Coke Takes a Big Gulp of Content Marketing
If you needed any further convincing that content marketing is the wave of the future, look no further than a recent article from Ad Week. The well respected ad industry tabloid ran a major editorial column with the following headline: “PepsiCo Exec Fears the Agency Model Won’t Bend, but May Break. Says shops aren’t changing with the times”. If you’re observing these changes, it isn’t hard to see that Content Marketing is the real thing! (to borrow Coke’s famous tag-line)
As the article explains, traditional ad agencies bubble up “four pieces of content a year, each taking about four months to make”. But consumers are drinking from different media fountains these days. Brands who have remained fluid with their consumers changing media habits are producing between 400 and 4,000 content pieces per year, in contrast. The big agencies, spoiled on super-sweet marketing budgets, are accustomed to charging up to $2 million for a single 30-second spot whereas healthy and lean content agencies are telling new customer engagement brand stories for as little as $20,000 per year.
Coca-Cola’s brand marketers have adjusted by fully embracing Content Marketing.
First, take a look at what Coca Cola is saying to their internal army of brand marketers:
Coke has a Genie in their (patented) ‘Magic’ Bottle.
The premise is that Coke will dominate the hearts and minds of their consumers by ‘creating ideas so contagious they cannot be controlled’. The video’s narrator also says that Coca-Cola’s content marketing initiative is going to link their business objectives (written in bold, 20-point dollar signs) and brands to customers’ interests. What’s he alluding to?
In other blogs, I’ve written that content marketing creates fresh, two-way communication and replaces the worn-out ‘canned-message’/ ‘let’s talk about me’ approach that is officially NOT WORKING ANYMORE.
By showing their customers that Coke is now actively listening to their consumers and providing messages that center around what their customers want to talk about, the brand has a new opportunity to recapture their hearts and minds and hopefully dollars, too.
An important feature is show-casing how naturally all their brands perfectly fit the modern lifestyles their consumers live. The products won’t overtly be the ‘stars’ of these productions, their consumers will. But by ensuring that its brands are always in the picture, the implied message will be that ‘these stories aren’t complete without our products’.
Coke is also leveraging the most important aspect of the new media – the fact that their consumers themselves play vital roles in telling their own stories. Digital is the great democratizing force in our landscape. Anyone with a computer, smart phone or tablet can create and publish their own stories! In fact, the videos own narrator says ‘consumer generated stories outnumber Coke generated stories on most of our brands.’ Everyone knows that word of mouth is the strongest form of advertising. Since it comes from other consumers, its perceived as more objective and more reliable. Coke is simply going to co-opt these stories for its own advantage! But it’s also going to go well beyond doing that. Their tactical plan calls for ‘acting and reacting to those conversations 365 days per year. I can imagine a vast team of content marketers both internal to Coca-Cola and external in its partner agencies swimming in massive kettles of content analytics and creating tactical plans to both influence and leverage the abundance of brand and consumer generated content.
And what will be the impact of all this new and exciting work? Coca Cola, one of the world’s best known brands, believes it’s going to double its business!
What Can the Genie Bring You?
Like Coca-Cola, indeed, even a little like Aladdin, you could be holding a magic bottle. The Genie inside it is called Content Marketing. What would you wish for? More customers? More repeat business?
When you partner with A-Cubed Marketing, we will help you turn your prospects into customers and your customers into advocates. Your stories will have influence on prospects and the decisions they are making. Best of all, your business will grow. After all, Coke isn’t achieving Content Marketing success because they’re getting consumers to do new things. As long as there have been communities, there have been story tellers. Internet is just the new medium for storytelling. The communities are your social media pages. A-Cubed Marketing can help you tell stories that attract more customers and encourage repeat purchases – among other things. So, be a story teller and prosper!
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