Coca-Cola Company Background
Coca-Cola Company BackgroundThe Coca-Cola Company is an American historical multinational beverage corporation and manufacturer, retailer, and marketer of nonalcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups, which is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. It is the known as the world’s largest beverage company, that refreshes its consumers with more than 500 sparkling and still brands. The company and its bottling partners are focussing on five key areas in this decade, viz., profit, people, portfolio, partners and planet. The company has the strongest portfolio of brands in the non-alcoholic beverage industry, that now features around 20 brands, which generate more than $1 billion USD in annual retail sales. The company believe in operating its global business on a local scale, in every community where ever it does its business.
Background of the Campaign
In 2012, Coca-Cola Company launched its flawless digital platform campaign called “Share a Coke”. This integrated campaign was launched in Britain as well as is in Australia. The soft drink mogul replaced its usual branding with 150 of the country’s most popular names. It was a multimedia effort, with TV adverts, billboards, and experimental marketing in the form of Coca-Cola tours where participants could have their own custom made bottles. The main success was through the digital platform, wherein each bottle carried the hashtag #shareacoke, in order to pursue users to share bottles with their names on social media.
Strategies used in the Campaign
1. Consumers were encouraged to participate and create online media content:
The company was able to encourage enormous consumers to generate massive amounts of social media contents by specifically targeting the consumers who are extensively using social media to share photos and stories. Coca-Cola company gave full creative control and brand ownership to such consumers, inducing people to feel like they were not promoting the company so much rather they were starting their own social media conversations. This gave a way to the multiplatform conversations on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
2. The Company connected the brand with the consumers at a personal level:
The company admitted that the new fad in the market is personalisation and its campaign meets to that fad in all prospective way. The consumers placed a high value on self-expression, individual storytelling and staying connected with friends. The “Share a Coke” campaign gave this ability to all its consumers along with promoting its own brand name. For example, when a consumer shares a name-branded Coke bottle with her mother, she feel as she is honouring her mother rather than promoting Coke brand itself. Furthermore, by taking and sharing photos with the #shareacoke hashtag drive more personal online media content that increases share ability.
3. The Company used Powerful Calls to Action in the campaign:
The campaign’s main slogan, “Share a Coke,” itself is a great call-to-action phrase. It induces consumers to buy a Coke in physical and also share their Coke stories online. The company tried to make the slogan very catchy and easy to remember whereby making the call to action sticky which induced consumers to remember it.
Results
The Coca-Cola Company’s, “Share a Coke,” was such an enormous hit in both the countries. The revenues of the company see a huge soar. The young to adult consumption of the Coke was up by 7%, whereby the year of 2012 and 2013 were really successful in all manners to the company. A whopping of 18,300,000 plus media impressions were visible all around the country, thereby, giving the brand its enormous recognition amongst its consumers. Furthermore, the traffic of social media sites of the Coke such as Coke Facebook site increased by 870% and that on its Facebook page grew by whopping 39%. Around 76,000 virtual Coke cans were shared online and 378,000 custom Coke cans were printed at Westfield malls across the country. Moreover, over the campaign, the company was able to create an image of its brand which the teens adults and oldies claimed that it gave them a very positive impression of the Coke.
Learnings from this campaign
Share a Coke turns out to one of the most outstanding and compelling campaigns in the history of the Coca-Cola Company. The overarching theme set up by the company gave Share a Coke campaign its edge over any other campaigns. The theme was to reach out to its consumers by replacing the company’s logo with individual’s names and in turn speak to the people as individuals. The campaign showed that when personalisation works it can be highly engaging and effective.
Furthermore, we can learn from this campaign is that, in the world of social media and digital marketing, personalisation only works if its is something that can be shared with the community as a whole. This campaign not only provides people with a reason to share, but also provide ways to share in their own way that is, there is a choice, it is customised and left up to the consumers to be creative in how and when to use it.
Moreover, we learned from this campaign that tools like social media has a very powerful impact and can be utilised in a customised way to suit to the needs of the consumers and company itself.
Share a Coke campaign spoke to the consumers as individuals, while making them feel more connected to the brand and to one another, which turns to be the secret of success of this campaign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l0cCyElfgg
Image Credits: Coca-Cola
