Could Coke sponsor an anti-obesity campaign?

In the wake of ‘soda taxes’ – in which governments are seeking to address the huge rise in global obesity – the implications for the likes of Coke are huge – which is why it has launched a new charm offensive. But Coke’s latest campaign is yuck; pure corporate hokum says Dominic Mills, and the idea of it sponsoring a government health campaign is just as ridiculous.

When you feel cornered, you have a choice: you can either smarm your way out of trouble, or you can fight.

Judging by the latest moves by Coca-Cola – which last week announced a series of ‘good citizen’ pledges – it has chosen the smarm route. The pledges include banning advertising to the under-12s, making calorie counts visible on packs and supporting physical education programmes.

The root of the problem is the growing level of obesity globally. Thomas Friedman’s book That Used to Be Us has a brilliant chapter of the consequences of obesity on society. Truly terrifying.

One response is the idea of a so-called ‘soda tax’, like that introduced by France last year. So far the UK has resisted one, but it’s a potentially easy option for governments all over the globe (even though it appears not to have worked in Denmark).

Obviously a soda tax has huge implications for the likes of Coke – which is why it has launched its charm offensive.

Here’s a flavour of what Coke says on its ‘Coming Together’ video: “We’ve always believed in strong communities and long supported programmes that encourage well-being for our people, our society and the environment.” Pure yuck. Pure corporate hokum.

Personally, the Coke initiative feels like too little, too late. Can you really exclude under-12s from all your advertising? If Coke does, won’t it just take that money and splurge it on, say, 13-year-olds?

Like cigarettes, sugary drinks are a habit you acquire early on in life. I don’t know anyone who’s started drinking Coke later on in their life. Get them young is the mantra.

Take this ‘Share a Coke ad‘, which broke just two days after the pledges. How old do those kids look? Fourteen? And why is only one pack shot a low-cal drink, while all the others are the full-fat version?

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised because this, after all, is a company where a senior executive once told me – utterly straight-faced – that its mission in life was to increase ‘share of throat’.

So, no soda tax equals less money for the government after last week’s announcement that brands would be allowed to sponsor government marketing, including health and well-being campaigns.

Put the two together, and what you have is the possibility of Coke sponsoring an anti-obesity campaign. Is that ridiculous? Some will say we live in a post-satirical world, so anything is possible.

When broadcast meets personal

If you start from the premise that outdoor is the ultimate broadcast medium (OK, we can have a separate debate with TV), and the mobile is the ultimate personal medium (for now, at any rate), what happens when you put the two together?

Well, you get the potential for lots of interesting interactions, as last week’s Primesight breakfast seminar explored. As we make more purchases via our mobiles, it is perhaps retail that has the most to gain, as Simon Andrews notes here.

In theory, both media are enhanced. Outdoor can be transformed from a passive medium into an active one and, from the consumers’ point of view, mobile advertising potentially becomes more relevant and rewarding. Result: higher, better levels of engagement.

That’s the theory, at any rate. But, as with any shift in media, when you combine one with another, it’s a complex process with many issues to navigate through: macro issues like technology, data, security, privacy, mobile wallets and micro (i.e. ad industry) ones like investment, creativity, planning and organisational structure.

What this means is that we’re at the beginning of an interesting journey, one that might speed up as the take-up of mobile advertising accelerates.

And of course it makes huge sense for the OOH owners like Primesight and its peers to get on board the mobile bandwagon as early as they can, even if the investment in mobile-enabled panels isn’t going to come cheap.

But we should also applaud advertisers like Nestle for experimenting with OOH/mobile. You can read the case study here.

One of the issues, however, is defining success – and then understanding what makes one campaign a success and another a failure. For what was essentially a promotional mechanic (£10,000 prize) designed to drive male consumption of chocolate with a witty idea (GPS-enabled choc bars), the campaign generated almost 3,500 mobile engagements and a decent word-of-mouth spin-off. But is that good or bad?

And, if the purpose of a promotion is not just a short-term sales uplift but a longer-term pattern of repeat purchase, what should we expect to achieve in terms of brand equity?

The answer is that no-one really knows, and we’re all feeling our way towards a better understanding. This is where the likes of Primesight have to work hard. First of all, the selection of panels has to be right. It’s no good selling an advertiser a campaign that includes panels where there is little or no pedestrian dwell-time. You won’t interact with a site unless you’ve got the time. So the panel packages have to be right, and they may have to be different for different advertisers.

The second is creativity – and this I think is a big deal. OOH is traditionally an awareness medium, which is why posters have to be simple and clear. But if people are mostly motivated to interact with a poster because of some kind of reward (discount vouchers, coupons, whatever) – a point made by my fellow Newsline columnist Greg Grimmer at the Primesight seminar – then it becomes a promotional medium. That requires a very different approach to creativity, and not one creative agencies will necessarily embrace.

Adding mobile to OOH (M+OOH, if we’re going acronym crazy) will also have an impact on the buy-side planning process. While media agencies are happy to allow specialists to do the heavy lifting planning a standard OOH campaign, they’ll want to keep hold of the mobile element – which they will claim they’re better at anyway. So where does that leave the specialists?

And if buy-side structures are not optimised for M+OOH, nor are the clients.

None of these obstacles are insurmountable, it’s just that anyone expecting an overnight revolution shouldn’t hold their breath. But then anybody in mobile is used to that anyway. Nonetheless, you can see the potential.

P.S. Except when the creative is like this. Leaving the Primesight seminar I found this poster outside the Canadian High Commission. If you look closely, you can see a QR code in the top right corner. But I cannot believe any passing member of the public would ever notice it.

@dominicmills