By Danny Chapman

Coca-Cola, the world’s largest beverage company, began changing its Coca-Cola product cans and bottle tops from iconic red to snow white as they raise awareness for the habitats of the polar bears they’ve so long featured in their holiday advertising. The design will make its way on to over 1.4 billion cans and will allow consumers to donate $1 by texting the package code to357357. Coca-Cola plans to donate around $4 million dollars towards the WWF’s efforts to maintain a tundra habitat twice the size of Texas between Greenland and Canada.(1)

This isn’t the Coca-Cola Company’s first major can design change this year—the company gave its Diet Coke product a much needed makeover for the fall season. The new can, which features the Diet Coke logo scaled up is both interesting and different.

For a brand that, according to Interbrand’s Guide to the Most Valuable Brands(2), is the most well recognized brand globally, it can be a risky to change the identity of your product. Packaging is the final frontier before purchase for customers. However these two can changes reflect the power that great branding can have. In terms of the first-ever white can, Coca-Cola is able to not only draw attention to their product but also demonstrate corporate citizenship through support of the environment and its beloved polar bear mascots. Not all CSR programs work for companies, but in this case, Coca-Cola has found a perfect balance between strategy and charity.

Sources:

(1)http://www.forbes.com/sites/eco-nomics/2011/10/27/in-first-coca-cola-cans-go-white-for-polar-bears/
(2)http://issuu.com/interbrand/docs/bgb_report_us_version