From Coca-Cola’s website:
“Minute Maid has been making juice for more than 60 years and has a heritage of nutrition, innovation, and quality. In 1945, the U.S. Army ordered 500,000 pounds of powdered orange juice from the Florida Foods Corporation, which later renames itself to Vacuum Foods and then finally the Minute Maid Corporation. The Minute Maid Corporation was acquired by The Coca-Cola Company in 1960, marking its first venture outside of soft drinks.”
Website: http://www.minutemaid.com/
“Del Valle Brand has its roots in Latin America and recently joined our ‘billion’ dollar brand status within The Coca-Cola Company portfolio of brands. It has a diverse juice line up ranging from 100% juices and nectars to juice drinks and is available in different convenient packaging for the whole family. The brand is available in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, and other markets in Latin America.”
Website: http://www.delvalle.com.mx/es/home/
What’s in a name?
Coca Cola has identical brands running in two different regions. Minute Maid is targeted and sold in the US and Canada, where speed is valued. While ads for Minute Maid are rare, the Coca Cola division is currently running a campaign on #doingood. In this ad, the focus is on the parents of an Olympian and the gratitude that the Olympian feels towards them. When we think of athletes, we think of them not having enough time. Therefore, even though the idea is that parents are doing good by feeding their children healthy drinks, the focus is again on the fact that it’s easy and readily available. Even the slogan, Put good in. Get good out., reminds me of American efficiency (and even of the inverse of a business term: Garbage in. Garbage out.). While this works for Americans, who tend to value large businesses, it would not work for Latin Americans, who are rather distrusting of large companies. Coca Cola could have literally translated the brand name but instead decided to create a new brand: Del Valle (literal translation: from the valley). The name separates the product from the big, bad, dangerous company and brings it to the safe and natural valley. The division’s slogan, Que siga cerciendo lo bueno (translation: Keep up the good) mainly refers to the ingredients in the drink and is highlighted on their website and in their ads.
Connecting with the target market
When it comes to engaging with the consumer, Minute Maid seems to be targeting social media while Del Valle is mostly leveraging commercials. Minute Maids’ website is significantly more developed than its Del Valle counterpart. The website is pushing the company’s #doingood campaign and features no Minute Maid commercials. This is a good approach for the United States, where users have learned to use ad blocker and instead pick their brands off of what they see their friends posting on social media. On the other hand, the Del Valle website includes a slider on the home page. The first two are banners promoting their new products, Pulpy and Mango and Strawberry mix, casually standing right next to fresh fruit. The third image really drives the identity of the brand as it is not promoting one specific brand but is in fact making the consumer associate Del Valle with farmers picking oranges off trees in a field. This shows again the company’s push to promote the “nature” aspect of the brand. Moreover, the Del Valle page features three advertisements, two of which only have fruit as the main characters presented on a backdrop of a valley. This emphasizes the brand’s image as a truly natural and healthful product, as opposed to one that’ll make you a good parent on the move. One similarity between both websites is that they include the nutritional facts of their products. This shows that while both divisions have different unique selling points depending on the culture of the market, they both fulfill the point of parity of being healthy.