Soft drinks giant moves entire category up into third place, featuring heavily in all five major multiples with footie offers

When monitoring promotional activity in the main power aisle, it is obvious the larger brands and companies will dominate. In future Promotrack features, Assosia will regularly look at newcomers to the featured space aisles who may not have the same budgets as the bigger brands, and also at activity within the independent retailers.
However, with World Cup fever truly upon us, we could not help but report the activity of its primary "grocery" sponsors: Anheuser Busch&'s Budweiser, Coca-Cola and Gillette.
Looking at Coca-Cola first, the brand&'s relentless activity has ensured the soft drinks category moves into third position in the branded category chart. Not a unique feat in itself, but when taking the top five brands in the soft drinks category, Coca-Cola accounts for a staggering 63% of activity - 50% ahead of nearest rivals Pepsi-Cola and Lucozade.
The mighty brand featured in all five major multiples with the majority of offers being three for £3.30 on its 2-litre skus.
Coca-Cola has ensured its continued dominance in this sector by launching Coca-Cola Zero and the limited edition 250ml football-shaped PET bottles in support of its World Cup sponsorship.
While health, beauty, baby has moved to fourth position below soft drinks in the category chart, Gillette&'s activity has also increased overall with the brand taking the top spot from Colgate (which has moved to second). No specific sponsorship activity was recorded around the brands in store this week, but it would appear Gillette has chosen to increase its activity on recognition of brand alone, without highlighting the World Cup tie-in.
Disappointingly for Anheuser-Busch, only two retailers recorded featured space promotional activity for the Budweiser brand, leaving it
at the bottom of the beers, wines and spirits category - a slide of 13% from last week&'s recorded activity and meaning it is overtaken by Carlsberg, Carling and John Smith&'s.
Kay Staniland