Each corner of marketing saw something different in Ronaldo’s moment of Coke madness. And each immediately explained the incident in direct contrast to the other sides of the discipline.

From where I was watching, almost everyone had a point. Yes, the situation would have cost Coke a couple of points of brand equity through damage to its image, but this was probably more than restored thanks to global salience from the coverage. But neither impact would have been particularly telling in the long run.

Similarly, sports sponsorships and influencer marketing can have a role to play in brand building but neither of them were anything other than tangentially involved in last week’s saga. This wasn’t a strategic move by anyone nor was it an exemplar of a particularly impressive channel execution. It was just a sports star, a father, reacting in his own impromptu manner. The lack of strategic motive or direction in all of this seriously undermines the enduring value of any media or marketing lesson from the saga. Shit happens.

Coca-Cola’s share price was certainly not impacted by the move either, but the general acceptance that it might have been does offer a telling insight into just how moronic a significant proportion of marketers really are.

That does not mean that Coca-Cola should not be worried about such things, however. The Coca-Cola company owns more than 400 brands and yet its biggest asset – the Coke brand – is now worth almost exactly a third of the total value of the whole company. That might have been reassuring back in 1995. But Coke now sits, in almost every major distribution channel, on constant price promotion with usually 30%, 40% even 50% off its RRP. No brand, even Coke, can survive that forever. Perhaps Ronaldo’s actions last week should be seen as a symptom, rather than the cause, of Coke’s misfortune.

But what we really learned last week is what a total fucking zoo the marketing world has become. Black battles with white. Upside can also be downside. Cold can run with hot. Just like that old, arcane Japanese movie, everybody has a take these days and it tells you more about them than the thing they are talking about.

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