Coca-Cola Leveraging Social To Drive Leadership in Social Media Marketing

Gone are the days when companies like Coca-Cola could rest on their laurels and rely on their global brand image to capture market share.  As Noreen O’Leary cites in her Adweek Article “How the World’s Most Iconic Brand Was Saved From Itself”, Coke ‘recognized the dire need to get back into the cultural conversation in order to become relevant and modern’ and appeal to a new generation. Through dramatic projects such as Coca-Cola.TV, Coca-Cola.FM and live-streaming music events, Coca-Cola has shown the world how revolutionary they can be and how this type of marketing evokes emotional, long-lasting customer engagement.

I’ve previously written about Coca-Cola turning its focus toward direct engagement with users via social media infrastructure and big data and how embracing social software has empowered big brands like Coke to leverage the powers of social. With marketing communication strategies evolving, Coca-Cola is looking to capitalize on the ever-changing landscape. Wisely recognizing the power of owning its own content and democratizing access to it, Coca-Cola has partnered with Thismoment to design a concept called “Pantry.” As communicated in a joint press release, “Pantry provides Coca-Cola with the ability to consolidate valuable content and democratize access to it. Through a central registry, regional content rights, analytics, discoverability, collaboration, future-proofing and a simple, easy-to-use interface, Pantry provides Coca-Cola with the ability to execute the revolutionary strategy it envisioned.”

Successful brand marketers like Coca-Cola understand that traditional marketing disciplines must be supplemented with new models rich with content, engagement, conversation, and analytics – the essence of social commerce. As big brands need to create an even better brand experience and empower their marketers with tools that will allow them to do so simply and effectively, more and more companies are turning to social software solutions to provide them the advantage they need to stay ahead of the curve.

In speaking with John Bara, the CMO of Thismoment, about how companies like Coca-Cola are able to continuously stay on top of the brand marketing pyramid, he shared “The youth audience is on line all the time. The ultimate objective of savvy social marketers is to reach and engage the audience anytime including on mobile devices. Marketers need a social marketing system which can help them and their agencies share, re-use and distribute content across all social end points and devices.”

As Javier Sanchez Lamelas, former Vice President of Marketing for Latin America and current Vice President of Europe at The Coca-Cola Company, espouses in the release – to continuously develop successful strategies that break new ground and lead to deeper engagement, powerhouses like Coca-Cola must align themselves with technology companies that enable them to crystalize their ultimate vision and go beyond the unexpected.