422【Key Years for the Beverage Industry】
If an idiom was used to describe Coca-Cola's situation this year, it would be: the house leaked and it rained all night!
The turmoil on China's side has not yet calmed down, and another accident happened on the European side.
In early June, some students in Belgium and France were poisoned after drinking Coca-Cola. A week later, the Belgian government issued a ban on the sale of all Coca-Cola beverages, including Sprite and Fanta, in the country. Although the French government did not issue a ban, it also ordered Coca-Cola to be temporarily removed from the shelves.
This is the biggest crisis that Coca-Cola has encountered in the past 113 years. Not only has the stock price plummeted, but it may also lose the entire European market.
In future MBA textbooks, Coca-Cola's handling of this incident is regarded as a classic case of corporate crisis public relations. However, Ivester, the protagonist at the time, didn’t think so. As we said before, this CEO is very unpopular. He is responsible for what he did wrong. He should have done what he did right, and he didn’t do enough. good.
In mid-June, Coca-Cola CEO Ivester went to Brussels in person and immediately held a press conference. He repeatedly stressed that Coca-Cola's poisoning incident was purely accidental, and there was no problem with Coca-Cola's formula, and Coca-Cola would continue to produce first-class beverages for consumers.
The reporters were each given a bottle of Coca-Cola, but no one dared to drink it, so they just threw it in the trash.
The next day, major Belgian newspapers published Ivester's autographed apology letter, which explained the cause of the accident in detail, made various guarantees, and promised to give a bottle of Coke to every Belgian family as an expression of apology.
Immediately afterwards, Coca-Cola recalled all the same batch of Coke in Belgium, quickly announced the results of the investigation and testing, explained the scope of the accident, and refunded compensation to consumers to bear the medical expenses of poisoned customers. Coca-Cola also set up a dedicated telephone line and a special webpage to answer and solve various questions raised by consumers.
Such a huge crisis was resolved in this way.
One word, money!
Four words, money can pass through the gods!
Coca-Cola bought almost all newspapers in Belgium, and at the same time gave shopping coupons door-to-door. The kids didn't care so much, they went to buy Coke with the shopping coupons, so the footage of the kids happily drinking Coke became a promotional material.
However, the ban issued by the Belgian government turned into waste paper. Countless manufacturers "illegally" sold Coca-Cola products, but the whole country turned a blind eye to it. In the end, the Belgian government simply canceled the ban.
Although the crisis was successfully resolved, Coca-Cola's stock price fell by 6% within 10 days. A total of 1.4 billion bottles of Coca-Cola were recalled, causing direct economic losses of more than 60 million US dollars, and public relations expenses were even astronomical.
CEO Ivester must take the blame. Although he successfully resolved the incident, shareholders and senior executives are increasingly disappointed with him, and he will be ousted soon.
The shareholders of Coca-Cola lost confidence in the entire senior management of the headquarters, so they bypassed the board of directors and held a shareholder meeting directly, and decided to transfer a local prince (regional CEO) back to lead the company. After the princes from all over the country got the news, they started to act frantically, while actively contacting shareholders, while developing regional business.
The CEO of the Far East region directly ordered the China region to speed up the comprehensive reform, not only to quickly shoot the Chinese version of the advertisement, but also to "copy" Xifeng's 101 channel plan in an all-round way.
Of course, Xifeng will not sit still, pay for the publication of various soft articles, make a fuss about the Coca-Cola poisoning incident, and crazily question the safety of Coca-Cola based on the patriotic sentiment of beverage consumers.
The CEO of Coca-Cola China announced at the first time that the European poisoning incident had nothing to do with the Chinese market. At the same time, he bribed the newspapers to exaggerate Coca-Cola's crisis management, making black and white statements, and leading public opinion that Coca-Cola pays attention to the interests of consumers-really special So many people believed it and praised Coca-Cola to the sky.
Xifeng and Coca-Cola are fighting various public opinion wars, and you can see related articles every now and then. The sales of the two companies' products are rising steadily, while Pepsi's market share is being suppressed.
Still the same sentence, the boss and the second child fought, and the third child was beaten to death!
Pepsi was bewildered and completely at a loss, watching Xifeng and Coca-Cola grabbing the market in a foolish way.
Time soon came to July, and the beverage market was booming again, and Xifeng's "Icy Cool" advertisements began to be carpet-bombed.
"Bingshuang" is a soft drink launched by Xifeng, similar to "Sprite" and "7-Up". This trademark had already been registered by a certain factory, and Xifeng bought that small factory directly. Before that, they were silently distributing goods, just waiting for an advertising campaign in the summer.
The advertisement was written by Song Weiyang himself: the heart is cool, the heart is flying!
The spokesperson for the advertisement is Xu Huaiyu, a bendy singer. She is one of the most popular bendy female singers in the past two years. In terms of record sales, she is second only to Zhang Huimei. The most important thing is that Xu Huaiyu looks purer and more in line with the "icy cool" image than Zhang Huimei.
What's even more rare is that Xu Huaiyu is particularly easy to arrange.
Rolling Stone Records has been on the decline for the past few years, and they regard Xu Huaiyu as a cash cow, with a full schedule of activities, and this girl is estimated to only be able to sleep peacefully for four or five hours a day. Xifeng only spent 1.6 million yuan in endorsement fees, plus 150,000 yuan in appearance fees for each event, to sign a devil's contract with Rolling Stone Records.
Xifeng held 40 sales events within a month and a half. Xu Huaiyu had to participate in each event, sing at least 8 songs in a single event, and also participated in some interactive sessions, and selected 100 lucky fans to sign for each event.
This girl spends the night on the plane every day, and in some cities she can only take the train. Moreover, while she was doing activities for Xifeng, the agency also arranged other activities nearby. She almost sang in the morning, had a box lunch and continued in the afternoon, and occasionally had commercial performances in the evening, and then hurried to the airport or train station.
In 40 cities in a row, Xu Huaiyu sang "I'm a Girl", took a bottle of "Bingshuang" in his hand and said "The heart is cool, the heart is flying", and combined with TV and newspaper advertisements, the "Bingshuang" soda was presented in an extremely powerful way. The attitude is to compete with "Sprite" head-on for the market.
As a result, Sprite still sits firmly in the dominant position, and Qixi is so fucked to death by Bingshuang.
By the way, I would like to introduce another spoiler to you. Wahaha recently launched a cola product called "Paradise Cola". It's not about drinking Coke and going to heaven, but it was named after the place name of Linzhou. There is no way, the name of Very Coke was snatched by Xifeng.
Since Paradise Coke came out, it has been on the verge of death, and it is one of Wahaha's many failed new products. But just this summer, a publicity campaign was launched suddenly, and with extremely low prices, in conjunction with Wahaha's inherent channels, it quickly seized the market in small counties and towns.
In this series of chaos, Coca-Cola inexplicably regained its vitality, Xifeng’s products attacked cities and territories, and Wahaha clung to the markets in small counties and towns. As a result, Jianlibao's market share plummeted, and the president of Pepsi China was so worried that the two brands were losing customers at an alarming rate.
1999 was a special year for China's beverage industry, and it was an unprecedented watershed.
The corpses of small brands are everywhere this year, and the market share is gradually concentrated in a few big brands. There is still room for small brands to survive in the emerging juice market.
(In the last chapter, a reader asked where the Sunshine Ice Tea went. It was killed by Xifeng a long time ago. There is an explanation in the book.)
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