Coca-Cola ends its ad break after seven weeks
After seven weeks that Coca-Cola had paused most paid advertising during the pandemic, the global cola market leader has returned to the airwaves with a new ad.
Recall that Coca-Cola had suspended marketing spend amid Covid-19 crisis, promising to re-engage with consumers ‘when timing is right’. The Coca-Cola brand has been particularly impacted by the lockdown-enforced shift in consumption habits, as net sales fell 1% in the three months to the end of March, versus the year-ago quarter. However, Coca-Cola said that April sales volumes had slumped by 25%, when reporting earnings on Apr. 21.
Prior to that, the brand owners had warned its advertising partners and vendors early into the crisis that from April and until further notice, it was putting commercial advertising for Coca-Cola and all their soda brands on hold.
“We have determined that in this initial phase there is limited effectiveness in broad-based brand marketing,” Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey had said on the first-quarter earnings call. “With this in mind, we have reduced our direct consumer communication, and we have paused sizeable marketing campaigns through the early stages of the crisis and will re-engage when the timing is right.”
As far as its national TV spend was concerned, Coca-Cola shifted its efforts away from soda and toward juice, energy drinks and sparkling water.
However, as NASCAR announced that its live races would return starting on May 17 after postponing the season back in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the schedule including the Coca-Cola 600 on May 24, Coke has launched a new TV campaign to leverage the events which are broadcast in 150 countries.
NASCAR is a popular sport in America and has become the No. 1 spectator sport, and 17 of the top 20 most attended sporting events in the United States. The sport is broadcast in 150 countries, and it is the second-most-watched sport on TV after the NFL.
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