All together now

I'm a great fan of Coca Cola's marketing. I have blogged about how the old dog does indeed learn new tricks here . The ideas from Coke that stem from the bottles are a marketing masterstroke, from the original 'Share a Coke with ...' and the names, to the football teams, to the 'Coke through the decades' retro pack designs. These are ideas that are about togetherness and individuality, the collective and the personal simultaneously.

And this summer, Coke has done it again with 'Share a Coke and a Song.' The 'Big 4' Coke varieties will include song lyrics on the packaging, with a promised mix of 70 songs, encompassing old, new, borrowed and blue(s), I expect.

This feels so right for Coke and hopefully will be worth all the effort and expense taken to secure the lyrics. Music is, of course, an international language which unites people. Music is about emotion, memory and mood, which ties in perfectly with Coke's new 'Taste the Feeling' campaign.

In another smart marketing move by Coke, the company will be rolling out its 'One Brand' packaging in 2016 and 2017.

It makes sense to me to bring the variants closer together under one brand - rather like car brands such as Audi, it's the marque that is important emotionally, not the individual variant that suits your physical tastes or needs.

And, going back to the music, I wonder whether it is also one in the eye for Pepsi, who have always had close associations with music in the past.