With the International Cricket Council (ICC) Men’s Cricket World Cup coinciding with the festival season, the Coca-Cola Company announced on Friday its expectations of a heightened consumer demand in the second half (H2) of the year.
To stimulate demand, the prominent beverage company is increasing its investments in brand marketing within the country.
“We have started activations around festivals like Ganpati in Maharashtra and Durga Puja in West Bengal. This is going to result in one of our biggest investments in Q3 and Q4 in the history of our company in India,” said Arnab Roy, vice-president, marketing, Coca-Cola India and South West Asia.
“We are also doing similar festival activations in neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The Q4 spends, as a percentage of the overall spends in a year, are close to 5-7 per cent higher than what we would do in a normal year,” he added during a media roundtable.
However, the company refrained from disclosing specific investment figures.
According to data accessed via the business intelligence platform Tofler, Coca-Cola India incurred advertising and promotional expenses of INR 737.97 crore in FY22, as reported by PTI.
Coca-Cola, the official non-alcoholic beverage partner for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup, has introduced its ThumsUp and Limca Sportz brands in conjunction with Sprite for the event.
“The Cricket World Cup is the largest sporting event and an important platform to leverage to continue the business momentum that has been positive for some time now,” Roy said.
As per sources, the company has successfully secured a sponsorship deal with the event’s official streaming platform, Disney+Hotstar, amounting to INR 150-160 crore.
With low-barrier moments for spending like festivals, “consumers tend to spend more. We have also seen inflation cooling down and that will give rise to sales of affordable packs,” he added.
Despite Q2 disruptions caused by unexpected rains, the company maintains its optimism regarding robust demand in the latter half of the year.
“We had a challenging summer, but the long-term metrics are looking good,” said Roy.
He added that, “Demand continues to be strong and we don’t see it slowing down in the coming months. Based on the trends, we are seeing in both Q3 and early days of Q4, we feel very positive and encouraged about the way we will end this year.”
