Coca-Cola has introduced a new Diet Coke can design for fall 2011, with Turner Duckworth, a design firm based in San Francisco, re-imagining the familiar Diet Coke can. The most striking element is the logo is blown up in size, making the script "D" in Diet the only letter of the major brand logo which appears fully on the can! This move with the Diet Coke brand holds both great strategic branding and creativity lessons.
5 Branding and Creativity Lessons
1. The Diet Coke logo violates the can's physical space.
Absent the self-imposed restriction of containing what you're doing to the physical space available to you, all kinds of new creativity options open up. How often do we ask about how much of something we have to fill? Forget that. Fill up the creatively appropriate amount of what needs to be filled without a concern for physical space or completeness boundaries.
2. You can be bold and still hedges some bets.
For all the boldness of not including the product's full name in the major logo treatment, Coca-Cola hedges its bets with 4 other full, albeit smaller, logos on the can. It pulls the design back from being completely edgy, but it strikes a good balance between creativity and brand imperatives. Some will claim though that hedging bets went into overkill mode with 4 other logos.
3. Incompleteness creates attention.
Since the major logo doesn't fully display the product's name, it creates both attention (from a new, striking design) and forces the customer to use imagination to fill in what's missing. When you can get an aluminum can to tweak engagement, you have a winner on your hands.
4. You CAN stretch your strengths.
Coca-Cola knows it can take advantage of an iconic logo’s ability to be stretched to freshen it and create interest. When a brand element is so well known (in this case, the logo), it's an opportunity to play against the strength and expand how people view the brand. And what applies to consumer and business brands applies to personal brands, too. It's important though to know how much of a stretch people will accept from the brand before making a move. You want to stretch, but not break your brand.
5. Not every promotional offer is about price.
Too often, we think of a promotion (which one of my mentor's drilled into me is "a short term change in the marketing mix") as only focusing on price, discount, or "get more for your dollar right now" offers. If you look at any element of the marketing mix as a promotional opportunity, however, you can easily get to a short term revamp of a packaging design. Additionally, as an AdWeek article points out, Coca-Cola has also introduced a short term change in the publicity element of the marketing mix, by being a bit mysterious about how long the can change will last.
Summary
What are your thoughts about the Diet Coke can change? Is it simply interesting or do you think people will drink more Diet Coke than they would already have this fall?
To me, it's a really smart promotion with strong banding and creativity lessons. Plus this move is a relatively easy strategy others could employ, if they’re smart about it and have strong enough logo recognition in their own market to pull it off successfully. – Mike Brown
The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your brand strategy and implementation efforts.
