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COCA-COLA IS CHANGING the packaging across all its flavours so they all look pretty much the same, aside from the different colours.

The company said in a statement that the packaging transformation moves it to a “one brand” strategy across Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Nordics, Holland, and Spain. Rather than marketing each brand separately, the entire range will be advertised as one.

That means saying goodbye to the iconic “Diet Coke hunk”.

It also serves to highlight how confusing Coke thinks its brand extensions have become.

Calories and sugar

Each can or bottle will have a more detailed description on the front about what each product contains. Coke Zero will more proudly display that it has zero calories and zero sugar, for example. But original Coca-Cola, amusingly, doesn’t cover the ingredients on the front and instead just reads “since 1886″.

The idea is to make sure consumers fully understand the benefits of its full portfolio. For example, the company says that five in 10 consumers in the UK don’t realize Coke Zero is a zero calorie and zero sugar drink.

One of Coke's new billboard ads in the United Kingdom.

In the UK, the idea is to meet an internally-set objective for 50% of its sales to come from the lower and no calorie range by 2020.

Coke is often heavily criticized by health campaigners for obesity issues that come with consuming lots of sugary drinks.

However, last year, for example, it launched a £20m (€27m) anti-obesity drive which included offering free fitness classes in the United Kingdom, as part of a separate goal to get 1 million people in the region more active by 2020.

- Lara O’Reilly

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