My grandfather, a very traditional Nepali man was never for all things Western, but Coca-Cola, he could not resist. He would hand me a 20 Rupee note and say "Ja euta Coke laidey" (Go get me one Coke). It was never a can or a plastic bottle. For some reason, Nepal mostly consumed glass bottles of Coke.
I am not a frequent consumer, like my grandfather was, but I too, cannot resist a glass bottle of the Coca-Cola when I see one. It's not so much about the taste of what I'm drinking, it's about the memory. I think about my childhood, the Coca-Cola labels in all the shops, the redness of it, and the feeling I had handing over that bottle to my grandfather. Coca-Cola gives me a sense of nostalgia.In its traditional marketing, the Coca-Cola Company has been successful in tapping the crucial elements of human emotions. Because the company has separate branches in various countries, their traditional broadcast marketing has catered to the cultural differences and needs.
One thing is clear, branding is everything for Coca-Cola. And If there is any brand that is truly in the ownership of customers, it is this one. Hear a piece of Coke history from the PR legend Harold Burson:
My question: Coca-Cola has a vast worldwide following of customers who feel a strong entitlement towards the brand. How is the corporation faring in new media marketing, where the groundswell can make or break a brand with greater impact than ever before?
In answering this question, I have been monitoring Coca-Cola for the past few weeks through their website, their Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram accounts. I have also analyzed their social media presence through the analytic tools: Addictomatic, Google Trends, Social Bakers, Social Mention, and Ice Rocket.
Complications
In Researching Coca-Cola, I ran into complications caused by their multiple identities.
Results from the various tools I used varied according to the key word I used. I will present data resulting from the keyword "Coca-Cola" and "Coke" in attempt to retrieve accurate data. I will also look at data that presents a universal perspective on Coke. Right off the bat, I can say that consistency in how the groundswell identifies with Coca-Cola is something the company needs to work on.
- Coca-Cola, the beverage, also falls under the umbrella brand name: the Coca-Cola Company, which includes Sprite, Fanta, and many other beverages.
- The beverage itself is also referred to by the name Coke, which is also a short name for Cocaine.
- Coca-Cola is a world wide organization with various branches, making it difficult to track social media activity as a whole.
Results from the various tools I used varied according to the key word I used. I will present data resulting from the keyword "Coca-Cola" and "Coke" in attempt to retrieve accurate data. I will also look at data that presents a universal perspective on Coke. Right off the bat, I can say that consistency in how the groundswell identifies with Coca-Cola is something the company needs to work on.
Website
I tried finding the Coca-Cola website on Google, hoping that there is a general website that is different from websites for each country branch. I did not find exactly that but rather, something more efficient. When you enter the company's website, you are automatically taken to its US link.At the top of the page, there is a tab, through which you can access links to other country branches. Each branch is customized accordingly; however, the layout remains constant.
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| From Bangladesh Coke page |
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| From India Coke page |
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| From Russia Coke page |
At the top is a "Win A Trip for you Family"
announcement, which asks participants o share family photos under the hashtag MomentosCoke. The feature is personal and endearing and focuses on the spanish speaking community of the United States. It shows happiness, family, and perpetuates the idea of "sharing," which is crucial to Social Media marketing.
Coke also promotes its recent activities, social media platforms, new product concepts, and promotional videos on their webpage.
Animation is not common to Coke. For that reason, I find this video a little unrelatable. I miss the smiles of real people and the warmth that comes from that. However, the video is well placed in the website. It is their newest video and should be seen right off the bat. When you click on the tab at the top of the page that says "Coke in the USA," you get a categorized list of everything I initially expected to see on the home page. They have smartly used tabs to sort their multilayered brand.
"Coca-Cola Conversations" is a page dedicated to the conversations amongst the groundswell. The organization gives you direct access to everything that is being said about them. There is so much being said about Coke that it is smart of the company to promote it.
Google Trends
When looking at the worldwide interest through time, it is clear that against Coke is more popular amongst the groundswell compared to its biggest competitor, Pepsi. In terms of terminology, the term Coke is used for that Coca-Cola. Surprisingly, for me, the United States is not amongst the 7 countries with highest interest. Within the United States, "Coke" and "Coca-Cola" have the similar influxes as they do worldwide and the highest interest states are from the south. Both graphs show high interest towards the end of 2013. This might be a result of the "Share A Coke" campaign, which I will explore in the second part of my social monitoring blog.
Addictomatic
Unfortunately, for me, this tool was out of service and has not worked for the past few days. I get "no results" no matter what I type in the search bar.
Had it worked, I would have been able to retrieve the common topics that are being written about in relation to Coke on various social media outlets like Twitter and other blog venues.
Social Mention
Coca-Cola
Coke
The tool attempts to measure not only how often the brand is mentioned in the Social Media platform but also what type of conversations they are. Are they positive? Negative? Social Mention is unique because of its qualitative measurement. The tools picks out various words in conversations to measure the sentiment. The terms Coca-Cola and Coke appear to have very low negative sentiments and high positive sentiments. When looking at the the actual mentions, it is clear that the majority of conversations that relate to "Coke" are about the beverage and not the drug.
Having said that this is a useful tool, I am skeptical about the percentages in which the tool measures sentiments; there is too much room for misinterpretation. It is a machine after all. I believe the measurement of seconds in average per mention, the time of the last mention, and number of unique authors is less subjective and valuable.
Having said that this is a useful tool, I am skeptical about the percentages in which the tool measures sentiments; there is too much room for misinterpretation. It is a machine after all. I believe the measurement of seconds in average per mention, the time of the last mention, and number of unique authors is less subjective and valuable.
Unlike the well organized website, the company's various FB pages are confusing and detached from one another. Here are only a few.
What I found the least effective about the FB pages is that the Coca-Cola, Beverage page does not have posts from the company. You can view posts that people post on the page but Coke itself doesn't post anything. I would put a picture of people's post but I think penis pictures are not the most appropriate for this page! It appears as though Coca-Cola has left this page to be. There is no work put into it. This "about" section appears very false.The Coca-Cola Company page is well put together and has several and frequent posts from the company. However, most of the posts are very formal and appear impersonal.
The posts that are not some form of very formal promotion, they are too random. But they are a refresher from the rest of the posts that are boring. There is a big lack of conversation between the company and the groundswell.Most of the responses from the groundswell on these posts ask Coca-Cola to bring "Surge," one of Coca-Cola's old and discontinued products back. Coca-Cola has not responded to these posts. But they did bring back the product on Amazon. This means that Coke is listening to the groundswell but they are not talking to it.
Regardless of activity, however, the Coca-Cola page has much more traffic than the Coca-Cola Company page.
The most interesting Coke conversations on FB can be seen on the #Coke page. There is controversy, promotion, and praise.
Regardless of the problems seen with Coca-Cola's FB presence, Social Bakers shows that it is fastest growing page and the top brand on FB. I believe that this success can be credited to Coke's long existing popularity and not its social media tactics.
In comparison to its beverage competitors, Coke is faring well as well. The list below pertains to the United States.
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| From Social Bakers
While Coca-Cola is faring well on FB, the data above shows that on Twitter, their popularity falls far behind.
Here's more Twitter data from Ice Rocket:
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The page has a similar aesthetic feel to their FB page. There is only one Twitter account for Coke; thus, they cost diverse tweets like this one that addresses the South Asian New year. They post frequently.
Youtube
On Youtube, the company's popularity is not as high as it is on FB but it fares better than Twitter.
There are several videos; some are TV commercials, some are specifically for Youtube. Some videos are unrelated to the product but causes the company supports. 
Instagram is where the company has posted the most personal and engaging material. They need more of this on their FB and Twitter accounts. The Instagram account is only for the UK branch.
However, because it is fairly new on the platform, it doesn't have a large following nor likes.
Blogs
The chart below from Ice Rocket shows how apparent, Coca-Cola, Coke, and Pepsi were in the past months in Blogs. The term "Coke" is more popular than "Coca-Cola" and the company as a whole is more popular than competitor, Pepsi.
When you look at the blogs listed, you see that they are from all over the world. The first one posted 18 seconds ago is from India. There are also recent French and Spanish blogs.
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| Retrieved from Ice Rocket |
All in All...
... Coca-Cola has a huge fan following and with its recent "Share A Coke" campaign, there is a Social Media community present. However, I question how much of its popularity is a result of its long standing history. If Coca-Cola doesn't converse with its groundswell through out and not just for specific campaigns, can it sustain its popularity on the long hall. We do live in a world where TV ads are less and less relevant and Coca-Cola has received its fame from well crafted advertisements.
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