The holiday season is quickly crawling upon us, and companies and advertisers can’t wait. It’s that time of the year for giving, family gatherings, and singing carols. But for advertisers, it’s the chance to push for some more sales before the end of the fiscal year.
And this occasion is especially important to Coca-Cola, since its easily relate-able red logo is one of the Christmas colors. With so many branding possibilities they can leverage with their red logo during this time, Coca-Cola has decided that, this year, they will partner up with Droga5, an advertising agency to provide consumers with a chance to design and personalize their own sweaters for the cold, perhaps snowy weather, but most importantly, to provide clothing that one can wear for those awkward family photos.
Personally, I think this is a great idea. The ability for consumers to co-create value is something that enhances the consumer’s perceived value for not only the product, but also the brand. It shows that Coca-Cola is open to the public’s ideas for its products, and that it wants to help satisfy the need to become warm during the cold season, differentiating itself from its competitors such as Pepsi. This is also an easy and fun way for Coca-Cola to encourage their loyal customer base. Finally, Coca-Cola is able to combine the situational factor of “purchase situation” with the social trend of “ugly holiday sweaters”.
Ugly Christmas sweaters started in the late 80s as an ironic fashion statement. Now, it’s a mainstream product that people love to buy as it represents Christmas and the positive affective attitudes that comes along with this occasion.
Cheers, Coca-Cola. I’ll be sure to buy one of these sweaters for the upcoming Christmas celebrations!
Here’s a link to a brief description of the product: http://adage.com/article/creativity-pick-of-the-day/granny-coke-s-sweater-generator/245319/
And the link to the Ugly Sweater Generator: https://www.cokezero.com/sweatergenerator/#/main/landing
Although it may certainly be possible for a blogger to have do extensive research, stumble upon information regarding an upcoming Apple product and release it out to the public so he can take the fame and claim to be first to report it, it is highly improbable that this can happen for every single product.
Thus, I also believe that Apple occasionally leaks out a little information here and there about a new innovation, whether it be about a new design, notable changes in product performance, or introducing a new feature. This way, they can tease the public and do some free advertising for its products. The tech savvy will read about these new, cool leaks, and then inform their friends, and these friends will in turn, inform their friends. Pretty soon, everybody will be tuning in to Apple’s highly anticipated keynotes to see if those leaks became a reality.
Perhaps Apple did intend to use some of the leaked designs, but trashed them out last minute because they were leaked, or it could even be that Apple leaked them out because they didn’t want to use the designs anyways, and just wanted to stir up some news on a slow news day. Who knows?