Challenge:
Coca-Cola was in trouble. And everyone knew it. There were supply-chain issues, trouble with its bottlers, lost opportunities in its global markets, and a constant churn in the company's leadership. The $270B company had lost focus. And to no surprise, its core product, Coca-Cola, had lost its sense of identity, its relevance and its sales were dwindling.

The Coca-Cola Company has over 200 brands in its portfolio but over 70% of its revenue is generated by one brand, Coca-Cola. On the outside, it seemed like Coke just didn't get it. But on the inside, everyone knew the company had a big problem.

The brief seemed almost impossible–to revive the Coca-Cola business and return the brand to its role as a global, cultural icon.

The brand had lost its focus
The first step was to find the essense of the brand

Solution:
Part of the challenge in working with very established brands at global scale is that they must balance the need to be utterly familiar yet continually surprising — create new relevance while not damaging the brand’s equity, which in Coke's case, had taken over 100 years to build. And to further complicate the challenge, the brand needed to be relevant in each of the 200 countries where it was sold–being relevant in Japan can be very different from Argentina or Morocco.  

The first step was to simplify all of the noise that had complicated the brand’s core equity over the previous decade including the familiar Coca-Cola Red, spencerian script, logo and contour bottle shape. These became fixed assets within the branding system.

But to create the brand’s relevance, new flexible branding elements were giving the brand the flexibility it needed to regain relevance in each of the 200 countries it operated in. This branding system was then used to design anything and everything from its packaging, websites, trucks, global ad campaigns and local promotions. 

 The Spencerian script, contour bottle, and the brand’s signature color became fixed assets


But to stay relevant, new flexible assets were added to the system including collabs with designers from around the world

A systematic approach to design was used to develop a fixed yet flexible branding system to meet the challenge–the same approach we now call our SoWhat Approach.

This approach not only drove more sales, more speed and more collaboration across the company but it also reduced its overall marketing spend by over $500M within the first 2 years. The same approach was then used across the company's 13 billion dollar brands.  

In less than a decade, Coca-Cola regained its status of being a cultural icon while also doubling the value of the company. For more, check out Design to Grow, now translated in over 25 languages.

 

Design to Grow︎︎︎