Abstract

This paper explores social media marketing, its functions and best practices. By examining uses and gratifications theory and the “groundswell,” this paper analyzes how to best use social media. Two campaigns of beverage giant Coca-Cola is examined and analyzed. Expedition 206 followed three bloggers on their mission to find happiness on a trip around the world, and 24-Hour Session with Maroon 5 examines an interactive song-writing session with the pop band Maroon 5.

Introduction

Social media is a driving force in the field of communication and marketing and is only getting larger. This phenomenon is changing the way marketing has been done in years past. Instant feedback and connecting first hand with your audience are only two of the benefits. This paper will showcase a large corporation utilizing various social media platforms that can serve as a model for future organizations.

Coca-Cola is a well-respected brand in the food and beverage industry and has been known for its high sales and community involvement. The company is actively involved in several social media platforms and their engagement can help serve as the foundation for a social media marketing plan.

Background of Coca-Cola

The Coca-Cola Company is the world's largest beverage company and is the leading producer and marketer of soft drinks. Today, Coca-Cola is consumed throughout the world at the rate of more than 600 million times per day and this figure is continuing to rise. However, Coca-Cola is not the sort of company to live on its past glories; instead it looks to the future as a challenge and constantly seeks new markets and ways of increasing its market share in areas where it currently has a strong presence. It is the world's largest producer and distributor of syrups and concentrates for soft drinks. Products developed by the Company are sold through bottlers, fountain wholesalers and distributors around the globe.

Social MediaSocial media is an imperative public relations and marketing tool for companies to utilize in their business practices. It allows companies to have more of a relationship with their customers and acts as another means of information. However, since it cannot be regulated, users are free to post what they please about the company, whether it is good, bad or ugly. Social media is developing rapidly and there are new platforms daily, making it necessary for companies to not only be familiar with those platforms, but also know how to reach the consumer through them.

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Coca-Cola and Social Media

In general, company is very supportive of buying media within those realms. It’s like fishing where the fish are. Social media is where their consumers are at the moment. There’s no better way to amplify company’s’ message. If you’re building a major campaign and putting a lot of time and energy into enabling social and interactive aspects, you have to make sure people know about it.

Company strategy is to be everywhere their consumers are, but as a member of the community. That’s not to say that they think there’s anything wrong with big billboards in Times Square or Super Bowl commercials. There’s a time and a place for that. Within the social media marketing realm, their approach is to be a strong member of the community that’s enabling consumers to celebrate manifestations of the brand.

Snapshot of Social Media

Coca-Cola is active on numerous social media platforms. On the company’s website, there are direct links to take the viewer to each social networking site the company is involved with. Once a viewer travels to any of those pages, there are links and buttons to direct the viewer to other Coca-Cola social media pages. Currently the homepage has ‘buttons’ that link viewers to Coca-Cola’s profiles on Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Fans, Friends and Followers

Flickr: 116 sets of photosTwitter: 248,953 “followers”

26,422 tweets65,813 following

Facebook: 24,595,148 “likes”12,731 photos

YouTube: Joined January 1, 200625,897 subscribers18,740,566 total upload views5,197,822 channel views

Posts on Twitter and Facebook are conversational, engaging and rarely have a promotional feel. Interaction via YouTube is daily, new videos are updated frequently. Flickr photos are updated at events Coca-Cola holds or sponsors, the most recent being the 24-hour session with Maroon 5. On Facebook, Coca-Cola attempts to lessen the effects of the unregulated nature of the groundswell by establishing “House Rules” for those wishing to interact with Coca-Cola on the page:

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The Coca-Cola Co. launched a social media initiative in January 2010, dubbed Expedition 206. This social media push sent three bloggers on an all expense paid trip to 206 countries, or as many as they could visit in a year. The number 206 is significant because Coca-Cola products are sold in 206 countries. The goal of the campaign was to uncover what makes people “happy” as part of Coca-Cola’s “Open Happiness” campaign.22 Expedition 206 involved blogging, posting videos to YouTube and posting updates on Twitter. Part of the campaign involved the team taking part in events such as the Winter Olympics in Vancouver and meeting locals in various countries. The main goal of the campaign was not to have the Coca-Cola brand front and center, but rather to focus on optimism and joy, the attributes of what Coca-Cola is about.

The outcome of the campaign resulted in 650 million media contacts and billions of individuals involved both online and offline. The program created more visibility for the Coca-Cola brand in key markets like China. In some countries, this campaign was their first interaction with social media itself. Overall, the company’s goal was to increase the use of this marketing tool across the globe.

Coca-Cola and Maroon 5 set out to make music history by bringing band and fans together to write a song in 24 hours via social media. It was promoted across Facebook and Twitter along with help from bloggers across 20 countries. All tweets were posted on a 3D interactive wall in the studio. Limitations of the event include spammers, inappropriate messages and Internet browsers crashing. As stated above, a downfall of participating in the groundswell is that it cannot be controlled.

More than 350,000 views were logged onto the Coca-Cola live stream throughout the duration of the session and more than 25,000 fans tweeted their ideas and messages of support to @cocacola using the hashtag #withMaroon5 to the band in the studio.

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In both social media marketing campaigns, Coca-Cola followed best practices. They were human, knew what they wanted out of each campaign, listened to fans and followers and responded and paced their content so they were not overwhelming them. They injected themselves into the conversation, got feedback in real time, knew the audience and the platforms and created a user-centric experience.

By creating the buzz, Coca-Cola gave fans, friends and followers a reason to visit their sites. In essence, the company created a “need” for users to search the sites for information regarding campaign status and progress. Users benefitted from visiting the sites and communicating with Coca-Cola and Maroon 5 by feeling as if they had formed a relationship and were part of something unique.

Opportunities & Challenges

Effective use of social media brought great opportunities for Coca-Cola according to the above campaign success. Moving with fast-paced developments in online technology and interaction tools helped to enhance Coca-Cola brand, boost the profile and even created new business. It is now easier than ever for company to:

Directly target customers with marketing campaigns Promote new products or services Build brand awareness Personally interact with existing and potential customers Measure referrals from your social media activity to sales

There are so many social media tools and platforms it can be hard to know where to begin. Some of the main challenges that Coca-Cola faced during implementation of the above campaigns:

Achieve marketing goals by using social media Time to be devoted to social media The most effective platforms to use

Conclusion

Coca-Cola’s social media presence and engagement with consumers can serve as a model for large organizations to follow. This paper explored social media and featured practices of Coca-Cola. The uses and gratifications theory was observed, as well as the theory of the groundswell. Best practices for communicating on social media as well as strategies for successful viral marketing campaigns were also examined and then analyzed by looking at Coca-Cola’s social media presence and involvement with two social media campaigns.

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Future analysis that can be conducted could be a detailed description of Coca-Cola’s presence on a daily basis, and not just large campaigns. Only one day is analyzed in this paper, but more would be beneficial. This analysis could help predict trends like when the most users are active on social media and if that is the best time to reach them, when users have the most complaints or issues regarding a product and if the company is responding.

References & Bibliography

Bachfischer, N. (2011). Expedition 206: First Results of Coca Cola’s biggest Social Media Project. Aquarius Digital Potential Blog. Retrieved April 11, 2011.

Coca-Cola, Corporate. (2011, March 1). One Band. 24 Hours. A Brand New Song Inspired By Fans across the World. The Coca-Cola Company.

Cook, D. (2011, April 4). Maroon 5′s “Is Anybody Out There” Released As Free Download in Partnership with Coca-Cola. M is for Music. Retrieved April 11, 2011.

Fredricksen, C. (2009, December 30). Four Social Case Studies from Coca-Cola – The eMarketer Blog. EMarketer. Retrieved April 11, 2011.

Kirkby, J., & Marsden, P. (2006). Viral Marketing. Connected Marketing (pp. 87-107).

Warren, C. (2009, November 17). Inside Coca-Cola’s Social Media Strategy and Happiness Ambassador Program. Mashable. Retrieved April 11, 2011

Zmuda, N. (2009, November 17). Digital: Behind Coca-Cola’s Biggest Social-Media Push Yet | Digital - Advertising Age. AdAge Digital. Retrieved April 11, 2011.

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