Corporate Identity And Branding For Coca-Cola And Fonterra

Create a corporate identity research report. Your report will focus on a range of Australian food and beverage companies (minimum of 2) and address the modern history of branding.

Look at and reflect on the development, trends and changes of your chosen food and beverage companies and how their logos and values have evolved over a period of time. Find out the historical background and the designers (if possible) and their thought processes in addressing corporate identities. Reflect on how logos and branding affect our lives and product perception. Investigate the meaning and concept of the design solution. Further investigate the use of colour, shapes and typography, in relation to food-branding and marketing. Prepare in-depth research into how food and beverage brands are represented and presented in the contemporary environment, by means of observation and research at local supermarkets, cafes, markets and pop ups.

Coca-Cola's Corporate Identity and Branding

Corporate identity is what differentiates us from others; it’s our character and personality that maintain our individuality that expresses the behavior and how we speak. Similarly, businesses distinguish themselves from other companies through letterheads, logos, business cards, brochures. It's a way company makes their brands through physical expression and also extending a culture that already exists within the companies that are expressed through a style of communication and exhibiting certain behaviors that promote the image of the company (Balmer 2001).

In the case of coca cola, it’s globally recognized company and has been in existence in Australia for eight decades. It was 1^st established in Australia in 1938 in Atlanta by coca cola inventor Dr. John Pemberton. He took a jug of syrup and soda to a pharmacy, which was sold by Jacob at five cents per glass (Watters 1978). Dr. Pemberton could not manage the start-up alone hence resort to a partnership with people like Frank M. Robinson to help him do the advertisement for this new product. Frank Robinson also came up with this famous name ‘Coca-Cola.' This was an icon which has lasted for over a hundred years now. At 1^st Australians were importing this beverage from the USA in 1900 before Coca-Cola Company began production in 1938 in Australia, (Guthrie and Petty 2000). This was the only product sold to Australians in bottles, but then they have to return the bottles to the shopkeepers.

Similarly to Fonterra, which is another famous beverage company in Australia. It’s a Co-operative group which was founded in 2001, and it's headquarter is located in Auckland. It's the current largest dairy company in Australia. Fonterra is a group of companies such as the New Zealand Dairy Group, Kiwi Cooperative Dairies and the New Zealand Dairy Board.  This company provides a relatively high percentage of New Zealand exports, of around twenty percent. Currently, it's the largest exporter of dairy products claiming almost a third of the total export of dairy products. It's owned by over 13,000 farmers of dairy products. The idea to merge the companies to form Fonterra was arrived at on June 18, 2001. This was spearheaded by three people namely, John Roadley, Henry van der Heyden and Greg Gent. They argued that facilitating this merge was necessary for the dairy industry and the Australians as a whole (Trechter, McGregor and Murray-Prior, 2003). The company spends its 1^st year in integration and making a new partnership to strengthen its foothold in the international marketplace. Fonterra has a total of 84 pants in the world, and 10 out of those are in Australia while the rest are distributed all over the world.  This company has four business department, i.e., Constant natural law Fonterra global trade, Constant natural food and Fonterra consumption dairy (Hill 2003).

Fonterra's Corporate Identity and Branding

Coca-cola products developed and grew steadily due to incorporation of computerized systems of managing the bottles, new delivery methods and the introduction of the most efficient automatic packaging technology. They have done this through branding and advertisements on billboards. Coca-cola move from a small start-up to a global business enterprise (Hartley and Claycomb, 2013). They achieved this through maintenance of a steady price of 50cent for over 50 years; this made them earn consumer trust thereby breeding loyal customers. Coca-Cola also came up with a sample coupon; which means giving the product away for free in appreciation (Coca-Cola, n.d.). This coupon caught the public eyes and this coca cola gain momentum. The picture below shows how this product advertisement was done.

Coca-cola has developed new brands based on the consumers’ needs and wants. The most recent brand is called Coke No sugar. This particular brand has fallen in love with people suffering from certain diseases such as diabetes. Branding alone has impacted on the people positively because checking the brand alone without reading the cover or but the color tell it all. Color plays an important role; for example, Fanta as a brand of coca cola has different colors with different flavors. This means that different consumers are attracted to a particular color depending on the flavor type (Taylor, 2000).

Coca-cola has a universal logo as shown below which is universally recognized. The logo performs several functions even if the brand name is not included in the logo; it provides a visual identity for the company.

A brief history on this logo design, is that this logo was not created by a designer but Cruncher. He was very creative and has exceptional skills in natural advertisement. He also had a printing press that that boosted his creativity. Coca cola was the first and the last name he proposed arguing that the two C’s will look more attractive during advertisements. Pemberton took an interest on that name and in 1886, He used it for advertisement of this beverage in a local newspaper. During this time no logo existed, so they use a serif font to represent the logo. This how the logo looked like.

Importance of Logo Design and Colors in Brand Identity

One year later, there was intense popularity and coca cola was enjoying economies of scale within the region, Georgia. This was probably the best time to build a proper logo for the brand. So pemberton goes to his trusted bookkeeper for assistance and they came up with a proper logo that was shown above. Before that, they made a series of these logo, saying that its right not get it right for the first time (Coca-Cola logo history, n.d.). Coca cola got his first trade mark in 1839 after their application of the patent was successful.

The logo helps in revealing the companies Identity as well as showing the ownership and telling  tells the consumers what they should expect. The logo also differentiate you from the competitors, because some people don't have to read, but they want to see; and the logo does this very well. Even when the customers don't understand the language used within the logo, but the logo itsethe potential customers or consumers how the product looks life (Coca-Cola journey, n.d.). Generally, itlf will tell it all. The logo also Facilitates the Brand loyalty as it can be used everywhere.

On the other hand, Fonterra has developed different brands based on consumer needs. Such brands include; series on anchor such as full cream milk powder, liquid milk, drinking yogurt. Others include Ratthi, Rasa padama, Anlene. A brand represents consumer's expectation which will help them decide on choosing one product over the other.  A logo, topography packaging and personality all represent a brand, together with customer service preference and the price.  Below show some few brands of Fonterra from,

Brand identity is the face of a brand; it's the visual component of a brand that represents the more significant ideas. Brand identity includes logos, typography colors packaging and messaging and it complements and reinforces the existing reputation of a brand. Proper brand names are done through market research which can be din through talking to customers, phone call, customer's suggestion box located inside the supermarkets and conducting interviews.

Conclusion

A memorable logo has also played a big role in the success of the Fonterra as a company.  The logo is like brand identity; it's what the customer identifies your business with. It’s like the visual identity that, even that the customers that are not able to read the brand name can visualize the logo and knows the different kinds of products that the company is dealing with. Fonterra has got a simple logo as shown below. This logo is simple and easy to remember hence it becomes an open canvas that customers can relate and associate with and have positive experience and attachment. It also needs to be flexible enough so that it can be displayed in any platform such as big billboards or social media platforms (Fonterra, n.d.).

The above logo was initiated by Sanjay Khosla when he took over the company as marketing director. He described the logo as ‘sunburst’ meaning consumer friendly which was designed to stand out in supermarkets where most of these products were sold. This logo didn’t involve too much complexity, they just agreed that, the logo should have the name of the company, encapsulated with a few primary colors. No design process was involved in coming up with this type of logo.

The other most important aspect of the logo Identity about corporates is the attractive color. It should be composed of 1-3 primary colors. Just like the Fonterra logo above.  Blue color above expresses the calmness in these dairy products of Fonterra, as stated by (Robertson 2009, p. 25). Professional typography is another consideration in logo design. For example in coca cola logo design, they chose the right font which brings harmony with color type chosen just like the Fonterra logo. Simple fonts are encouraged as they are easy to read and takes the shorter time to identify and locate. Font mixing is also not encouraged as they sometimes can lead to font complexity which is not necessary  

 In conclusion, during my observation in local supermarkets, I came to realized that more than 70% of the customers and consumers preferred some products based on the logo and the brand name. They got attracted to the logo based on the colors and the typography or the font used. They want something easy to identify and easy to read. Something can learn from far.

References:

Balmer, J. M. (2001). Corporate identity, corporate branding, and corporate marketing-Seeing through the fog. European journal of marketing, 35(3/4), 248-291.

coca-cola(n.d.). Retrieved from: https://www.coca-cola.co.uk

coca-cola journey(n.d.). Retrieved from:  https://www.coca-colajourney.com.au.

Coca cola logo history (n.d ). Retrieved from: https://www.fineprintart.com

 Fonterra (n.d.). Retrieved from:  https://www.fonterra.com/my/en/our-brands.html

Guthrie, J. and Petty, R., (2000). Intellectual capital: Australian annual reporting practices. Journal of intellectual capital, 1(3), pp.241-251.

Hartley, R.F. and Claycomb, C., (2013). Marketing mistakes and successes. Wiley.

Hill, J., 2003. The Fonterra Research Centre. International Journal of Dairy Technology, 56(3), pp.127-132.

Robertson, T. (2009). Export-pack design wins. Food New Zealand, 9(6), 25.

Taylor, M., (2000). Cultural variance as a challenge to global public relations: A case study of the Coca-Cola scare in Europe. Public Relations Review, 26(3), pp.277-293.

Trechter, D., McGregor, M. and Murray-Prior, R., (2003, October). A neo-institutional assessment of cooperative evolution: Comparing the Australian Wheat Board and the Fonterra Dairy Group. In NCR-194 Research on Cooperatives Annual Meeting (Vol. 29).

Watters, P., 1978. Coca-Cola: An Illustrated History. Doubleday Books.