Social Media Strategy Coca-Cola – Employee Engagement & Active Monitoring

Coca-Cola understands the importance and value of direct brand conversation facilitated by social media platforms. Company has expanded its marketing strategy and included social media marketing into it as customers are looking to engage with the company on various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Coca-Cole went even further encouraging their employees to actively participate and engage with customers on various social media platforms. Employees actively engage in millions of conversations that take place on various social networking sites and share the optimistic and positive spirits of Coca-Cola brands.  Social Media Principles guide the employees in terms of how to participate both at the personal level and official capacity and mostly surround on the principle of “Have fun, but be smart.  Use sound judgment and common sense, adhere to the Company’s values, and follow the same Company policies that you follow in the offline world.” The company also provides the relevant training to employees and agency partners through internal online learning portals and also evaluates them and update accordingly. Company expects the employees and agency partners use blogs and other social media tools not only as a form of self-expression, but also as a means to further the Company’s business, aware of the implications of engaging in social media and online conversations that reference the Company, its brands, or its business, and that they recognize when the Company might be held responsible for their behavior. 

Coca-Cola also has made certain commitments as highlighted on the company’s website for the customer engagement on various social networking sites like transparency in the social media engagements, protection of consumers’ privacy and comply with applicable privacy policies, IT security policies, and laws, rules, and regulations, respect copyrights, trademarks, rights of publicity, and other third-party rights, responsible use of technology by not aligning with any organizations or Web sites that use excessive tracking software, adware, malware or spyware and judicially monitor behavior of employees and consumers in the social media space, establish appropriate protocols for monitoring social media presence, and keep appropriate records of our participation as required by law. Coca-Cola Social Media Monitoring strategy is first monitoring and reviewing what conversations related to Coke are going on the social media world, second respond to the chatter quickly and with accurate, fully transparent answers, third record short video pieces that respond to the chatter in an entertaining, but informative manner and finally redirect social media users to other content on other social media sites. Coca-Cola also gives more importance to the fans and customers on the social media platforms and encourages them to post and share most of the content on the social networks and also aligned its marketing strategy accordingly. Coca-Cola social media strategy has been to influence purchase decisions and loyalty by leveraging the emotional ties people have with their products. This strategy has been hugely successful for the company as the statistics of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube highlight but the company feels that there still long way to go where social media generates hard sales so that company can increase revenues and profitability. 

Social Media Marketing Strategy @ Coca-Cola – Coke Facebook Strategy

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. 

Social Media @ Honda Motors - Honda Loves you back & #Hondainnovator series

Honda Motor Company had been using social networking sites since past five years and had been present on all the major social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest, etc.  Honda social media strategy is based around supporting business and corporate goals such as new product launches, corporate communications, public relations messages, tackling rumors, engaging with customers and communities like  fans/ racing community and more. Honda is effectively using the social networking sites to humanize the brand, keeping track of the conversations about the company, deliver key messages about their corporate social responsibility efforts on topics related to the environment and innovating new technologies, and also build relationships with journalists and bloggers. Another advantage of social media is to share customer stories around Honda products And Services, events or happenings that Honda fans might like to know about and also engage the customers, fans and others in such events.

Honda was recently given the first-ever "Driver Engagement" award at the Chicago Auto Show for the Japanese automaker's campaign, “Honda Loves You Back”. The Honda campaign showcased a music video from the band “Monsters Calling Home”, as the video was filmed inside one of the band member's Honda. The car company got the band booked on" Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in a symbolic gesture of giving back to fans of the brand. Social media campaigns like this help drivers connect more personally with a brand, as they can interact with a company by uploading their stories and photos.Since social media has become an integral part of marketing for most major car companies, the Chicago Automobile Trade Association decided to introduce a new award at the 2013 Chicago Auto Show to showcase the effectiveness of marketing through sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Recently Honda launched a social media program, the #HondaInnovator Series, in support of a TV ad for its 2013 Civic that emphasizes on inventors and innovation in various fields. The series also includes social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube to initaite conversations about innovation and the car itself, as well as the idea that progress never stops. In a series of six one-hour tweet chats, users will be able to submit questions to inventors featured in the Civic TV spot, like baby product company 4moms co-founder Henry Thorne, Waterfall Swing inventors Ian Charnas and Drew Ratcliff and 2013 Civic Senior Product Planner Jay Guzowski. Additional content will include: Facebook posts to introduce fans to the Innovator Series; behind-the-scenes photos from the commercial and an assortment of Civic images on Instagram; and a "Things Can Be Better" board on Pinterest. In addition, on YouTube, Honda has created a so-called Innovation Playlist featuring additional content tied to the inventors featured in the Civic TV spot. Honda says its Civic TV campaign ties Honda's philosophy of innovative thinking and continuous improvement to other inventors working to develop better solutions. Promotion will include sponsored posts on the social news site Buzzfeed, promoted tweets, promoted posts on Facebook, YouTube ads and search.

Early 2012 Honda Motors launched a unique promotional campaign on Pinterest, a pinboard-style photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, and hobbies. Users can browse other pinboards for images, ‘re-pin' images to their own pinboards, or 'like' photos.  Honda’s "Pintermission" campaign identifies top "pinners" and offers each one $500 to take a 24-hour break from Pinterest to explore some of the places or buy some of the products they've pinned about. Initially two women had been handed checks by Honda and are putting the money toward travel. The goal of the Pintermission campaign was to uniquely establish Honda’s new CR-V and promoted the vehicle’s “get out and live life” personality. Marketing the vehicle on Pinterest was a suitable choice, as target customers for this vehicle are young people on the edge of adulthood’s big milestones like marriage, children, etc. and young people plan those milestones on Pinterest. More than 4.6 million people were exposed to the #Pintermission boards, which produced more than 5,000 repins and almost 2,000 likes. Additionally, more than 16 million media impressions were garnered from the campaign.

Honda Motors social media presence include Facebook with close to 2.7 million likes, Twitter with close to 91,000 followers and more than 3,400 tweets, YouTube with close to 106,000 subscribers and more than 32 million video views and Pinterest with close to 6,600 followers. The company has also framed a Social Media policy and guidelines for its associates and employees that provide the rules and regulations they need to follow on social networking sites. Automobile industry is aggressively using the various social networking sites for marketing, customer service and customer engagement and they are allocating significant financial resources, appointing the relevant agencies that specialize in the social media and even recruiting exclusive managers as Social Media Managers within the company. Honda Motor Company has been using the social media effectively in its marketing, brand promotion, engaging customers and new product launches.

Case Study: Social Media presence of Goldman Sachs: Looking to improve presence

Despite being one of the biggest investor in Social Media companies like Facebook, Goldman Sachs presence on Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube is quite lackluster. Goldman Sachs joined Facebook in June 2009 and till now it has only 20,000 fans, mere 16,000 likes which is far below when compared to its peers in the Financial Services industry and also has many negative comments about the bank on the Facebook page. It started its twitter account in May 2012 and since then it has 22,000 followers and the twitter account highlights the events, work, research and employees.  Goldman Sachs official twitter account is nothing compared to a parody feed called @GSElevator Gossip, which has over 320,000 followers which reports the various conversations overheard in the bank’s elevators. Goldman Sachs LinkedIn presence has 90,000 followers and is limited to job openings, recruiting interns and informing about employee update and new hires. In February 2012, Goldman Sachs launched YouTube channel and it features videos of employees discussing careers; experts interviewed on topics such as the global economy; clients talking about relationship & work and its corporate citizenship programs. Goldman Sachs is looking to hire a fulltime social community manager who will manage its social media presence and will also monitor the activity.

The reason for such a lackluster presence for Goldman Sachs and slowly improving social media presence for most of the Banks and Financial Institutions is due to the stringent financial regulations by the regulators. Broker, dealers, Relationship managers must comply with very stringent regulations regarding communications with their clients which had become a negating factor. The SEC and FINRA quickly classified social media interactions as records just like emails or physical communications which means they must be archived and managed according to the same rules and which also means tight policing and steep sanctions these institutions face in terms of violations from the SEC/other regulators will also be applied to social media records. Most of the financial institutions were not confident that they could comply with such stringent regulations while using social media so they avoided using it. But there are significant benefits in using social media like advisors/traders/relationship managers can build trust with clients, network more effectively and use social media as a marketing tool for more business and with new tools available that help in archiving and managing social media interactions effectively, Goldman Sachs and other Financial institutions & banks have been actively improving their social media presence. Social Media policy is in place and employees are being trained in terms of how to utilize and manage the social media presence, regulatory aspects and precautions to be taken during client interactions is also provided to all the client facing teams.

Banks & Financial Institutions need to understand that the new era financial customers, clients and public are social media savvy users which also has become an active part of their day to day lives and Social media is disrupting the financial industry with the emergence of social media real time money, investment and trading communities and crowd financing which is funding new players. All the above factors have forced the financial institutions to enter the open and transparent world of Social media. Goldman Sachs too is following and improving presence.