1. Introduction

Nowadays, a lot of researchers had concluded a lot about the marketing strategies of Coca-Cola. However, most of that research targeted a broad aspect of the marketing strategy of Coca-Cola, they did not connect how the main concept of happiness is expressed through the specific marketing strategy to help spread Coca-Cola out for example packaging of Coca-Cola [1]. Therefore, the target research topic for this commentary will be to analyze the package design of red color in Coca-Cola products and the method of expressing the main concept of happiness to its customers [2]. This study will investigate how the red color of Coca-Cola packaging conveys happiness to all customers. Moreover, this paper also discusses its marketing strategy to attract new customers or maintain the original customer’s loyalty to Coca-Cola. The purpose of this research project is to explore the strategy of packaging, specifically targeting the marketing strategy of the company Coca-Cola. The skills and concepts learned from Coca-Cola might help to better understand through a different perspective what successful marketing is in order to benefit everyone in future careers too.

2. Introduction of Marketing

Marketing is the act of a business to promote and sell products or services, including market research and advertising. In most B2C companies, marketing exists and remains at the heart of their product launch. In order to stabilize their market competitiveness, most companies have their own unique marketing strategies to promote products. Marketing is much earlier than most people think. While there is some disagreement about how marketing began, many historians believe it began as early as 1500 BC, when Mesopotamian society began mass production of goods. The development of marketing concepts is also growing with the changes of society and the renewal of enterprises.

In order to survive in the fierce competition, enterprises need to carry out promotion strategies closely around the company's brand or products. In continuous practice, the focus of marketing has gradually shifted to brand marketing, which conveys products to consumers through specific brand symbols. Brand marketing is the process of making customers form the cognitive process of corporate brand and products through marketing. Marketing is not only an organizational function, but also a series of processes for creating, disseminating and delivering customer value for the benefit of the organization itself and its stakeholders. A brand is a symbol, a symbol that condenses various important information of an enterprise. It condenses important information such as the company's reputation, culture, products, and quality into a brand symbol, and strives to shape its wide social popularity and reputation. And imprint this symbol into the hearts of the public, so that the product can enter the hearts of consumers with the brand symbol [3] (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The billboard of Coca Cola [3].

3. Marketing Careers of Coca Cola

Coca-Cola was founded in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia. Coca-Cola Company used free coupons for drinks to gain interest in the product and painted wall signs, napkins, and clocks to advertise the product [4]. By 1911, the firm has gotten one million for advertising budgets [4]. However, there are too many marketing strategies to adopt. As result, Coca-Cola Company narrowed down the market strategy, it focus on the package to enhance the customer impression and customer loyalty. Back in the 1980s, Coca-Cola's image had some problems with recognition, as the brand impression conveyed by its "one true red" slogan varied from country to country, state to state, and store to store [5]. As result, Coca-Cola made the final decision, setting Color Red as the main color of its promotion. According to reports, nowadays, 94% of people recognize Coke's red and white logo [5].

4. Happiness in Marketing

Happiness is a feeling of happy, satisfied and released, and people enjoy this feeling because it provides them a sense of life. However, Happiness can also be used as a drug, a good strategy to “hook” your customers and make sure they are loyal to your company. Therefore, every marketing from any company is aimed to achieve one goal: to convince the buyers to buy the product. Most companies for example soft drink or consumer discretionary companies are aiming to achieve happiness. As one of the concepts of Coca Cola company, happiness is one of their core concepts to provoke. In result, using different strategies to provide happiness to a potential group of customers is a core to success to most companies.

5. The Use of Colors in Marketing

Any brand can stand out from the crowd by choosing the right colors for the marketing efforts. By utilizing colors decisively for your advertising endeavors, you can get your crowd to see what you need them to see and assist them with seeing you the way you plan to be seen. Therefore, understanding color psychology can be so helpful for advertising endeavors [6]. Since it can assist you with depicting your image the way you need to influence the crowd.

While picking the right colors can upgrade your brand discernment, unfortunate color determination can cause harm to the brand. For example, assuming you pick some unacceptable colors for your brand or logo, it can end up being less discernible, and difficult for your crowd to comprehend, which could not attract any potential customers.

6. The Use of Red in Marketing in Coca Cola

Marketing uses color not just for aesthetic reasons but is also psychological and can evoke different emotions. Red is associated with power, excitement, passion, and passion, as well as stimulating the appetite. For Coca Cola, a soft drink industry, it is important to adopt a color that both represents passion and appetite, and they also use red to create excitement in their branding by using words like happiness [1]. Basically, when most consumers are seeing the package of Coca Cola, when the red color of passion and the hissing sound of opening the coke, both combined together, it creates a sense of passion, release and excitement to the consumer. This kind oof feeling, which is in a sense what Coca Cola has been aiming to achieve throughout the years, has made consumers a sense of reliance that they can’t stop drinking them, because they feel so much released and passionate when drinking Coca Cola. All those addictions and happiness expressed through the packaging of Coca Cola have made this whole brand attached to millions or billions of loyal consumers and customers, which established a robust system of reliance and loyalty.

Also, with the data, although it shows a large portion of blue-lovers, but red-lovers are mostly located at the second most likable color that people choose [4]. With this, Coca-Cola’s red color could be accepted by a lot of people. To sum up, the color red does have some kind of attention, meaning that the color is a good choice for marketing.

7. Influences of Red Colors in Coca Cola on Santa Claus

In addition, Coca Cola’s color marketing even changed a culture, and making it a symbol of happiness. For example, the weird myth surrounding Coca Cola's red and white combination, there is also a myth regarding the most well-known character in the world today, Santa Claus. Rumor has it that Coca Cola "invented" him [2]. Coca cola is credited with popularizing Santa Claus in a time before most media outlets used color [7]. Several images of Santa Claus in red and white pre-date the first Coca Cola Santa Claus advertisement in 1931. However, it wasn't always the way Santa Claus looks - the big, happy man in the red suit with a white beard - that we know and love. The truth is, many people are surprised to find out that Santa was portrayed in various ways prior to 1931, ranging from a tall gaunt man to a spooky-looking elf. His clothing features a bishop's robe and the animal skin of a Norse huntsman. In result, to drawing Santa for 30 years, Nast changed the color of his coat from tan to red over the course of time. Then this would be the choice Coca Cola chose for the advertisement which began appearing in magazines in 1931 [8].

Figure 2: Campaign from 1931, featuring in the Saturday Evening Post [11].

To create a campaign that showed a realistic and symbolic Santa Claus, Coca Cola hired Archie Lee, an advertising executive with the D'Arcy Advertising Agency. In order to illustrate commercial images using Santa Claus- not a person dressed up as “Santa Claus” [2], Coca Cola hired Michigan-born illustrator Haddon Sundblom. The Coca Cola advertising during the decade from 1931 to 1964 showed Santa wearing red suits delivering toys, reading letters, drinking Cokes, visiting with children, and raiding refrigerators. In addition to magazine advertisements, billboards, posters, calendars, the red, stylish happy old man- Santa Claus was everywhere [3]. In result, it created a trend that when anyone sees any signs of Santa Claus, the next perception will be thinking towards Coca Cola.

Other than the own product of Coca-Cola, the company has a lot of other products, such as: 1. Diet Coke / Coca-Cola Light. 2. Coca-Cola. 3. Sprite. 4. Fanta. 5. Coca-Cola Zero. 6. Coca-Cola Life. 7. Minute Maid. 8. Nestea. 9. Del Valle. 10. Simply Orange. 11. Powerade. 12. Powerade Zero [10]. All the brand acquired by Coca-Cola are also a form of its marketing. However not all of them uses the same marketing strategy of using the red color, but happiness was spread out to every corner of the world. In places like convenience stores, retail outlets, grocery stores, restaurants, vending machine, street vendors, food-service distributors, movie theatres, and even in amusement parks, you can see Coca-Cola. [11]

8. Conclusion

Overall, I would like to say Coca-Cola’s way of marketing is evolutionary. This new strategy of marketing has opened up the world of all kinds of marketing. From the basic use of the color red, which has multiple strong feelings, all the way to how Coca-Cola changed a culture! This is absolutely legendary. However, this investigation needs more improvements, for example, getting more data available to support the claims, or interview some professionals which could help me a lot too. Also, I might do a comparison between Coca-Cola and Pepsi!