Fanta woos Belgian bloggers

A mysterious package was delivered to me today. I knew it would be arriving, I knew that it had something to do with Fanta, but I didn't know what it was until I opened the box. It contained a can of a Thai variety of Fanta with mango taste. "Fanta World Mango from Thailand - Limited Edition - inspired by Fanta Thailand", the label says. On the other face the can carries a Thai label.



How did it taste? A lot like common Fanta orange, with just a very slight sweet and exotic mango note.

The can epitomizes two catchy and relatively new marketing trends: regional branding of exotic soda varieties (like Fanta Pomelo aka Skwiiz or Coke Light Sango); and companies wooing bloggers for marketing purposes.


The Coca Cola Company, owner of the Fanta brand, is launching this new "Fanta World" campaign in Belgium with the Thailand Mango product. Fanta Mango will only be available for 4 or 5 months. Later this year, another variety from another exotic country will follow. In the last few years, Fanta has been increasing its number of tastes to six: orange, lemon, "skwiizz" (previously known as "pomelo"), "Pink Kiss" (diet raspberry), "Icy Lemon" (diet lemon) and "Funky Orange" (diet orange).



Fourteen bloggers in Belgium have received a similar package as I did today. Ogilvy Interactive, part of the worldwide group Ogilvy and Mather, organized a Blogstorm last July with Dutch and Belgian bloggers, to exchange ideas and to learn about the medium. Now they are putting things into practice for this Fanta campaign. But as Franky Willekens from Ogilvy told me beforehand: "This is just a very small experiment. Don't put your expectations too high".

OTHER SODA-RELATED ARTICLES ON THIS BLOG:
In English:

• The Coke Index

• Coke Light, Fashion Edition
• Quoting Annemie Neyts about Coke, Fanta and globalisation
• Coke Wars
• De cola-index