Coke's Personalized Package

Although this is not something happening recently, I just read about this campaign today which will be copied in the US market. I really love personalized product and merchants can easily capitalize on me. One month ago, when in Orlando, I specially look for key chain with my name (now it rests on my desk.. not use it). Apple also shows the emphasis by providing engraving service for customers.

Personalized products can have two side effects. On one hand, consumers may feel closer to the brand and increase purchase probability. One the other hand, the brand itself may be neglected as people focus their personalized feature.

For small brands, this strategy may be risky when lots of players are utilizing it as people will not feel the special. For big brands, I personally see great potential not only for Coke but also for PC manufacturer and some other mass product. and the cost can be compensated from the economy of scale and borrow resources from marketing expense.

But when it comes to China, difficulty occurs as it will be so weird to have my Chinese Last name on the bottle. And due to the diversified first names in China, you can not capture the full name of people. You may argue that we can try to produce the names used most often. However, those popular names always are considered as tacky, not-knowledgeable which may show that you come from a family without a great   education background. So what I think will work better may be just character instead of the full name. And a good association would be character with Chinese calligraphy for bottle water product and PC product.