Tag: Coca-Cola

Singapore – Global beverage company Coca-cola and super-app Grab have teamed up to unlock growth opportunities in a booming digital consumer market within Southeast Asia. The partnership will bank on Coca-Cola’s extensive offline retail presence and Grab’s large online network.

Both companies will also collaborate on impact initiatives to accelerate digital skilling for merchants and promote convenience and an array of beverage choices for consumers.

The landmark partnership spans six Southeast Asian countries including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. However, the partnership in Thailand covers all areas except GrabFood.

The partnership revolves around four objectives, namely growing with merchants through GrabFood and GrabMart, engaging consumers in refreshing ways through GrabAds, enhancing support for small, traditional merchants through digitalisation, and using both company’s combined scale to do good in Southeast Asia.

Sam Way, head of offline to online at Coca-Cola ASEAN & South Pacific, said, “At Coca-Cola, we are transforming our business model for the digital age. This new multi-market partnership extends our online reach and enables us to stay ahead of changing shopper trends as we drive customer value and growth through digital enablement.” 

He added, “We are thrilled to be collaborating with a forward-thinking company like Grab and we look forward to working closely to build new consumer connections and offer a new level of convenience to digital consumers in the region.”

Meanwhile, Saad Ahmed, regional head of merchant at Grab, commented, “We are very excited to be Coca-Cola’s preferred partner in Southeast Asia. This partnership also reflects our shared commitment to support merchants to further grow their business through digitalisation and financial services.” 

He added, “By enabling them to capture new and unmet consumer demand, we enable them to provide better services to our users. This in turn strengthens brand love for Grab and Coca-Cola.”

Singapore – Popular soft drink brand Coca-Cola has recently released its limited edition collaboration with American music producer Marshmello, and is now available in select Southeast Asian countries namely Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. 

The Marshmello’s Limited Edition Coca Cola is a fusion of the artist’s favourite flavours: strawberry, and watermelon, mixed with the original Coca-Cola taste. Fans can also scan the QR code on the can to be transported to the Coca-Cola Creations online hub via coca-cola.com/creations, where several different digital experiences can be enjoyed. 

Speaking on the collaboration, Marshmello said, “It was great to collaborate with Coca-Cola on this limited-edition drop. We created a vibey blend of my favourite flavours in this all-new mix. I think it tastes amazing and I hope fans love it too.”

Meanwhile, Teejae Sonza, marketing director for Trademark Coca Cola of the Coca-Cola ASEAN & South Pacific, commented, “Music – just like Coca-Cola – has such an amazing power in connecting communities and creating opportunities for shared experiences.”

She added, “For this second Coca-Cola Creations drop we are doing here in ASEAN and South Pacific, we sought to add an unexpected remix of flavours to a great Coca-Cola taste, and Marshmello is the perfect collaborator. It is an exciting step for our brand to introduce Marshmello’s Limited Edition Coca-Cola and invite fans to immerse themselves in Mello’s world.”

Collectible slim cans with striking black and white visuals in the limited edition cans pay homage to the artist’s signature aesthetic, as well as dripped Spencerian script, melding the brands together into a smooth and satisfying vibe. Coca-Cola partnered with creative agency Forpeople on the packaging design.

Singapore – Multinational beverage company Coca-Cola has named Matthias Blume as its vice president of marketing for ASEAN and South Pacific, where he will be leading the company’s marketing and brand initiatives across Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands and serve on the company’s senior leadership team in the region.

Blume is a seasoned marketer with 24 years of international marketing experience including 21 years at Coca-Cola and three years at Danone. He has held local, regional, and global roles in a range of markets across Asia, North America and Europe.

He was previously the frontline director for Coca-Cola’s ASEAN & South Pacific operating unit, based in Singapore. Previously, he was the sparkling director for the company’s ASEAN business unit. He has a detailed knowledge of the company’s business across the region and has driven growth and innovation across the company’s stills and sparkling beverage brands.

He was also at the forefront of the company’s introduction of a prominent “Recycle Me” call-out across all its packs as well as the move across Southeast Asia to switch its iconic Sprite brand to clear, transparent bottles which are easier to recycle.

Claudia Lorenzo, president, for ASEAN and South Pacific, said, “Matthias brings a tremendous passion for marketing and people plus a superb knowledge of our bottling system. He also brings a combination of consumer centricity, marketing curiosity and business acumen – strengths that we need and value deeply in our marketing organisation.”

Singapore – The Coca-Cola Company, the global beverage company that owns the world-famous beverage brands Coke and Sprite as well as a portfolio of hydration, nutrition, juice, and dairy, and sports, and coffee and tea brands, has appointed media, digital, and analytics veteran Anupama Biswas as its new senior director for its Analytics & Insights team in the APAC region. 

The appointment comes as the company progresses on a major strategic transformation, including rewiring to become a more networked organization. Biswas will become part of a new team called Platform Services and will be leading the company’s analytics and insights for four operating units in the APAC region. 

Biswas brings with her almost two decades of experience in media, digital, e-commerce, and analytics, and business strategy across leading consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Colgate-Palmolive. Her expertise includes combining data-driven insights, creativity, and pragmatism to develop organizational alignment, focus, and a clear path to growth. 

Biswas most recently comes from Kellogg Company as its regional director for e-commerce, media, and analytics in the AMEA region. In her last assignment, she has implemented digital transformation and drove change management within the organization by building in-house digital & analytics capabilities.

Meanwhile, her experience on the agency side has had her working particularly with GroupM agencies, such as Maxus, which is now Wavemaker, and also Mindshare. For a little over a decade, she was with MediaCom in its Singapore team. 

In an interview with MARKETECH APAC, Biswas shared that her role will be focusing on delivering actionable insights to drive business growth. The specific areas she will be handling will be commercial in nature, such as consumer segmentation and revenue growth management. 

Biswas shared that over the near term, her responsibilities would be more focused on building a team and on building the analytics framework, while over the long run, the goal would be to make the jump from descriptive analytics to more predictive and prescriptive solutions.

“I am super excited to be at The Coca-Cola Company. This is a company that I have always admired and it’s a privilege to be here. I look forward to driving a data culture and unlocking analytical solutions to deliver actionable insights to further fuel business growth,” said Biswas. 

Meanwhile, Alex Clarke, the global head for Analytics & Insights at Coca-Cola, and to whom Biswas will be reporting, commented, “We are thrilled that someone with the talent and experience of Anu has chosen to join the Coca-Cola Analytics & Insights team. This is an exciting time to join our company as we step-change how we leverage analytics and data science to support our growth ambitions. Anu will play a key role in the region in helping us achieve our goal of being a truly data-driven organization.”

Singapore – With the sudden rise of K-pop groups such as BTS being tapped by global brands as their respective brand ambassadors, the trend has been evident among these brands to be more recognized by the general populace. The K-pop effect on the consumer is proven further with the latest findings from shopping aggregator iPrice showing that search results for brands can jump up to 50% after signing in BTS as their brand ambassador.

According to the insights, these sudden spikes in brand popularity have been long evident across brands three years ago when the prominence of K-pop brand ambassadors started to materialize. For instance, luxury brand Louis Vuitton and soft drink brand Coca-Cola gained 46% and 14% search boost respectively in the global market when they signed BTS as their brand ambassador. Meanwhile, sportswear brand Fila gained a 16% spike in brand interest in 2019 globally for the same reason as well.

Another successful brand interest was manifested last year when South Korean multinational electronics company, Samsung, released a BTS edition of Galaxy S20+. The result revealed a 53% increase in brand searches compared to the same period in 2019. 

And more recently, the recent collaboration of BTS and fast-food chain McDonald’s has earned the brand an 8% increase in search interest globally compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile, among Singapore consumers, the said collaboration recorded a whopping 81% increase in Google search volume, signifying the massive effect it had on the growth of McDonald’s brand awareness in the country. 

The insights also note in McDonald’s case in Singapore that due to the insane demand for McDonald’s paper bags adorned with the BTS logo, people ended up reselling the packaging along with unopened sauces on an e-commerce platform within 24 hours of its launch.

Part of the reason these brands have gained so much success from their collaborations is that aside from the love towards BTS as a whole, each of the Korean boy band’s members boasts a fan base of their own. K-pop fans have come up with a term called ‘bias’, which essentially means a favorite member.

In terms of biases within the Singapore consumer base, findings show that Jungkook tops the list, accounting for over 26% of the country’s searches. He is followed by V (25%), Jimin (20%), Jin (10%), Suga (8%), RM (7%), and J-hope (3%).

In Southeast Asia, people seem to be Googling V the most, averaging 29% of the search volume, followed by Jungkook at 26%, and Jimin at 18%.