Blue Collar Energy Drink

According to MediaPost's Out to Launch, Coca-Cola is going after the worker crowd with their new energy drink Full Throttle:

"Targeting a blue collar demographic, Coke wrapped 14 brand new Cement Trucks with Full Throttle creative and equipped each truck with a Female Full Throttle Brand Influencer/Sampler. Each Full Throttle Cement Truck drives a specific route and stops at construction sites, manufacturing plants, Home Depots and other relevant locations/events."

For me, this is a really interesting case of targeting. During college, I worked for Red Bull as a Student Brand Manager. Now for Red Bull, it's all about the young adult influencer...the extreme sport athletes, the all-night club goers and the big men/women on campus. For years, Coke & Pepsi tried to hit the same target with their Amp and KMX products and met with no success. It looks like Coke has finally faced that fact and is going after the blue collar beer drinking crowd instead. It will be interesting to see how it work, especially as blue collar brands like Budweiser launch their energy beer "B to the E". But nonetheless, it looks like finally companies are accepting that they need to use targeting to carve up the energy drink market instead of doing a one-size fits all approach.