Cristiano Ronaldo's Coke snub kicks off meme fest; brands seize the moment

Fevicol, Zomato, ITC, Parle, Paytm and Amul all reacted quickly to Ronaldo's press conference stunt in what has come to be called 'moment marketing'

Last Monday, when Cristiano Ronaldo removed the Coca-Cola bottles placed in front of him and endorsed water instead, he may or may not have been the one to have sent Coke’s market capitalisation plunging by $4 billion in the US. But what he did do was trigger a barrage of memes from brands that were quick to seize the moment before it ran out of fizz.

Labels as diverse as Fevicol, Zomato, ITC, Parle, Paytm and, of course, Amul were among the many who immediately reacted to Ronaldo's Coke snub through what has come to be called “moment marketing”. The age of clicks, likes, retweets and viral content ushered in by the rise of digital and social media platforms in recent years has given wing to this phenomenon.

Sample this: Fevicol’s “Na bottle hategi, na valuation ghategi (the bottle won’t budge, the valuation won’t tank)” repartee on Twitter has been liked by over 36,000 followers and retweeted over 6,600 times since the meme was release on Friday. Its response to Ronaldo’s thumbs-down to the cola has clearly earned a thumbs-up for the adhesive brand.

There were others too, like Dabur, which came up with: “The only cola that keeps everyone cool, Hajmola Chatcola.”

"Being topical suggests that you are aware of what's happening around you. As online users grow, brand engagement has become a round-the-clock exercise,” says K V Sridhar, global chief creative officer, Nihilent Hypercollective, a Mumbai-based consulting and services firm. “Moment marketing is a clever way of telling your consumer base that you are there. What you get is shareable content, which induces top-of-mind recall."

Add to this that it costs nothing, since the ads and memes are released in the digital sphere on the brand’s own social media page.

Brand experts say that moment marketing lends itself to social listening, which gives marketers a clue about the consumer’s mindset. “These are important markers for future communication. So, the next time an interesting moment comes up, brands can draw from past experiences,” adds Shrenik Gandhi, co-founder and chief executive officer of White Rivers Media, a digital marketing agency based in Mumbai. “Unlike earlier, when communication was one-way, social media has made it a two-way process. This helps brands to fine-tune commercials or ads on social and digital media. I see this trend staying.”

Going by Gandhi's assessment, moment marketing may gather steam as digital adoption grows in the post-pandemic world.

Consider some more examples of the phenomenon this year. In February, a young influencer from Pakistan posted a video of herself and her friends enjoying themselves. Her line – translated into English, “This is our car; this is us; and this is our pawri (party)” -- took the internet by storm.

Not only was it picked up by netizens, resulting in a flood of memes, songs and videos, brands too came up with their own take on the word “pawri”.

More recently, Rahul Dravid's “Indiranagar ka Gunda” -- a commercial for financial startup Cred, where he features as an angry man, frustrated by the traffic snarls in Bengaluru's Indiranagar area -- ensured he was the top trend on Twitter during the Indian Premier League in April.

Brands doffed their hats and came up with witty one-liners to Dravid's angry moment on social media. Here’s one by FreshMenu: “Indiranagar, our deliveries are being blocked by a wall. Expect a delay of 31,258 deliveries before he retires. #IndiranagarKaGunda.” And here’s another, by Oyo: “Stuck in Indiranagar? #CometoOYO”

Parle Products too joined in and offered to send its popular Parle-G biscuits to the cricketer: “Sending additional supplies of Parle-G to Indiranagar to turn the Gunda back into a Genius. #IndiranagarKaGunda”

Some experts, however, caution that this “here-and-now” approach to marketing has its pitfalls. Ads such as these, they say, lack longevity and advocate a more substantive approach to brand building as a long-term solution to marketing communication. “To me, moment marketing may well capture the present, but it hardly lends itself to the future,” says N Chandramouli, chief executive officer of brand insights firm TRA Research. “Long-term brand building cannot happen with moment marketing alone. You need a long-term strategy, a platform and a line of thought to build your communication. Who will remember the moment once it has passed?”

Sridhar says that it could be hit-or-miss for a brand in the world of moment marketing. “Some brands may get it right; others may not. And the ones that don’t may have to deal with the consequences of it, including facing ugly trolling and tweets,” he says, adding, “Controlling the damage could be difficult on social media.”

Condom brand Kamasutra's meme to the “Bottlegate” controversy, as it is being called, is an example. “He shouldn't have been so hard on cola,” quipped Kamasutra's meme. The clever play of words, however, barely attracted attention.

But then in the microcosm of such fleeting marketing, you win some, you lose some. Ask Amul, whose USP is moment marketing and which has over the decades made quite a name for itself in this area. Brands are well aware of this reality, and the proof of it will come with the next moment worth marketing.