communications research essay

1 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

Share A Coke Campaign

XXX

Bryant University

2 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

Share a Coke

Persuasion is a concept that can be attempted in numerous different ways including

verbal vs. nonverbal, interpersonal vs. mediated, factual vs. emotional, and so on. Multiple types

of strategies are also involved, but the ultimate goal is to shape, change, or reinforce people’s

attitudes on certain subjects. Persuasion is recognized every day, whether it be within an ad

campaign, someone giving out samples at the grocery store, or a friend convincing you to go out

that night. Specifically, this paper will focus on Coca Cola and their strategies and persuasive

tactics within their world famous “Share a Coke” campaign.

Background and Significance of Share a Coke

What is the Share a Coke Campaign?

The Beginning: It is no secret the power that Coca Cola has within the food and

beverage industry, but once this campaign began, it was groundbreaking. The whole idea of

“Share a Coke” was created in 2011 and initially was known as “Project Connect” (Moye, 2014).

Coke started with this idea in Australia and began this whole experience by exchanging “Coke”

with the 150 most common names in the country (Moye, 2014). The results were at a level that

Coke decided was too good to stop the campaign. In a nation of less than 23 million people, this

brand sold more than 250 million of the named cans and bottles. Now, the brand has brought this

campaign to 70 different countries (Moye, 2014). Once this idea reached worldwide audiences,

more and more ideas were added and it continued to increase Coke’s brand. For example,

Amsterdam had opened a store that only sold these personalized Coke cans and bottles and

Germany had started an online store that gave customers the ability to order these personalized

bottles and have them delivered to their home (Moye, 2014).

3 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

Initially, this was the companies summer campaign, but once Coke recognized the

profitability and new connection with its customers, they looked into starting a new campaign

that promoted customers to “Share a Coke with Santa” (Burke, 2011). The company looked at

the pros and cons of extending this campaign and decided that it was going to be a hit. They then

made the decision to continue the campaign through Christmas and moving forward into 2012

because of the extreme success that came from those summer months. When winter approached,

they used names on the bottles and cans such as “Dancer” and “Holly” to get customers excited

to purchase these products while Christmas was approaching (Burke, 2011).

Significance of Share a Coke Campaign:

One article looked at the severity of this campaign in comparison to Pepsi. In the UK in

the year 2011, it was announced that “the volume of the drink sold leapt 2.9 per cent to 272.17

million” (Sebastian, 2013). Contrarily, Pepsi fell 2.4 percent, almost the exact opposite of Coke,

and brought them down to 102.8 million (Sebastian, 2013). Coca Cola making this move became

a tremendous uproar and helped them continue to surpass competitors worldwide.

When looking at this campaign, the success can be accredited to three main reasons.

First, Coke received massive amounts of social media content from customers posting with these

cans and bottles. Second, it creates a connection with the customer that they have never been

able to achieve before. Lastly, it continues to change all the time. An article from earlier this year

explained how Coke has made new bottles that have the several name labels as peel-off stickers.

Once the stickers are peeled off, scan codes are revealed underneath that allow chances to win

prizes such as amusement park passes, baseball tickets, or a free Coke (Beverage Industry,

2018). All of these reasons without a doubt helped Coke grow as a brand and even reach a whole

new customer type, but how did they achieve this? Coke was able to get an audience so impacted

4 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

by their campaign by using three main persuasive strategies which are Value Expressive Theory,

narratives, and lastly how they use message sidedness.

Value Expressive Theory Persuasive Strategy:

Explanation: Value-expressive attitudes as something that is formed when one’s values

need to be achieved or maintained (Hullett, 2010). This can happen by randomly creating a bond

between an attitude that is about an object and what values are indicated from that object or also

by messages that link an attitude to at least one of the audience’s values (Hullet, 2010). The

article “The Timing of Repeat Purchases of Consumer Durable Goods” examined the four

attitude functions. Within the findings, it showed that when consumers have value-expressive

attitudes, it actually helps them be able to convey what their self-identities are as well as personal

values are to others. It was recognized that people who hold this attitude function make their

purchasing decisions based on their own identity and how they expect other people to react to

their purchase decisions. This attitude function is also associated with interpersonal

communication which ultimately allows these consumers to recognize other consumers with a

similar mindset (Grewal, 2004). The experiment went on to find results that interpurchase

intervals decreased when the knowledge or the social adjustive function had an increase, but

when value-expressive function had more of an influence and increased, so did the interpurchase

interval. This conclusively showed that consumers are not apt to let go of products that fit into

their value-expressive style which creates much longer amounts of time for their interpurchase

intervals (Grewal, 2004).

Example: If someone was to hold family and friends at a high level of something they

value, finding a Coke can or bottle with their mother’s name on it would be exciting and

important to them. It would make the person feel as if they were honoring their mother’s name

5 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

rather than just giving profit to the Coke brand. In one of Coke’s most famous commercials (See

Appendix A) it exemplifies how finding your own name is exciting, but more importantly being

able to share that moment with your other friends is an experience that you would not be able to

get with other types of beverages. The commercial truly displays an ideal situation with a group

of friends and really entices a viewer to go out and purchase a product themselves.

Pros and Cons: In Hullett and Boster’s article, it is explained that “The success in

forming the advocated attitude should depend on the strength with which the values mentioned in

the message are actually held by the message recipients” (Hullett, 2010). When looking at Share

a Coke campaign, it is not necessarily certain that the audience would feel an extreme amount of

value held to a soda bottle, so when using this strategy for the campaign it could potentially fall

short for several audience members that do not look at it that deeply.

Although the article “The Timing of Repeat Purchases of Consumer Durable Goods”

showed how truly important the value-expressive function can be when dealing with consumers

purchasing products, it was looking at durable goods which are meant to last a long time rather

than a Coke can or bottle which will usually be used within the first hour of purchase. The

purpose of this product is to make consumers feel as though the soda was made just for them

which brings lots of attention to the value-expressive function, but because the product is not

something that is typically kept for a long period of time, the sentiment may not be as important

to the consumers which may pose as the biggest downside to the product. In addition to that,

Shakespeare explained that “some participants expressed disappointment at not finding their

names on Coke bottles” (2013). This could also play a role in how successful the Coke brand is

because if they do not keep up with what the consumers want and continually advance and make

6 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

them feel that type of identity, it could eventually lead to the entire “Share a Coke” campaign

losing its credibility.

Narrative Persuasive Strategy:

Explanation: When creating an advertisement or campaign, the people responsible can

look at the contrasting factors of using evidence for their persuasive strategy versus narrative, or

even a mixture of both. According to Perloff, evidence deals with “factual assertions,

quantitative information, eyewitness statements, testimonials, or opinions advanced by credible

sources” (Perloff, 2017). This can be seen in campaigns such as getting people to quit smoking

by giving the statistics of how many smokers end up getting lung cancer or showing statistics of

skin cancer in an approach to get the audience to stop using tanning beds. On the other hand, an

article written by Quintero Johnson and Sangalang explains

“Fundamentally, narrative persuasion works because of the unique capacity for stories to inspire message involvement through story elements—story plots rife with conflict, crises, and resolution, interesting settings and scenery, and characters with whom audiences can identify” (Quintero Johnson and Sangalang, 2017).

This types of persuasive strategy can often times been seen in movies, books, TV shows, etc.

In addition to the entire story telling process that makes narratives become influential,

another main component of this persuasive strategy is transportation. An article looking at the

importance of transportation in narratives, Liang and Tukachinsky found that based off of

previous research, narratives when compared to non-narratives seemed to be able to stop the

audiences sense of reality and allow them to completely fall into this sort of story world for a

time (2013). “In the transportation process, media consumers engage in a mental simulation of

the narrative world and create a vivid mental image of the narrative-based reality” (Tukachinsky

& Tokunaga, 2013). Once this process is going on, transportation will ultimately make the

7 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

audience more confident when it comes to what their attitude is. This is because transportation

has to ability to briefly change reality for viewers, so the experience they go through makes them

grasp onto either their positive or negative attitude more strongly and that is what helps with

their attitude confidence in the end (Tukachinsky & Tokunaga, 2013).

Example: Specifically for Coke, their commercials have mostly focused on the narrative

approach. In one of Coke’s commercials from Summer 2017 (See Appendix B) it tells the

audience a story of two people that are trying to find a way to talk to each other, but the timing is

never right. It repeatedly showed one of the characters look in the direction of the other as soon

as that other person looked away and vice versa. The problem was finally solved when the girl

ordered two bottles of Coke and gave one to the boy working the stand. Through the process of

them sharing a Coke everything fell in place and the viewers got to see a happy ending. This

shows the narrative strategy because it gives a beginning, middle, and end of a story, makes the

viewers focus on the characters, and provides a resolution to the issue at the end.

Pros and Cons: Although narratives can be very useful as a persuasion tactic, it has

factors that are negative just like all other strategies. When looking at the difference between

narratives and evidence, it can be seen that multiple studies found narratives to be more

persuasive due to reasons “such as vividness, perceived representativeness, and ease of recall to

explain this advantage” (Good, 2010, p. 9). These elements that are linked with narratives can

get viewers to connect more through the process of transportation and hold stronger attitudes.

Even though the extreme vividness and stories portrayed to audiences has worked well, evidence

is also seen as very persuasive because it “provides a large sample size, bolsters perceptions of

believability and credibility, and fairs better when supporting general claims (Good, 2010, p. 9)”

An example was given by Good that looked at a study that took two routes as to try to make an

8 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

audience more assured of a new cultural center. One way to deliver the message was by sharing a

story of a center in a different town that was similar, which took the narrative route. The other

way was by giving a statistical report of 27 other cultural centers. The results showed that the

statistical message had a higher level of persuasion, which was due to the fact that the audience

had more confidence in 27 samples of factual evidence rather than just the one story (Good,

2010). In addition, Perloff explains that sometimes “narratives can be so distracting that they

interfere with reception of the message” (Perloff, 2017, p. 346). When this happens, it can make

people not able to fully understand the message and therefore in these situations makes evidence

more persuasive.

One-sided Persuasive Strategy:

Explanation: Message sidedness has three different choices that persuaders can choose

from. There is one-sided, two-sided refutational, and two-sided non refutational messages.

According to O’Keefe, “Persuaders are best advised to meet opposing arguments head-on, by

refuting them, rather than ignoring or merely mentioning such counterarguments” (Perloff, 2017,

p. 225 as cited in O’Keefe 2016). This quote agrees with Perloff’s idea that refutational two-

sided messages have an advantage because they “enhance the credibility of the speaker” and

“provide cogent reasons why opposing arguments are wrong” (Perloff, 2017, p.335). This

explains that the best way to use message sidedness when persuading an audience is to use two-

sided refutational. This strategy allows the persuader to show the audience why their argument is

not only one they should believe in and gain a strong positive attitude form but why it is better

than any opposing arguments. While this strategy is said to be the best, one-sided messages are

also important to use in certain scenarios. Perloff explains that one-sided messages are best used

when the audience “strongly agree with the communicator’s position” (p. 336). For example, this

9 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

can be seen in persuasive messages that have to deal with politics because it is likely that a

person supporting a candidate already feels strongly about their policies, views, etc.

In an experiment performed by Martin Eisend, the results showed that highly involved

consumers were enticed with the amount of negativity that is given in two-sided messages. This

information indicated that two-sided messages are extremely persuasive when used for

advertisements or campaigns that consumers look at in a profound way such as “in special

interest papers (e.g., computer or automobile magazines)” (Eisend, 2013). For example,

computer or automobile advertisements showing negative information about competitors and

also presenting positive information of why what they have to offer is what will really attract

consumers. Two-sided messages do not always have to deal with competitors, though. A famous

example is when Avis, a car rental company, was rated number two in the industry. The

company started a campaign that showed negative information about itself and then went on to

show positive arguments about itself such as “We try harder!” (Kuster & Eisend). In contrast to

this idea, if consumers have low involvement, the negative information is much less important

and the persuasiveness falls more in the element of amount of information (Eisend, 2013).

Example: Coca-Cola as a company has in the past used two-sided refutational strategies

such as portraying themselves as a “hero” in the advertisement they used to respond to an ad

done by Pepsi. The photo (See Appendix C) shows a Pepsi can with a Coke cape wrapped

around it and the slogan at the top reads “Everybody wants to be a hero!” This is refutational

because Coke is showing that they are better than Pepsi’s brand rather than just mentioning

Pepsi’s brand which would be non refutational. The Share a Coke campaign specifically has not

used two-sided messages. The majority of commercials created by the Coca-Cola company for

this campaign deal with a younger generation sharing the Coke bottles with their friends and they

10 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

also are normally portraying it to be on a summer day. This year’s summer commercial (See

Appendix D) shows a barbeque scenario with a numerous amount of friends sharing with each

other and ends with their slogan of “because sharing is always better when I share a Coke with

you.” The commercial was a one-sided message and the company just focused on giving the

audience the information of how great their brand was rather than including what competitors

they are better then. Soda is not something that most people will think profoundly about, so it

makes sense that Coke tries to use one-sided messages for the most part rather than either of the

two-sided options.

Pros and Cons: One-sided messages are without a doubt very persuasive in certain

situations such as when the audience has low involvement, but the strategy is not always useful.

People often need more information than just one argument and therefore require two-sided

messages. Typically, if an advertisement, campaign, etc. requires someone to be highly involved

and look at the subject deeply, one-sided messages would not hold as much substance as a two-

sided message. This can be because “two-sided messages particularly strengthen perceptions of

source credibility” (Eisend, 2010)/. In contrast to that, it is noted that when there is too much of

negative information, it increases the losses by focusing on the negative attributes which can

exceed the gains from credibility (Eisend, 2010). All in all, choosing if something should be one-

sided or two-sided can be a difficult task.

Most Effective Persuasive Strategy:

Looking at each of the examples of the commercials that are produced by the Coca-Cola

brand, the strategy that seems to hold the most importance is the narrative persuasive strategy. In

each of the advertisements for Share a Coke, the company focuses mostly on portraying their

product as a fun and exciting experience that is shared with friends and those that are closest to

11 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

us. Each commercial from the campaign tells its own story, some go more in depth to a story

than others, but all of them are able to make the audience feel connected to the characters and

enter the transportation process. The majority deal with a summer day and show lots of people

together, laughing, and enjoying their day. An audience wants to connect and identify with those

characters which ultimately can lead them to purchase the product. According to an article from

Human Communication Research, people try to find stories to get pleasure from them which is

just one reason why narratives are such a popular persuasive strategy (Hoeken, 2016). Also, the

article discussed that there is lots of evidence that “people learn in the sense that they adapt their

beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors after reading or watching a story” (Hoeken, 2016). It is

important to realize how much stories impact an audience and how that can be crucial in an

advertisement or commercial setting.

Recommendations for Future Persuasive Strategies

Evidence: The Share a Coke campaign has been going on for years and continues to

incorporate more names as well as more advertisements each year. To stay relevant, it is

important to constantly come up with ways to attract the consumers eye and keep them wanting

more. Narratives as discussed are a large part of what the campaign has to offer, but to enhance

the information given to the audience, a combination of evidence and narratives in some

commercials/advertisements could increase their customer base. Not everyone will be attracted

to a product based off of a story and therefore would like factual evidence of what is so great

about Coke’s product. As stated earlier, an audience may have more confidence in statistical

evidence rather than just a story (Good, 2010). In an article looking at how people would react to

multi-functional cultural Centre being built in their town, an experiment was made to show the

differences in people’s views from anecdotal persuasion vs. statistical persuasion. It was shown

12 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

that statistical had just as much importance in the area of vividness, and much more in the areas

of acceptance of claim and perceived argument quality (Hoeken, 2001). This just shows another

example of how important statistics and real evidence can be for an audience. Coke for example

could potentially show statistics of people that prefer Coke over competitors such as Pepsi.

Conclusion

The Share a Coke campaign has been an enormous addition that the Coke brand has

incorporated into their company. Since the beginning of the campaign that started in Australia in

2011, Coke has increased their original 150 names to over 1000 first and last names on their cans

and bottles as well as some apparel and gift items (Unbottled Staff, 2010). The company has

used numerous persuasive strategies in their advertisements and commercials, but the main three

recognized are the Value Expressive Theory, narratives, and their use of one-sided messages.

After identifying some of Share a Coke’s most popular commercials, it is recognizable that

narratives have the most importance in their strategy to attract customers. The Share a Coke

campaign is continuously growing from year to year and as the brand continues to progress one

possible adjustment could be to add more facts in their campaign to attract consumers that are

less affected by stories and the transportation process and would rather see concrete facts and

statements before purchasing a product. Overall, the campaign has made a great impact in the

beverage industry and it is clear that Coke understands the way their product can make their

consumer base feel and in order to keep up with that, they incorporate persuasive strategies to

cultivate the campaign.

13 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

References

Burke, J. (2011, 11). Coke gets into xmas spirit with 'share a coke' campaign.Food Magazine, Retrieved from http://bryant.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/929137024?acc ountid=36823

Eisend, M. (2010). Explaining the joint effect of source credibility and negativity of information in two-sided messages. Psychology & Marketing, 27(11), 1032–1049. Retrieved from http://bryant.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true& db=ufh&AN=54336917&site=ehost-live Eisend, M. (2013). The Moderating Influence of Involvement on Two-Sided Advertising Effects. Psychology & Marketing, 30(7), 566–575. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.2062 Good, C. (2010). Persuasive Effect of Narrative and Statistical Evidence Combinations Core https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/5168046.pdf Grewal, R., Mehta, R., & Kardes, F. R. (2004). The Timing of Repeat Purchases of Consumer Durable Goods: The Role of Functional Bases of Consumer Attitudes. Journal of Marketing Research, 41(1), 101–115. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.41.1.101.25090

Hoeken, H. (2001). Anecdotal, Statistical, and Causal Evidence: Their Perceived and Actual Persuasiveness. Argumentation, 15(4), 425–437. Retrieved from http://bryant.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true& db=ufh&AN=11307314&site=ehost-live Hoeken, H., Kolthoff, M., & Sanders, J. (2016). Story Perspective and Character Similarity as Drivers of Identification and Narrative Persuasion. Human Communication Research, 42(2), 292–311. https://doi.org/10.1111/hcre.12076

Hullet, C. R., & Boster, F. J. (2001). Matching Messages to the Values Underlying Value- Expressive and Social-Adjustive Attitudes: Reconciling an Old Theory with a Contemporary Measurement Approach. Communication Monographs, 68(2), 133. Retrieved from http://bryant.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true& db=ufh&AN=4901300&site=ehost-live Küster, F., & Eisend, M. (2016). Time heals many wounds – explaining the immediate and delayed effects of message sidedness. International Journal of Advertising, 35(4), 664– 681. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2015.1052616 Liang, Y. (Jake), & Tukachinsky, R. H. (2017). Narrative Persuasion 2.0: Transportation in Participatory Websites. Communication Research Reports, 34(3), 201–210. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2017.1285759

14 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

Moye, J. (2014, Sep 25). How the Groundbreaking Campaign Got Its Start 'Down Under' Coca- Cola Company Retrieved from https://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/share-a-coke- how-the-groundbreaking-campaign-got-its-start-down-under

Perloff, R.M. (2017). The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication Attitudes in the 21st Century. New York, NY: Routledge.

Quintero Johnson, J. M., & Sangalang, A. (2017). Testing the Explanatory Power of Two Measures of Narrative Involvement: An Investigation of the Influence of Transportation and Narrative Engagement on the Process of Narrative Persuasion. Media Psychology, 20(1), 144–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2016.1160788 Sebastian, J. (2013, Jul 19). Coke's 'share a coke' drive helps it pull clear of pepsi in UK. Marketing Week (Online), Retrieved from http://bryant.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1406088085?ac countid=36823

Shakespeare, S. (2013, Nov 13). The secret recipe for share a coke's massive success. City A.M. Retrieved from http://bryant.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1450089593?ac countid=36823

Share a Coke. (2018). Beverage Industry, 109(6), 53. Retrieved from http://bryant.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true& db=bth&AN=129844107&site=ehost-live

Unbottled Staff (2017). Is Your Name on a Coke Bottle? Coca-Cola Journey https://www.coca- colacompany.com/stories/is-your-name-on-a-coke-bottle-find-out-here Ventricelli, P. (2014, Sep 2). Pros and Cons of Personalized Marketing: Take a Tip From Coke Content Boost Blog Received from http://blog.contentboost.com/2014/09/02/pros-and- cons-of-personalized-marketing-take- a-tip-from-coke.html

15 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

Appendix A

Share a Coke USA Commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-ahnFYzMp8

16 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

Appendix B

Share a Coke: Break the Ice | Coca-Cola https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvYTF-A4Seg

17 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

Appendix C

Re: the 2013 Cola Caption War

18 SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN

Appendix D

Coca-Cola | Share a Coke with Friends :30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk7G4PUzEUo