About Coca-Cola
The Coca-Cola company is the world’s largest beverage company, refreshing consumers with more than 500 sparkling and still brands. It is an American multinational, manufacturer, retailer and marketer of world’s largest selling non-alcoholic beverages and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The Coca-Cola company comes with a long history dating back more than 130 years. Today, it is considered to be the world’s 3rd most valuable brand that touches over millions of hearts. The company has more than 500 brands and sub-brands, of which Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta, Diet Coke and Minute Maid tops the list. Coca-Cola company reaches over 200 countries and ‘Open Happiness’ for all.
Business Objective
Mission:
1. To refresh the world
2. To inspire moments of happiness and optimism through their brands and actions
3. To create value and make a difference
Vision:
- People: Be a great place to work where people are inspired to be the best they can be
- Portfolio: Bring to the world a portfolio of quality beverage brands that anticipate and satisfy people’s desires and needs
- Partners: Nurture a winning network of customers and suppliers, together we create mutual, enduring value
- Planet: Be a responsible citizen that makes a difference by helping build and support sustainable communities
- Profit: Maximize long-term return to shareowners while being mindful of our overall responsibilities
- Productivity: Be a highly effective, lean and fast-moving organization
Core Objective
The Coca-Cola company believes in being a brand that inspires creativity, passion, optimism and fun. It wants to be globally recognized as a company that conducts business ethically. Sustainability is such a critical aspect of Coca-Cola marketing and it wants to ensure sustainable growth.
Approach/ Strategy adopted
Coca-Cola on Social: Coca-Cola has succeeded in attracting millions of fans through the social media platform, which isn’t that surprising as it’s one of the most recognizable brands in the world. They have reached fans not only nationally or internationally but also in remote places to make an impact. Coca-Cola’s both social media marketing and ad-campaigns have brought in a revolutionary change in their visibility. Back in 2009, Coca-Cola launched ‘Open Happiness’, a globally integrated advertising campaign. The objective behind this campaign was to increase sales as it was the post-recession phase where the sales numbers took a dip. This campaign highlighted the happiness behind small things in life and simple pleasure out of it.
‘In 2013, Coca-Cola set out to break boundaries and create that simple connection between two nations, India and Pakistan. The initiative ‘Small World Machines’ provided a real time communication portal between India and Pakistan and showcased what unites us is stronger than what sets us apart. The key to engaging with each other through the machines was simple: people in India and Pakistan could complete a task, like touching hands, drawing peace, love, and happiness symbols – together. It brought nations together in minutes.
Coca-Cola utilizes majority of well-known social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and Flickr.
YouTube:
YouTube was the first social media platform Coca-Cola joined. Their first ever YouTube channel went live on January 1, 2006. At present, they have 677, 555 subscribers and millions of views on each post.
Facebook:
Coca-Cola today has over 96 million fans on Facebook. Coca-Cola page on Facebook is much active and engaging now than it used to be in the past. They’d hardly share an article or two in a month which has now moved up to two posts minimum every week. It publicizes its ads, endorsements, applications and games on FB. It is encouraging fan interaction by posting content such as fill in the blanks which takes users seconds to respond to. Facebook is the dominant network for reach. The ‘Small World Machines’ video was launched via Facebook on May 19, 2013. In the first 15 days of the campaign, the video received 26,205 likes and 6608 shares. Coca Cola also has fan pages for its other products like Coca Cola Zero, diet coke. Diet coke has around 2.5 million fans and Coca Cola Zero has around 6.8 million fans despite the fact that it is updated very rarely.
Twitter:
Coca Cola’s main twitter feed has 3.11 million followers and has tweeted 143 thousand times which makes it a very active brand amongst others. It also has dedicated pages for various products and sub brands including diet coke, coke zero, etc. The social team at the company rarely post any straightforward marketing messages and instead primarily use twitter to respond to @mentions. It responds to a lot of complaints, requests, compliment, etc. But not all mentions are answered many of the mentions go unanswered but this is a nice strategy rather than pushing out marketing messages. Compared to their main Coca Cola page their diet coke page adopts a different approach and is mainly used for tweeting marketing messages, asking questions, etc.
Pinterest:
Coca-Cola’s Pinterest account is really quite interesting as there’s only one board that relates to a specific Coca-Cola ad campaign, while the others are all images that focus on a random theme. It’s the kind of thing that’s fairly typical of major brands on Pinterest and is by far the least interesting of its six boards. The other five are themed around vague topics such as ‘Be Together’, ‘Keep Discovering’ and ‘Be Active’. They include some great photos, all of which are taken form Flickr so none of it links back to Coca-Cola’s own websites, which is a trap that many brands fall into.
Instagram:
Instagram is one of the latest booming social media platforms and Coca-Cola has tapped this market too. Today, they have over 1 million followers and over 480 posts on their Instagram page and it is growing every day.
Results Achieved
Coca cola as we know is one of the largest beverage company and exports their products in more than 200 countries and this account for 55% of its sales (i.e outside US). Coca cola’s important international markets are Asia, Latin America, Europe that accounts for 33% of revenue, combined. According to the 2007 annual report , Coca Cola sales distributed as follows:
• 43% in the US
• 37% in Mexico, India, Brazil, Japan and People’s Republic Of China
• 20% spread throughout the world
Learning
The success of the Coca Cola company revolves around five main factors:
1. Coca Cola is one of the most popular, trusted and the biggest brand all over the world (a unique and recognized brand)
2. Coca cola consistently offers product of highest quality to the consumers(quality)
3. Coca Cola uses and delivers innovative and creative marketing programs worldwide for e.g. social media marketing campaigns and ad campaigns(marketing)
4. Coca Cola is globally available and their products are bottled and distributed in more than 200 countries(Global availability)
5. They have been providing their consumers worldwide continually with new products for e.g. diet coke, coca cola zero, etc.
Image Credits: Coca cola
