Coca-Cola makes Happiness Online
The big slogan shows on Coca-Cola’s Tumblr states that it is the place “Where happiness lives online”. As one of the most successful advertising companies, Coca-cola does a great job on online marketing and has the high level of using social media. This blog is going to analyze and figure out the way that Coca-Cola uses social media platforms. The company uses social media to increase its publicity and attract potential customers by trying multiple social media marketing strategies, offering customer care via social media platforms and using the Internet to reasonably change the marketing plan.
Firstly, there is no argument that Coca-Cola is good at using several social media marketing strategies. Open its any social media account that is listed on the official website, and it is not hard to notice that most of the posts combine with pictures or videos of Coca-Cola’s commercials. In other words, these posts involve at least 2 forms of visuals in one post. According to the result of HubSpot study of B2B and B2C companies in 2012, the posts that include visuals can get 120% more engagement than the text-based posts. Now is a quite fickle age, people get much variable information from many resources, as the study shows that the most efficient way to let people’s fingers stop swiping up to the next post is to include any forms of visuals in the posts. Go over every post on Coca-Cola’s Facebook page, all of them are the mixed messages which include texts and pictures or videos, and the texts are clear and simple in just one sentence. Most of the visuals that upload are the videos that less than 10 seconds or GIFs. The way to figure out if a commercial is attractive is to evaluate how many customers still watch after 3 seconds. It shows Coca-Cola has a great understanding of social media users’ habits and what kinds of information are attractive. The shorter ads are, the better effects create. Also, Coca-Cola tries different social media platforms instead of just using one. On Coca-cola website for Canada region, it lists 7 common contacting methods. These social media platforms are all the most popular Apps that people use today from blogging to vlogging, and the company timely updates the news on all of its accounts in different social media platforms in order to make the information release to all fans at the same time. Through those social media platforms, It is necessary for Coca-Cola to use word-of-mouth strategy well. For example, once Coca-Cola had a promotion tab on its Facebook page called “Ahh-Giver”. It was a simple e-card program. People could use the ecard they received from their friends to get free Coke products. According to sharing Coca-Cola’s page, Coca-Cola can easily have network flow and more followers as potential customers. The associate director of Public Relations Society of America Ketich Trivitt described it seemed like Coca-Cola’s Facebook page were just full of massive advertisements, but the frequent conversations happen between Coca-Cola company and its customers and fans because of the company’s efficient marketing strategy via these ads.
Secondly, Coca-Cola also offering its customer care on the social media platforms. The social media is the best place to have frequent interactions with customers because it does not hinder from the geographic issues. The blogger Kevin Shively mentioned in his article that “ 83% of Coca-Cola’s Tweets in the last month (April 2012) were direct @Replies.” This action can let its fans know Coca-Cola loves its loyal customers, and these Tweets are the best publicity to get more potential customers by creating a friendly and lovely appearance and mentioning its kindly customer service. Otherwise, frequency Tweets and updates can keep the vitality of a company. Coca-Cola has the different management method of social media accounts from other companies. Instead of buying existed accounts, it chooses to hire those “Creators” to take responsibilities for accounts updating and operating. For example, here is a secret of Coca-Cola’s Facebook page. The official page was not created by Coca-Cola company. Page Creators were 2 Coca-Cola fans who did not find its official page on Facebook. Instead of solving in the traditional way that other companies do such as buying the accounts from the creators or letting the creators change the page names that avoid holding the company’s registered name, Coca-Cola decided to hire creators and let them continually manage the Facebook page with company’s professional guide and information control. Sometimes fans can do the things that employees can not do because fans much clearly know what market and fans really want. Although Fans may do not have the professional managing skills, they are the loyal customers that the company should keep for further growth. Therefore, fandom is powerful and essential, and the suggestions from fans are useful, too. Meanwhile, in order to have more new potential customers, Coca-Cola always seeks more effective ways to attract people. “Coke TV” is an excellent example of that. It is a related YouTube channel of Coca-Cola official commercial account. The channel had created many episodes that are about different topics. These videos aim to challenge some”missions” that are popular topics around the teenagers such as gaming. Coke TV invites famous teen Youtubers as the guests, and the videos are shooting in vlogging style. Different ages have different transmitting ways. According to the report by Common Sense MediaOn average, teenagers spend 9 hours per day on average on social media platforms and 34% of their video time is spending on YouTube. Therefore, YouTube has become a new platform for companies to have marketing competition. Coke TV appears much earlier than other companies such as its biggest competitor Pepsi, and it really brings more young customers to the company. Until now, the channel for Coke TV of Canada has 37,017 subscribers. The Youngs always are the target marketing for most of the companies, and keeping loyal customers is also relevant for the operation of a company. As a result, Coca-Cola makes a very successful innovation on YouTube.
Coca-Cola uses social media to attract customers, and social media makes the company understand the customers and market as well. Like other companies, Coca-Cola like to join the online challenges. In 2014, “The Ice Bucket Challenge” happened almost half of that year. Coca-Cola also participated in this non-profit activity. The Vice president of Coca-Cola Wendy Clark accepted the challenge, she recorded the video with the mascot. The challenge was the hottest topic at that summer. After the video uploaded on its official account, it received a lot of positive comments and created its nice publicity again as well. Also, Coca-Cola uses the common online advertising strategy such as Supporting large national and international activities. The advantage of that is to build a connecting memory for people to remember the brand. For example, the commercial of mini coke (Hulk vs Ant-Man vs Coke Mini) appeared in 2016 Super Bowl and got 58,532 views and 19,550 likes on Coca-Cola’s Instagram account. It was a brilliant way to release a new product and got people’s attentions. At last but not least, data statistics via social media helps Coca-Cola launch targeted ads to its existed and potential customers. Like Benjamin Brimy, the VP of media at IPG’s Ansible, said that “Unlike text-based targeting, which can often be ambiguous, pictures provide more nuanced and subtle context.” As above mentioned, today the posts on social media have more visuals elements instead of just texting. Photos and videos can more clearly and directly reflect individual’s daily hobbies. That means nowadays the platforms can offer companies more detailed data to use. For example, Coca-Cola used picture date analyzing when it wanted to release its Gold Peak brand. Before it launched ads, the company analysed customers’ interest through their pictures posted on social media platforms such as Instagram instead of text-based post on the blog website, and then the system picked and served users who may be interested in ice tea based on the results. It makes the serving more targeted. Rather than Coca-Cola uses social media platforms to run the company, social media helps Coca-Cola objectively understand the market as well.
Coca-Cola is a company that has talented methods of using social media, benefits from its online customer care and is consulting by social media. The company is using multi-visual posting way to update its information now, and it does not only have one individual official social media account. Coca-Cola is willing to seek and try different new stuff on social media such as creating Youtube Channels, using fandom power, join the hottest social topics and so on. Overall, as a successful international company, Coca-Cola knows how to efficiently using advertising such as supporting many activities, and it also can use the customer data via social media properly. Overall, Coca-Cola brings the happiness to the customers while the company is growing positively.
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