The seasonal connection has taken on new meaning this month as the Coca-Cola Company has joined the home-shopping giant HSN for what is being described as the channel’s most extensive partnership with a packaged-goods marketer.
The collaboration, which began on Thursday, includes HSN’s selling merchandise not only on its cable channel but also online, on mobile devices and through social media like Twitter. More than 275 items will be available to start.
Most merchandise is devoted to the Coca-Cola Company’s flagship soft drink, Coca-Cola, while some items will carry Diet Coke logos. Products are also being based on ads, store signs, vending machines and other memorabilia.
The merchandise — in a broad assortment of categories like accessories, apparel, home décor, kitchen items and sporting goods — will be a mix of products already produced by Coca-Cola licensees and products that Coca-Cola and HSN are producing together.
Coca-Cola is returning the favor by promoting HSN on My Coke Rewards, a Web site with more than 14 million members. For instance, members can redeem rewards points for HSN merchandise at hsn.com. And the partnership has a charitable component, involving HSN Cares and nonprofit organizations for which the Coca-Cola Company helps raise money.
This is the first month of what is to be a multiyear deal. Although financial terms are not being disclosed, HSN has signed a licensing agreement with the Coca-Cola Company as part of the partnership. Coca-Cola and Playboy are considered to be the most prominent licensed brands outside the realms of sports and entertainment trademarks and characters like the National Football League and Mickey Mouse.
The Coca-Cola Company estimates that its licensing program is responsible for more than $1 billion in annual retail sales, at stores owned by Coca-Cola in cities like Atlanta, Las Vegas and Tokyo; at stores owned by retailers like Target and Walmart; and online, at the Coca-Cola Store Web site and Web sites operated by others like Amazon.
What began as a way to encourage customers at drugstore soda fountains to order “the pause that refreshes” has turned into a lucrative line of business.
Through licensing, “we support, extend, enhance and amplify our brand messages,” said Kate Dwyer, group director for worldwide licensing at the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, with demographic groups like teenagers, who are potential buyers of products in categories like “fashion, sports and technology,” and mothers, who are potential buyers of holiday products and merchandise related to eating, and entertaining, at home.
Among other recent “partnerships with big brands, big retailers,” she listed deals with Dolce Gabbana, Jack Spade and the publisher Assouline.
Her colleague, Stuart Kronauge, senior vice president for Coca-Cola trademark marketing at the Coca-Cola North America division, described the genesis of the agreement with HSN as the “unique HSN ability to tell stories” about the products it sells.
Perceptions of HSN as down market or dowdy did not deter Coca-Cola, she added, because HSN “actually has a very wide range of consumer” who buys products in higher-ticket categories like “health and beauty, jewelry and electronics.”
That the relationship is starting this month is no coincidence, Ms. Kronauge said, because “this is a peak selling season for both us and HSN.”
Bill Brand, executive vice president for programming, marketing and business development at HSN in St. Petersburg, Fla., echoed her.
“We’re introducing our customers to Coke during the holiday season, and developing a yearlong cadence,” Mr. Brand said. For instance, plans call for merchandise and charitable campaigns for occasions like Valentine’s Day, he added, with broader seasonal efforts like picnic and beach items in the summer and products for football tailgate parties in the fall.
Mr. Brand traced the agreement to a discussion with Coca-Cola executives at a retail industry conference in January about “all the licensed products that Coca-Cola sells around the world.”
“I’m not sure there’s another brand similar to Coca-Cola in this space,” he said, particularly in terms of its marketing efforts that are devoted to themes like “love, happiness, inspiration.”
HSN has previously teamed up with makers of consumer packaged goods like Kraft Foods. Kraft products were used by HSN Chef partners during shows on the channel and HSN cooking items were sold on Kraft Web sites like kraftrecipes.com.
The prices for the initial Coca-Cola products being offered by HSN range from $12.95 for a wall-mounted bottle opener to $499 for a bicycle to $1,200 for a vintage-style refrigerated cooler.
In addition to getting the partnership with HSN under way, Coca-Cola executives have had a busy last few weeks. They have also introduced an overhaul of the corporate Web site as well as the Coca-Cola brand campaign for Christmas 2012, which features a giant marionette version of Santa Claus.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/business/media/coke-and-shopping-network-unite-to-sell-brand-items.html?partner=rss&emc=rss