Dive Brief:
- At last week's Neuromarketing World Forum, Adam Palenicek, Coca-Cola's senior insights manager for Western Europe, told an audience that 30% of the brand's ads don’t reach its "action standards" in internal testing, and added that the testing happens too late in the process to further develop messaging or ideas, Marketing Week reported.
- In an effort to bring more neuroscience into the testing process, Coke has now partnered with Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience to study non-conscious reactions to ads and measure resonance and emotional connection.
- "Where Coca-Cola needs to upskill pretty quickly, is how we adapt our TV content for the digital sphere. We do need to do more optimization in the digital space," Palenicek said, per Marketing Week. "We haven’t done that much, and at the moment we test our digital adverts via a more self-reported way, but [neuroscience is] something we’ll definitely be looking at."
Dive Insight:
The announcement at the Neuromarketing World Forum is more evidence Coke is looking to innovative means to improve its marketing and advertising spending. In an era where it's increasingly essential for marketers to make a strong emotional connection, neuroscience might provide deeper insights into what actually resonates with consumers, resulting in more on-point messaging.
Coke, one of the world's largest and most influential advertisers, continues to put its marketing structure and operations into a state of overhaul as it tries to develop a stronger digital foothold, speaking to the larger challenges marketers are weathering with the channel.
Late last month, Coke announced Global CMO Marcos de Quinto was leaving and that the position was retiring with him as the brand aims to consolidate its marketing, customer and commercial leadership strategy into a single combined function under a new executive role called a Chief Growth Officer.
In February, Coke also unveiled a complete reworking of its popular loyalty program to give it a stronger digital focus, and other recent innovations include tapping a group of Google technologies to create its own in-house digital signage for in-store end caps rather than purchasing costly off-the-self tech.