Free Custom «Comperative Analysis» Essay Paper

Introduction

Visual advertisements speak volumes about a product, and can determine its success in the market. One company that has been very consistent with its advertisement is the Coca-Cola Company. This is an international company selling its products in the most parts of the world with its popular product being the Coca Cola brand. The company uses different strategies to appeal to its prospective customers including visual advertisement. Coca-Cola has fashioned a series of advertisements to get to its customers. In conjunction with a television special featuring Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen, the company produced the first television advertisement on Thanksgiving Day, 1950 (McCarthy and Bergen). The D'Arcy Agency of St. Louis was responsible for both the sponsorship of this program and its advertising. D'Arcy had served in the advertising outfit for Coca-Cola Company since 1906. From that humble beginning, the two firms developed a long-term relationship. For a great deal of that instance, Arthur Lee was the creative chief at D'Arcy. He directed the story and created such unforgettable slogans for the company such as "the pause that refreshes” (Coca-Cola Company). This paper seeks to investigate the effectiveness of the Coca Cola’s advertisements in reaching its prospective customers.

Television promotion was  originally a tentative means for the Coca-Cola Company and D'Arcy to reach its consumers. They both put in great effort to develop a plan to reach consumers successfully. This was at a time when a small number of cities had television broadcasting stations. One of its approaches was the sponsoring programs that offered the chance for the company to make bigger relationships with players from its radio programs. The first Edgar Bergen special was rapidly followed by the Christmas Day 1950 premiere One Hour in Wonderland, sponsored by Walt Disney's television. The subsequent three years saw Coca-Cola support the Western kind program Coke Time with Eddie Fisher and The Adventures of Kit Carson. Nonetheless, Coca-Cola puts in a great effort with television advertising.

In the year 1993, the company made a spectacular move in its advertising by bringing in the "Always Coca-Cola" crusade. The crusade was diverse, with a preliminary run of 27 commercial intended to attract precise audiences. The advertisements was worldwide and incorporated an assortment of innovative methodological techniques, for instance, computer animation (Stewart). One such commercial dubbed "Northern Lights," brought in the animated polar bear; what would turn out to be one of the most popular signs of Coca-Cola advertising. Ken Stewart creator and freelance writer reflected on drinking Coke at the movies when requested to develop an innovative commercial for Coca-Cola. He thought his yellow Labrador Retriever looked like a puppy polar bear. He reflected on how polar bears would go to the movies. Bringing the two concepts together in the commercial, "Northern Lights," he depicted a magical place where polar bears drink from bottles of Coca-Cola and watch movies.

Mr. Stewart enrolled the help of Hues and animation company Rhythm to animate the polar bears. The course commenced with storyboards. The storyboards separated the commercial's  into a sequence of scenes to suit the required time slot. After that, pencil sketches were done to illustrate how the polar bears would look like in each scene. These drawings were then advanced, with background and detail added. To acquire an enhanced idea of how the bears shift their bodies, limbs, and heads, Mr. Stewart and the animators considered photographs and film studies of real polar bears. Then, replicas of a bear were fashioned from clay. The replicas were transformed into three-dimensional figures and amassed as sophisticated computer graphics. An animator schemed the positions along the bear's head using a stylus linked to a computer to produce a computer image. The bear could be moved once, the image was sophisticated and loaded into memory as animators schemed its track on the computer. The bear's head, limbs and torso had to be maneuvered disjointedly, because unlike the real-life bear the animated bear was not fashioned in one piece. The animators also completed creating the bear's delicate motor activities during this phase of production.

Once, the essential actions were finished, the remainder of the picture was advanced. Supplementary basics that were not generated by the computer, for instance a Coca-Cola bottle, had been examined and amassed in the computer. These details were added at this stage. The bear's eyes were completed, its fur was added, the attractive background was painted in and the lighting details were fine-tuned. Mr. Stewart teamed up with Glenn Rueger at Outside Music and Weddington Productions to create a unique music and sound effects whereas the animation was being produced. In order to uphold the ethereal and magical quality of the bears’ world, he chose to keep minimum levels of music. He made use of the created music as a basis of punctuation only. He kept the polar bears conversation free, except for the distinguished grunts, which Mr. Stewart produced on a sound stage with his own voice. His voice was then changed to make him sound like the polar bears. The playing polar bear was a substantial achievement. This advertisement targeted the sophisticated youthful audience. The innovative Coca-Cola commercial was produced using computer generated images managed to show the audience that Coke adds a magic touch to life.

Various other advertisements in the ‘Always Coca-Cola campaign’ were brought in over the course of the following years. Attractive to the people's delight of the refreshment Cola provides its taste, the commercials utilized an assortment of approaches including music, humor, animation, stories and even Shakespearean parody. This was in an attempt to put together an emotional link between Coca-Cola and its customers.

On the global front, Coca-Cola initiated a television commercial in the year 1998 for the Muslim community fasting month of Ramadan. The commercial was created by McCann-Erickson. It was titled “Charity" and denoted the company's primary effort to have one Ramadan television advertisement for its global market. Previously, Coca-Cola’s Ramadan advertisements had been created by native advertising agencies in each country. Nevertheless, the "Charity" advertisement ran in 20 Islamic countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Egypt and Morocco.

It took eight months for the advertisement storyline to be executed. At the outset, representatives from Coca-Cola and McCann-Erickson did a research no the perceptions, likenesses, and unlikenesses in the ceremony of Ramadan in more than a few main Muslim cities. The research indicated that the spiritual facet of Ramadan was common. With the use of this information, Ahmad Shukri Rifaie the McCann senior account manager developed a straightforward story of friendship and charity, which was brought to life by a child.

In the advertisement, a boy and his mother present small gifts to an orphanage. The mother presents a basket of food and rug, and the boy offers a bottle of Coca-Cola. The boy plays football with a number of the orphans and makes friends at the orphanage. Afterward  the boy runs back to the orphanage to break the fast with his new friends. The boy and his friends share the Coca-Cola. The advertisement ends with a phrase "Always in good spirit. Always Coca-Cola.'' This Coca-Cola commercial targeted the Muslim community all over the world. Nonetheless this commercial used real life casts unlike the playing polar bear advertisement. More so, the commercial puts emphasis on charity and friendship, therefore, showing how Coca-Cola connects people. However, this commercial also shows that Coca-Cola can also add magic moment in your life. This is portrayed by how the  boy dashes back to share the Coca-Cola with the orphans, therefore, a magic moment to both, the boy and the orphans.

Subsequent to the accomplishment of this attempt, the Coca-Cola Company began a determined new global advertising campaign in January of the year 2000. Using the catchphrase "Coca-Cola Enjoy." The campaign was intended to attract people globally by convincing them that Coke puts in a magical sensation to the extraordinary instants in their lives. The company envisioned the new catchphrase as an invitation to customers all over  the world to enjoy life's simple delights and Coca-Cola. The theme was universal, but the campaign utilized limited resources in various countries to produce individual commercials pertinent to native cultures and tastes. Its architects came up with a tune malleable to a variety of musical styles to amalgamate the campaign with as much suppleness as possible. 

The advertisements in this campaign articulates its theme by attempting to generate images illustrating how Coca-Cola puts in something extraordinary to day by day life. One advertisement by Leo Burnett USA, which is known as "First Experience", features a boy looking forward to what a Coca-Cola will taste like by comparing this experience to a kiss. The advertisement  was set in a tiny village in a remote part of Morocco. The whole cast featured was from the community, which has no television, no electricity and no Coca-Cola. John Madden who directed the films Shakespeare in Love, and Mrs. Brown directed the commercial. This commercial, unlike previous commercials, brings into picture a native set up, where there is no electricity and television. It also targets the youthful audience. Like the previous commercial, it also uses real-life casts. The advertisement also shows how one can yearn for Coca-Cola (Burnett).

To sum up, all the three advertisements are similar in the sense that professional film directors are  involved in the production. They also show how Coca-Cola adds a magic moment in the day by day life. These commercials were all successful appealing to respective audience.