There was once a time you might have mocked your pals for picking up Coke flavours like Vanilla or Cherry. But the Coca-Cola marketing team has made these obscure flavours look totally normal with some utterly bizarre new flavours over the last year that have made me ask the question – what the heck is going on?
A few months ago Coke launched its new series of flavours called “Coca-Cola Creations” which included variations of the soft drink such as ‘Starlight’, ‘Byte’ and musician Marshmello’s strawberry and watermelon coke. But its new ‘Dreamworld’ flavour might be the cherry on the peculiar Coke cake. While we are all for an out-there marketing campaign, there is something so odd about having an entire drinks campaign around flavours that well, simply don’t exist right? This isn’t the first weird campaign we’ve seen, to celebrate our 10-year anniversary we looked back on the most controversial ad campaigns of 2013.
The latest addition to the Coca-Cola Creations list is the ‘Dreamworld’ flavour, which according to Coke (opens in new tab), “bottles up the technicolour tastes and surrealism of the subconscious” (whatever that means). In short, it sounds as though Coke is getting you to taste your dreams, which is a little different to the ‘Taste the feeling’ slogan that the brand so famously sports.
While the campaign feels utterly random, I have to admit that it does a great job of getting people talking. Not only does the weirdness of the campaign spark a lot of conversation, but there is also debate about what the flavours actually taste like too (apparently Coca-Cola Byte tastes like grapes, and Coca-Cola Starlight taste like Cotton Candy).
Plus, the packaging for all four of the Coca-Cola creations looks pretty awesome. Each sports a different design based on the flavour, and three of the four each have slight variations to the logo. I particularly like the Marshmello design with the dripping Coke logo and would love to see more variations of the Coke logo in the future.
The Coca-Cola Dreamworld flavour will be available to buy in the US and Canada on 15 August (leaving us Brits weird-flavoured Cokeless). Coca-Cola is one of the most famous brands of all time, so it should come as no surprise that it made it to our list of the most iconic drinks logos of all time. And if you feel inspired by all this branding talk and fancy creating your own iconic brand, then brush up on your knowledge with our roundup of the best branding books.