Case Study: Coca Cola’s Successful

Cross-Cultural Marketing Campaigns

Getting your desired message across to more than one group of people, or to a
demographic consisting of diverse cultures can pose a challenge. Many acts of cross
cultural marketing have failed, such as the marketing 101 tale of the Chevrolet Nova,
whose sales tanked in Spanish speaking countries because “No va,” means “doesn’t go”
in Spanish. Issues like this highlight the importance of having a trustworthy and native
speaking translation service. One company is particularly talented at crossing cultural
boundaries, and corporations can learn some helpful strategies from their efforts.

In 2013, Coca Cola aired a heartfelt commercial. The ad spot featured actors singing the
Patriotic tune “America the Beautiful” in 7 different languages. The company called the
ad “It’s Beautiful,” and it was indeed moving to many people. This is what advertising
specialists refer to as inclusive marketing. The ad appeals to a wide variety of
demographics, old, young, and capitalizes on the diverse American population. “The
new spot reinforces the sentiment of unity and that America is beautiful and Coca-Cola
is for everyone,” reported a Coca Cola representative on their corporate blog, “the
overall message of inclusion communicated by the ad reflects some of Coca-Cola’s
most important values.” By coming up with a creative and emotionally stirring spot that
contained translated content, Coca Cola was able to represent not only their product, but
their corporate values of inclusion as well.

In 2008, Coke was attempting to penetrate the South Korean market, one that they
didn’t quite understand as well as they wished. They decided to use what they knew
about the culture to expand their South Korean market share and revenue. Marketing
analysts noticed that 43% of South Korean citizens had an online profile or blog, and
that 90% of the 20-29 years old demographic logged into social media at least once a
day. Coca Cola reached out to young mom bloggers in that age bracket to use their web
properties to share information, evangelize the brand, and increase loyalty. They also
used their South Korean bloggers to provide them with more cultural information about
how to best communicate their message for maximum efficiency within the South
Korean population.
Getting your brand’s image and desired advertising message across in a foreign country
is a careful balance of cultural knowledge and translations. Coca Cola has demonstrated
two ways of doing this. The first one was created for a domestic audience, making
members of diverse cultural groups feel included in the advertising message. The
second method was to use the members of a foreign culture about which Coca Cola
didn’t know much to provide them with social marketing and cultural data to further the
company’s penetration of that country’s soft drink and beverage market. Business
owners and marketing professionals can take these tips, put them in their international
marketing pocket, and utilize them in conjunction with translations by native speakers
to effectively reach foreign audiences.