Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Mirta Milek
Egle Wehle: Think globally, act locally. This phrase best describes the mission and vision of Kofola ČeskoSlovensko, one of the leading European companies in the segment of non-alcoholic beverage sales. This company, sharing the name with its most famous product – the most popular Czech cola drink with herbal extracts, is constantly looking for old brands to instill new life into through marketing and manufacturing.
But don’t let this fool you. These are not people who tour the flea markets searching for old junk. This is a top-notch company that has brought the process of mergers and takeovers to perfection, and which thinks very seriously, despite a somewhat funky outlook. Kofola ČeskoSlovensko is present on five European markets, and how challenging it is to work on similar, yet so different markets, from the marketing point of view, we will learn from the members of the Radenska marketing team. The acquisition of Radenska is an example of Kofola’s business philosophy: to find a brand with which generations are intimately tied up, to take it over and market it in the spirit of the new era.
We talked with Egle Wehle, Marketing Director of Radenska, who talked about marketing strategy and presented her regional team.
Media Marketing: You are from Lithuania, from the Baltic, and you work for a Czech group, as Head of marketing of Radenska for the Adriatic region. Your biography, then, covers a large portion of Europe; is it difficult to reconcile all these geographical or even cultural differences? Is it more difficult or easier for you, as an impartial, “outside” person, to function in such an environment?
Egle Wehle: I hardly ever feel “impartial”. My background might bring some confusion from time to time, however in most cases it turns to be a benefit. I often challenge my brand managers with different opinion. Although it’s not always easy, I prefer diverse team instead of uniform-minded one. It’s good for our brands. Last but not least, “multi-culti” environment is so much more fun! My Adriatic team is a good example: in total, we are eight people of four nationalities.
Media Marketing: Every multi-national has a general direction of their marketing communications, and then they localize it to a greater or lesser extent. What is the main characteristic of Kofola CeskoSlovensko’s marketing activities and how much freedom do the local offices have in adapting the campaigns?
Egle Wehle: We are very lucky that owners of Kofola group granted us freedom to do whatever we feel is right in each market. And Group standards for marketing are very high, no matter in which country. We are a complicated and stubborn client for many creative agencies. My appreciation to all our creative partners who respect and support our ambition to be “best in class”. We market mainstream, massively targeted products, but we believe that generic campaigns are boring and also too expensive to spend time on. We push for authentic and meaningful concepts very hard. We want to stand out. This is where the fun for us and our end-consumers starts!
In future, I expect that we will find wider synergies for products and communication on inter-company group level, however this will be mostly for new brands and/or other categories beyond water. For water category, which is our priority number one in the Adriatic region, we need to stay local.
Media Marketing: Do you have plans for introducing any new things this year? Summer’s almost here – the main season for the non-alcoholic beverages market. What are your expectations for the season?
Egle Wehle: We have big expectations for this year, and we already did “bear-sized” job to help them come true. By this summer season, we have re-designed all our products. We launched or will be launching soon new campaigns for Radenska, Studena, Lipički Studenac, Nara, Pepsi. My partners in crime, team of my brand managers for Croatia, will tell you more about what is on our plate today (see below).
Media Marketing: Kofola in the Czech Republic, Radenska in Slovenia and Studenac in Croatia are heritage brands that remind many of their childhood and harken back to different, simpler times. Any other traditional brands in the region you would like to see in your portfolio?
Egle Wehle: We love local brands and we know how to treat them well. Therefore we keep our eyes wide open.
Media Marketing: You have been in this position for some time now so you have had the chance to gain insight into the local media markets. What are some audience preferences?
Egle Wehle: Each country has naturally some specifics, however I do not see them as radically different. In general, Croatians, Bosnians and Slovaks love humor in any shape, and they seem to me more emotionally driven. Also outer beauty, for example premium product design seems to trigger them strongly. Slovenians are a bit more grounded and they require rational “hard facts” behind. Czechs appreciate sophistication and delicacy in humor, and they may be rather skeptical about “straight-to-the-point gag” style.
Media Marketing: With social networks being ever more important and influential, influencers have become inevitable, too. What is your position on influencer marketing, do you work with any influencers? If yes, how do you plan on evaluating the benefits from such collaborations? If no, do you plan to?
Egle Wehle: Step by step, we would love to unlock true potential of digital marketing. We learn as we go along our way. For Studena.Prirodno Ja campaign we collaborate currently with Ida Prester and Vitomir Maričić, and more awesome personalities will come. We honor to cooperate with these guys as we see their life stories to be a perfect manifestation of what means to be “naturally me”. We do measurements of traffic/engagement on-line, however this is a peak of an iceberg. The emotional value of such cooperation is immeasurable. The more people get inspired in their daily private lives, the more of campaign’s mission will be completed well.
Media Marketing: Who is in charge of activities in the Croatian market; can you introduce the team and campaigns?
NIKŠA FARAC, Brand Manager – Studena, Studena Ice tea
New campaign Studena. Prirodno ja is a celebration of life, of me being me. We created, visually very clean, simple and attractive TV spot, which promotes Studena values – naturalness, boldness, freedom through different humans showing them being themselves beyond social stereotypes of „being good and fitting in “. Because the only thing you can do better than anyone else, is be naturally yourself!
With a new campaign we also redesigned Studena water and Studena Ice Tea portfolio and launched new flavour strawberry in Ice Tea.
IVANA ŠEREMET, Brand manager Radenska, Lipički Studenac, Nara, Inka
RADENSKA “3”
In our Radenska campaign called “Three”, which relaunched Radenska to Croatian market, we created this special character who was obsessed with number 3 from his early age. He had all threes at school, he saved 3-legged dog from the street, he drives tricycle as an adult, believes that 3-leaf clovers bring happiness and of course, he is blessed with triplets at the end of the story. What we wanted to tell our customers with this story? To be OK with being different, to help others, to be easy on their children when they don’t do strait A-s in school, to dare to love, to create their own happiness… we wanted to leave them warm feeling around their hearts and inspire them to be better to themselves and to the others. Because, that’s what Radenska is all about.
RADENSKA “TROJČEKI”
Extension of mentioned campaign is recent Radenska Triplets campaign, one that I am very emotional about and the kind that makes me love my job even more. Here we went step further, we decided to help people not only by inspiring words, but also financially. In this campaign we found real Croatian triplets and we’ve put them on billboards and social networks to announce our quest for newborn Croatian triplets, so that we can give them a very special and valuable gift – strollers for three babies. If you know someone who is expecting triplets, this is the link for application: www.trojceki.hr
LIPIČKI STUDENAC
I love this one! This one is all about good vibes while drinking spritzer with your usual and most unusual friends. It’s about male-bonding, entertainment and laughter. Did you already hear the joke with a horse? J Anyway, Lipički Studenac is definitely “coming back” to the Croatian stage of mineral waters. We plan to make it the most entertaining water on the market. Except the redesign, we also gave this water brand back its old name Lipički Studenac, because we believe that roots, tradition and geographical location of any water is very important and no one should take it away from it.
NARA
After last year’s relaunch campaign, which brought back little Nara girl to life together with beautiful childhood memories of our 35+ consumers, recent campaign introduced her 4 naughty pets who we call Nararići. We produced 2 animations that work as cartoons and we are hoping to amuse families with these “Tom & Jerry” like plots. Since these little guys have wild imagination for naughty stuff, as well as our creative agency, we are already preparing next series for year to come.
MATEVŽ ZVER, Brand Manager – Pepsi
Pepsi is a proud partner of UEFA Champions League. So for this year we decided that we will do a campaign focusing on football. Why football? Because for fans around the world, football is not only a game, it is a global passion, it is their religion.
In April we launched a national campaign PEPSI LOVE IT. LIVE IT. WIN IT., where our heroes football players Messi, Marcelo, Dele, and Kroos played the center part of our campaign. These guys are also smiling from the shelves since we put them on the labels. As a cherry on top, a big national consumer promo was executed, where 1 lucky winner + his guest was sent to the Champions League Final in Kyiv, to see the final match. An experience that will last for life time. But there will be more, so stay tuned!
BOHUSLAV GAJDOŠ, Brand Manager – Lero, Voćko
After last year’s re-design of Voćko, who got an ergonomic plastic bottle with new design and practical closure for safe pouring, we put an eye on our second traditional syrup brand Lero. We gave it another (smaller but prettier!) glass packaging and a new label which symbolizes good old tradition, pleasant simplicity and good taste of this beautiful long-time established Croatian brand.