Was Coca Cola in white can a good sustainable marketing strategy?

Was Coca Cola in white can a good sustainable marketing strategy?

Sustainable marketing is all about increasing the decision making boundaries to embrace the entire product’s life cycle – both before and after the product is made and consumed. 

Coca Cola’s White can

Why Coca Cola’s white can was a bad Green Marketing strategy?

Coca Cola collaborated with WWF to make a new sort of can for its coke. They launched together a white can which was also tied to the donations for the protection towards polar bears. Coca Cola had to pay a large amount of money to this polar bears ( 2 million dollars). Now is the question if this new surface had a succes?

This white can wasn’t a succes at all. It was viewed as a potential green wash by the loyalists. With giving their customers the intention to green-up their image, Coca Cola hurt the real eco-conscious customers. These are people who are well informed, educated and especialy people who demands green products. These kind of consumers are really tough to reach and are very clever to sense any fake claim.

The company assesses if their product reduces the environmental impact. Only when this is the case, sustainable marketing can be effective.
In Coca Cola, it wasn’t the case. They just sold the same product in a new kind of packaging. It sold “old wine in a new bottle” and hoped it to work. With this failure, we are coming to explain what Green Marketing isn’t about:

“The aim of sustainable marketing is not to lure consumers into buying green.”

Practicaly, they are saying that it is not enough for the consumers to leave a note on the can that it is helping the environment. Marketing has always been about creating consumers, not forcing them into consumers. If they have the feeling of being forced into using a certain product, it just might back fire. This is what happenend with the white can of Coca Cola.

The minuses

Sustainable marketing strategies do have a potential disadvantage. If it doesn’t have any commercial implementation or an ingenious return on investment, the strategie in particular will be dropped.

The pluses

-       reduces a company’s carbon footprint

-       develop an effective sustainability

-       convince people about their good intentions to serve the consumer by having a minimum environmental burden as possible

Julie Deweerdt 2MA01

http://linkingsustainability.com

October 27, 2011 · by Pankaj Arora · in Green Marketing, Sustainability. ·