Health Quencher
Diet Coke is carrying a banner to build women’s awareness about heart disease with a fashion event and a multicity tour, coinciding with American Heart Month in February.
The brand is supporting the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s The Heart Truth campaign by sponsoring a Red Dress fashion show and a traveling exhibit that offers free heart health screenings, educational material and samplings of the diet soda.
“This issue is very important to our consumer base,” says Caren Pasquale Seckler, group director, low calorie colas, Coca-Cola North America. “And it fits with our perspective on well-being.”
Coca-Cola has long been a corporate advocate of healthy lifestyles. Its long-standing Olympics sponsorship is the most visible aspect of Coke’s profile as a fitness proponent. It has been particularly active internationally in recent years.
Copa Coca Cola youth soccer leagues, started in Mexico in 1998, now supports student athletes in 10,000 schools throughout Latin America. In 2001, the Coca-Cola English Schools Cup introduced a championship competition among 2,600 schools and 40,000 students annually. Coke also sponsors a cycling program in Denmark, and athletic activities programs through other sports in Norway, Australia and the Philippines.
But this marks the first time a Coke brand has engaged on this scale in a campaign of this kind, according to Seckler.
The effort kicks off with The Heart Truth’s Red Dress Collection Fashion Show in New York on Feb. 1 during Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. That date is National Wear Red Day, aimed at raising the country’s collective consciousness about heart disease.
The Red Dress Collection will feature dresses from top fashion designers and worn by celebrities on the runway to demonstrate their support for the campaign and the red dress concept.
Six celebrity-worn dresses will then become part of The Heart Truth Road Show that will hit 10 U.S. cities through April. The exhibit will stop at shopping malls in Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Charleston, SC, Birmingham, AL, Palm Beach, FL, Atlanta Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Minneapolis.
Besides seeing the symbolic red dresses, visitors to the exhibit can have a free screening for heart disease risk and get advice in a cardiac consultation area. They can also take home Red Dress pins and drink Diet Coke for free.
But the real objective isn’t to sample product, but to present the proactive message the campaign tries to impart, encouraging women to take an active role in preventing heart problems by consulting their physicians and educating themselves about personal risk factors.
Apart from the potential of reaching a broad demographic, Diet Coke is embracing this issue because of this sobering statistic: heart disease ranks as the No. 1 cause of death among women in the U.S.
“It’s important to help raise awareness of that,” says Seckler.
The Heart Truth and Red Dress logos will adorn Diet Coke, Caffeine-Free Diet Coke and Diet Coke Plus packaging. Tips and information about heart health care will also appear on the estimated 2.5 billion new product packages hitting retail shelves through May 31.
Diet Coke will also support the campaign with a national blitz of TV, print and online ads and a contribution to the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, NHLBI’s umbrella organization.
Coca-Cola North America will participate with a month-long educational program among 5,000 associate companies, including on-site heart health screenings and educational luncheons.
While men obviously will also be exposed to the Diet Coke messages geared towards women, the brand’s research shows that a larger percentage of men are concerned about the cardiac health of the women in their lives than those women themselves.
The current alliance between the brand and the NHLBI is for one year, but Seckler says Diet Coke wants to make it a long-term deal, depending on the response it receives from consumers.
W
For more articles on experiential marketing, go to http://promomagazine.com/eventmarketing/
