Despite the early public backlash against its viral marketing and mainstream ad campaign, Coke Zero has managed to survive its first year in the Australian market.
And not only has it survived, but according to AC Nielsen figures, it has thrived. Coca-Cola Amatil’s Coke Zero is now ranked third place in the local cola category, behind stable mates Coca-Cola and Diet Coke.
Coke Zero was branded as a knee-jerk reaction to Pepsi Max, the other no-sugar cola available in the Australian market.
Coke initially launched Zero by way of a teaser viral campaign that was slammed by many consumers for being misleading. The web site, zeromovement.com, was accused of being deceptive – a flog, or fake blog – entirely created by Coke corporate HQ.
It sparked such a reaction that parody sites such as thezeromovementsucks.blogspot.com were created and anti-Coke Zero merchandise came on to the market.
But the controversy didn’t end there. The television campaign, which showed a man climbing on to the roof of a moving bus was banned by the Advertising Standards Bureau after complaints from the public about potential copycats.
According to Nielsen Media Research AdEx, Coke Zero spent approximately $5.3m and Pepsi Max spent $7.4m on main media advertising over the last calendar year.
Pepsi certainly can’t be accused of taking the challenge Coke has presented them with lying down: their ad spend is up by 67% on the corresponding period in 2005 – the period of time when they were the only player in the market.
Coca-Cola is quick to espouse the successes of the Zero brand: in the first four months after its introduction, a quarter of all Australian households tried the product.
At the end of its first year, 92% of the population was aware of Coke Zero and the company had sold 250 million bottles of the stuff.
See next week’s B&T for a further analysis of the cola market in Australia.
