot of advertising on the social network, according to Baer.

Dr. Pepper Snapple Group paid to try a new type of Facebook ad that ensures that a post on its brand page will be promoted to its fans in multiple places on the social network.

The result, said Baer, was that the post reached 83 percent of Dr. Pepper's Facebook fans over a 28-day period. Dr. Pepper Snapple Group was allowed to use the new Facebook ad format before it was officially introduced to other advertisers two weeks ago and the level of user "engagement," such as users "liking" the post, was 80 percent higher than normal.

Investors, competitors and marketers are watching closely to see if Dr. Pepper's initial experience and enthusiasm for the new ads is matched by the millions of other big brands that have Facebook pages.

Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011, with 85 percent of the revenue coming from its advertising business.

In courting consumer brands and other businesses, Facebook is competing against the larger and more graphically rich "display" ad formats offered by websites such as Yahoo Inc, as well as against the popular Web search ads where Google Inc is the dominant player.

Facebook's revamped brand pages, which are available to businesses at no cost, offer companies more capabilities to create splashy, media-rich pages within Facebook. A chronological timeline on the right side of the page lets businesses create customized pages to showcase past milestones, and a new "offers" capability lets companies place coupons and promotions directly on their page.

Companies can offer the coupons on their Facebook page for free, as well as pay for the coupon to be seen by a larger audience on Facebook.

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Honest Tea's ready for change

Honest Tea, a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlanta-based The Coca-Cola Co., made changes to its label and bottle.

The nutrition facts panel has been updated to reflect that one bottle is equal to one serving to make it easier for consumers to watch their calorie and sugar intake, the company says. Changes to the bottle include transitioning from a dome that was at the bottom of the plastic bottle to a flatter bottom. The original dome design was needed to accommodate the 22 percent plastic reduction used in each bottle, but some consumers thought the dome resulted in a reduced amount of tea, the company says.

Honest Tea worked with its engineers to develop an eco-friendly, hot-filled plastic bottle that also appealed to consumer requests for a flat bottom. The new bottom is stamped with a company seal that reads: Est. 1998, Bethesda, Md.

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Starbucks opens its first juice bar

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Starbucks moved beyond its coffee roots Monday, opening its first juice bar under its newest brand, Evolution Fresh.

The juice bar is in Bellevue, Washington, not far from its Seattle home base. While the company operates about 17,000 coffee shops in 50 countries, this is its first non-coffee retail location.

The company bought the Evolution Fresh juice brand for $30 million in November, and until now its line of juices has only been available in grocery stores. Starbucks plans to roll out Evolution Fresh juices to its coffee shops later this year.

Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500) was founded in 1971, but it wasn't until after Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz bought the company in 1987 that it started to expand the idea of gourmet coffee shops on a massive scale. In addition to Starbucks it also operates the Seattle's Best chain, which it acquired in 2003.

Evolution Fresh juices are made using a technique called high pressure processing, which the company said retains more of the flavors, vitamins and nutrients of raw fruits and vegetables.
The store is aimed at health-conscious consumers, offering wraps, salads and soups, as well as vegetarian and vegan offerings.

Starbucks did not give a target for future store plans in Monday's announcement, but it said the move into branded stores will revolutionize the $3.4 billion and growing cold-crafted juice category. The leader in the field today is smoothie maker Jamba Juice (JMBA), which has 750 locations in more than 20 states. 

Source

Side note - Starbucks' sent out all of there promotional material with the word "vegetables" spelled incorrectly. (Pictured above and source)

Diet Mountain Dew - Last Diet Dew

Name of Company/Competitor: Diet Mountain Dew

Name of Campaign/Spot: Last Diet Dew

Date Launched: 2/27/12

Description: Erin Andrews, Dick Vitale, Mike Golic & Mike Greenberg from ESPN compete for the great taste of the last Diet Mountain Dew

Media Details: TV

Coke Zero "Last Request"

Name of Company/Competitor: Coke Zero

Name of Campaign/Spot: Last Requests

Date Launched: 2/1/12

Description: A man bounded and locked in front of a firing squad gets one last request, a refreshing Coke Zero. After reading the word "and" on the can he begins to request more and more items, starting small until he is finally set free on a horse riding off into the distance.

Media Details: TV