Close-Up: Live Issue - Are umbrella campaigns effective?

Coca-Cola UK's over-arching campaign has surprised the industry Claire Billings investigates.

Coca-Cola has become the latest company to use an umbrella advertising campaign to support its portfolio of brands. After all, how many consumers know that Coca-Cola, worth dollars 67.4 billion in a recent Interbrand study, owns the Fanta, Minute Maid and Malvern brands in addition to the eponymous brown fizzy drink with its lemon, lime and diet variants?

VCCP has created the campaign to address this. The advertising, which uses the banner 'A world of refreshment', brings together all of Coca-Cola's brands within the outline of the iconic Coke bottle. A website, www.refreshinglife.co.uk, has also been developed to promote the message.

The campaign aims to tell consumers that Coca-Cola produces healthy drinks, such as orange juice and water, as well as the less wholesome sugary carbonated ones it is famous for. At the same time, it hopes to boost sales of its lesser-known brands by promoting their association with Coke.

Adrian Coleman, a partner at VCCP, says: 'It's a good information vehicle. It surprises consumers as well as adding to the stature of the individual and the overall brands. It's a double hit.'

However, some commentators believe it is an unusual strategy for a branding campaign because the separate products are not linked by name. Others think umbrella campaigns are best suited to corporate campaigns designed to boost a company's share price or promote its products to the trade.

One planning director, who prefers to remain anonymous, says this kind of strategy smacks of 'corporate arrogance'. 'Such campaigns are usually selling some kind of emotional high ground that bonds audiences to the brand. But, inevitably, they just want to push product sales,' he adds.