Most Trusted Brands 2011: Coca-Cola versus Pepsi, the tussle for cola marketing

While on a market visit in rural UP, towards the end of 2009, the Coca-Cola India & South West Asia, president, Atul Singh observed that there were pockets with intermittent or no electricity connectivity, which meant that selling the beverage chilled, was a task.

While the eutectic coolers were already there, freezers specially designed and developed for the places where power shutdown is for longer duration up to 10 hrs, the bigger issue was selling chilled cola in areas with no supply of electricity.

The brief was given to the technical team and solar coolers were created, that have been piloted in rural Agra for now. While the coolers' solar power could help the rickety shop remain open much longer even after dark; in addition it had a mobile charging unit, which led to many walk-ins. Result: sales went up nearly 5 times in the areas where this concept was tested.

This bottom-up innovation, once rolled out on a large scale, is likely to be exported to other markets also. Innovation has been something that the cola brands have been trying to incorporate in a very big way, be it in distribution or packaging or formulation or in the branding.

The year has been particularly a good one for Coca-Cola. In Brand Equity's Most Trusted Brands survey 2011 Coca-Cola has moved up from 23rd position(overall rank in MTB 2010) to 11th position this year. In the beverage (cold) category, it has emerged as the winner followed by Thums Up (overall -16, last year - 20), Mirinda (overall -19, last year - 56), Pepsi (overall - 21, last year - 15) and 7 Up (overall - 25, last year - 52) as the Top 5 players.

Noteably the top two brands in the category are from the Coke stable, with rival Pepsico taking the next three places. Excitedly Anupama Ahluwalia, VP - marketing, Coca-Cola India & SWA elaborates on the brand Coca-Cola's performance for the year, "The focus has been on building brand-love through our brand campaigns, undertaking relevant social causes and campaigns to help build an enduring social component into the brand and create unique brand properties like Coke Studio."

Some of their marketing initiatives like the 'Shadow' campaign, the 'Invisible bottle' campaign, the 'Brrr' campaign were integrated with on-ground activations to create buzz. For instance the 'Shadow' campaign was first released to consumers on mobile phones and 400,000 people downloaded and got an exclusive preview of the campaign before it hit mass media.

The carbonated drinks market touted to be worth nearly Rs 10,500 crores of which nearly Rs 4,000 crores is the cola segment has been among the most active battlefields for marketers. Be it the global behemoths like Coca-Cola and Pepsi or the Indian-born big daddy Thums Up, all are vying constantly for the consumers' wallet-share through a slew of marketing initiatives across mediums.