Coca-Cola has built an active presence on various
social media platforms without much effort by the company as the brand is
hugely popular and integral part of the daily lives of the people across the
world. Moreover Coca-Cola’s customers themselves have been active on various
social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Google+,
etc. A key step forward was made I the
year 2012 when the company announced Content marketing Strategy 2020 where in
the company moved from moving from “Creative Excellence” to “Content
Excellence” Creative excellence has always been at the heart of Coca Cola’s
advertising particularly the 30 second Television Ads and they have decided
that content is now the key to marketing in the 21st century on a social web. Consumer
engagement and collaboration model was adopted where in Consumers
ideas, creativity and conversations on various social networks are tracked and
use them to increase brand visibility and market the products. The purpose of
content excellence is to create “Ideas” that are viral and uncontrolled
which is called “liquid content”. Coca-Cola adopted 70/20/10 Investment
principle to creating “Liquid content“, 70% of content should be low risk that
pays the rent and is bread and butter marketing (also easy to do and consumes
50% of time), 20% of content creation should innovate off what works and 10% of
content marketing is high risk ideas that may be tomorrows 70% or 20%
or will fail.
The Coca-Cola
Facebook Page is a collection of customer stories showing how people from
around the world have helped make Coke into what it is today. Most of the
content on the page is consumer created and the company’s focus is on maintaining the brand image and raising awareness of
its ad campaigns. Coca-Cola,
which joined Facebook in 2008, has garnered close to 75 million likes by
engaging customers and fans actively and less focus on product promotion and
more on its fans. Coca-Cola's success has been achieved through statuses,
updates, videos and photos that increase customer engagement and interaction,
supporting various social causes and integrating other forms of social media.
Apart from promoting the widely popular Polar Bears campaigns, Olympics and Euro 2012 ad campaigns, Coke’s social
team post questions and run polls often, but pictures and photos that are
shared generate significant response from fans in terms of comments and
‘likes’. Coca-Cola also has a number of Facebook apps, including one called
‘When will happiness strike’ that is basically a video real of its ads and
another called ‘Ahh Giver’ that allows users to send a personalised message and
a free Coke to a Facebook friend. Coca-Cola also has Facebook pages for its
other products such as Diet Coke and Coke Zero, however these have far fewer
fans. But interesting fact is that Coca Cola did not start the Facebook page
first, it was started by the company fans, and it is created by its loyal
consumers. It all changed when Facebook introduced new rules
which mandated that brand pages must be administered by the brands themselves
and Coke decided to keep the existing page but manage it themselves rather that
they starting a new page.
Coca-Cola realized the fact that only traditional advertising is no longer
relevant it has to be supported by active social media presence where customers
actively engage by sharing opinions, videos, stories and photos and this
highlights the fact that the company cares.