This happened when Portugal captain asked people to drink water and snub Coca-Cola right at the beginning of his team’s press conference ahead of the Hungary match in Euro 2020. Ronaldo is a very popular figure known world-wide for his fab football kicks. He is very active in social media and has about 299 million followers on Instagram alone.
The incident has its implications. Coca-Cola’s share price drop from $56.10 to $55.22 and has wiped off USD 4 billion from company’s market value. While the brand responded saying “everyone is entitled to their drink preferences”, I think the damage is irreversible and it seems to be a classic example of failed promotion. I hope that Ronaldo or for the matter who ever it is was taken into confidence for the indirect / passive promotion activity.
I think in some sense this can be correlated with FAD marketing. A fad catches on very quickly because it has a shallower appeal and eventually fades. However, it can make or break a brand during this short period of the surge. This seems to be what has happened in this case. Few brands like Fevicol and Amul have taken this incident to their advantage and have tailored their fad campaigns around it.
These brands have built a advertisement campaign that could last for a day to a week probably a month but create a brand impression on the countless people who some or the other way are associated to Coke and have heard about this incident. Fads decline because they don’t normally satisfy a strong need. The marketing winners are those who recognize fads early and leverage them into products with staying power (Kotler, 2016, Marketing Management E15).
