Posts tagged ‘Coca-Cola’

November 3rd, 2009

Tips from Coca-Cola’s Marketing Strategy: New Social Media Experiment Highlights Happiness Around the Globe

cokeOne year, three adventurers, 206 countries and a whole lot of happiness – that’s the gist of Coke’s new social media initiative.

As part of Expedition 206, a team of three young people will visit more than 200 countries where Coke is sold.

The Mission: to discover what makes people happy and to share that joy with the rest of the world.  The journey will bring Coke’s “Open Happiness” campaign to life as the travelers meet people from different cultures and share their stories online.

The  Guides: After an extensive search, Coca-Cola selected nine finalists. Fans around the world will make the ultimate decision by voting at http://www.expedition206.com/ through Nov. 6. Anyone can vote once per day throughout the three-week voting period. The winning team will be announced Nov. 16 at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta.

The Adventure: The Expedition 206 journey will begin in Madrid on Jan. 1, 2010 and culminate at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta on Dec. 31, 2010. The expedition will make stops in cities big and small, visiting everyday people and marquee global events, such as the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Canada, the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, and the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, China.

New Media: The unique social media experiment will play out online at http://www.expedition206.com/, as well as on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr. As with other Coke social media initiatives, fans will drive the experience. In addition to selecting the travelers and following the journey, visitors to the Expedition 206 website and other online destinations can vote on where the team goes, what they do and who they visit in each country.

A Tradition of Happiness: “Coca-Cola has been inviting people around the globe to enjoy the simple things in life for more than 120 years, and that spirit of positivity and optimism is at the heart of Expedition 206,” said Cristina Bondolowski, Senior Global Brand Director at Coke.

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Here are some tips that you can use from Coke’s social media marketing strategy:

1. Pick an emotion that matches your product, and leverage it in your social media campaign. The marketing team at the Coca-Cola Company had lost its way for many years in the late 1990s and early 21st century. But they have their marketing mojo back and are leveraging it with their “Happiness” campaign. You can do the same thing Coca-Cola does — that is, pick an emotion that matches your brand essence and promote it vigorously via social media.

2. Match your marketing vehicle to your target market. Millennials love social media. They’re also a primary target market for Coca-Cola. When you match the two together, you have a winning combination. The same holds true for the other end of the spectrum — if your target market is age 55+, you’ll want to run something like a direct mail campaign rather than a social media campaign. By matching your marketing vehicle to your target market, you’ll have a better ROI.

3. Get your consumers involved. A brand isn’t defined by positioning anymore. It’s defined by how people engage with your product or service. The Coca-Cola Company gets that and, as such, allows consumers to vote on the team, track their progress and engage with them in other ways, too. When you’re thinking about your brand, be sure to get your customers and prospects involved. The more involved they are with the campaign, the more successful your program will be.

4. Think really big. Really big. You don’t have to be Coca-Cola to leverage the world wide web. Anybody can do it, and that includes you. So be sure to think big and to think global — it’ll help you grow your market share and your revenue. Better still, you’ll be able to tell your CEO that “We’re using the same marketing tactics that the Coca-Cola Company does!”

Visit http://www.expedition206.com/ to learn more and vote for your favorite team.

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January 3rd, 2009

Pepsi Introduces New Brand Identity to Add a Spark to Sales.

The soft drink industry is a relatively mature industry (although you could argue that it’s a young industry in China, India and other developing nations). But in the United States, carbonated sugar water will have to work harder and harder to generate the kind of returns they did in the 19th and 20th century.

For more information on the Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola marketing wars, just type "Coke vs. Pepsi" into the search button on the right hand column.

When an industry is mature, you, as a marketer, have to find increasingly innovative ways to add a spark to sales. That’s why Coca-Cola introduced the uniquely-shaped plastic bottles several years back (which, apparently, was just what the brand needed to see a bump in sales).

Last week, PepsiCo introduced a new brand identity for it’s flagship brand Pepsi. The company tends to noodle with its logo much more frequently than Coke because of its strategy to focus on youth and innovation. (For more on this, visit the Marketing That Works blog from 60 Second Communications, where you’ll find a posting called “Why is the Coca-Cola Brand More Valuable Than the Pepsi Brand?”)

In any case, Pepsi has jazzed up their logo and, in our opinion, have done a pretty good job with it. Sure, you could argue that there have been better attempts in the past, but we think this one is pretty good.

What do you think? Should they have changed their logo again? How’d they do this time?

Let us know your thoughts.

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September 23rd, 2008

Coca-Cola, Interbrand and a Book Called “Branding Only Works on Cattle.”

Once again, Coca-Cola has taken the top spot in Interbrand’s list of the world’s most valuable brands. As is often the case, IBM and Microsoft followed closely behind. Google had a good run of events as well, jumping from #20 to #10 in just one year.

This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about Interbrand’s annual report in this blog. The report is essentially a barometer to test the “value” of any particular brand. But in a new book out by Jonathan Salem Baskin called “Branding Only Works on Cattle,” Mr. Baskin challenges the “math” behind Interbrand’s approach.  The book is worth buying if only because of the wonderful way in which Mr. Baskin disassembles Interbrand’s formula. Mr. Baskin’s point-of-view is summed up quite nicely at the end of this passage when he states, “This isn’t math, it is religious scripture, created to reaffirm belief to the flock while ginning up enough obfuscation to dissuade nonbelievers.”

But to say that’s the only time Mr. Baskin shouts “the emperor has no clothes” would be a disservice to the book. In fact, the main premise of the book is pretty extraordinary — that is, that the branding people who tell you it’s about what people think have it all wrong. It’s not what people think about your brand that’s important, it’s how people behave with your brand.

It’s a deceptively simple premise, but one that has profound implications. Baskin writes about Gillette’s introduction of the new Fusion — a five-bladed razor that consumers haven’t embraced. Why? Because it was built on a faulty premise of how consumers think about shaving, rather than how they want to behave when they shave. (Lagging sales would indicate that consumers want to behave by buying a simpler, less expensive shaving solution.)

Just when you thought you’d read everything you needed to about branding, along comes Mr. Baskin’s book that turns everything on its head. Mr. Baskin says that one of the most sacred tenets in marketing — brand theory — needs to be reinvestigated and turned upside down.

To be sure, the book offers plenty of arguable premises. For example, even though the Interbrand approach may include some arguable assumptions, it’s still the best thing we have. And, at a bare minimum, the Interbrand solution can be used as a way to compare your brand’s value relative to your competitor’s and that, in an of itself, has some value.

In any case, “Branding Only Works on Cattle” is a smart, insightful, well-written book that’s worth taking a spin through.  If you like Mr. Baskin’s approach, you can also follow him on Dim Bulb, his blog about marketing and branding.

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August 18th, 2008

Coca-Cola, Oreo, Visa and GE Score Big with Olympic TV Ads

Today’s Wall Street Journal highlights a report from Nielsen IAG outlining the best-liked ads with Olympic themes that aired in NBC’s prime-time coverage. It looks as though emotion-driven spots from Coca-Cola, Oreo, General Electric and Visa are the big winners.

Nielsen IAG looked at 9,000 surveys of NBC Olympic viewers to come up with their list of the Top 10 Most Remembered and Liked Ads. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Participants regularly log into an IAG Web site and answer questions about TV shows and ads they saw in the past 24 hours.” The results of the survey can be seen by visiting WSJ.com/Olympics.

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