In my first year in the advertising industry – many, many years ago – I attended a talk on advertising strategy. It was presented not by a planner but by the legendary UK creative Dave Trott.
Dave stood in front of the hundred or so new-graduate recruits from all the best London agencies and drew a pie chart representing global market share in the cola category. There were only two players: Coca-Cola had about 80 percent share and Pepsi-Cola the remaining 20 percent.
The shortest route for Coke to grow sales was to make the circle bigger.
Increasing penetration or frequency of purchase in the category benefited Coke more than it did Pepsi, so it was the logical marketing objective to achieve.
