Social Media and Societal Marketing by Coca Cola - Essay Example

Social Media and Societal Marketing by Coca Cola Collage: Lecturer: Introduction Since our ancestors started buying and selling of goods and services, marketing has been an important part of the whole process. The concept of marketing is about creating a social process where individuals and groups obtain their needs and wants by creating and exchanging products and values among themselves (Kotler, cited in Abratt & Sacks 1988, p. 497). Marketing as we know it today is not marketing as it was in the yester years. A lot has changed. Although the four P’s of marketing still form the foundation of any marketing training, both social and economic considerations have now had to be considered in training (Abratt & Sacks 1988, p.498). In the economic considerations, business entities are devising new ways to interact with customers as they look to increase sales indirectly, and the new way of getting this engagement is through social media (Evans & McKee 2010, p. 4). The integration of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and others in marketing campaigns of various companies is now an agenda up for discussion in basically all marketing departments. Multinationals realise that they need to be in constant touch with the customers, getting to know and monitor changes in tastes and preferences and also the quality of the good or service. Small and medium enterprises also realise that it is through social media that they can have the most effect, in their plans to compete with the dominant force in their line of business (Zarella 2010, p. 1). Nonetheless, seen as a business that sets out to create a need within a people, marketing has come under sharp criticism for forming discriminatory based on a segmentation that people who use a certain product are better than others (Saad 2011, p. 52). Because of dwelling the focus of marketing messages on satisfying short-term consumer needs and wants for profit-making, there is an increased criticism towards the profession, with marketers being said to have no regard to social impacts (Campbell and Cordoba 2010, p. 120). There is an essence of societal damage from the people who have had their self-esteem brought to a low indirectly caused by certain marketing messages. Societal marketing therefore comes into the fore whenever, organisations get into plans to develop marketing messages. Not to be confused with social marketing, societal marketing incorporates considerations of the effect of the product to the consumers, when designing and implementing marketing strategies (El-Ansary 1974, p.317). This paper looks at the effective use of social media marketing by Coca Cola, and at the same time maintaining socially responsible societal marketing. As the world talks about sustainable development, in the aspect of maintaining our environment, societal marketing keeps corporate companies in check as they develop and maintain their marketing strategies. The Coca Cola company history John Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist, created Coca-Cola soft drink in 1886, which was a mixture of soda water, lime, cinnamon, coca leaves and Brazilian shrub weeds (Ford et al. 2007, p.2). Frank Robinson, Pemberton’s bookkeeper, coined the name Coca-Cola, writing it out as it is today in his own handwriting. Selling at five cents a glass at Jacob’s Pharmacy, the company sold about nine glasses a day in the first year. In 1891, the company was sold to Asa Candler, who later transformed the company into internationally recognised brand it is today. In 1919, Ernest Woodruff purchased the company for $25 million and handed the company to Robert Woodruff, his son, in 1923. Atlanta, Georgia became the company’s headquarters, growing from the nine glasses a day in the first year, to being one of the world’s biggest brands available in over 200 countries and grossing approximately $50 billion in revenue annually. The Coca Cola Company and social media On its website, Coca Cola has links to various social sites that it is present in. These include Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn and Google+. By September 2012, Facebook had 1.01 billion users globally. This figure is expected to grow to 1.5 billion by the end of 2013. As of the end of 2012, Twitter had over 500 million users, who generated more than 340 million tweets daily. To a marketer, these are numbers that would make them ogle at the prospect of enormous sales, though indirectly. The Coca Cola Company is an active member of social media, using this tool of marketing to develop trusting customer relations (Sviokla 2010). In the US alone, social media marketing accumulated to an approximate $5 billion in 2011. Though a small figure, it goes to show how fast the social media segment was growing in online spending, since this figure had doubled from the previous year (Halasz 2012, sec.1). In the same period (2011) marketers had spent $50 billion online, and at the end of 2011, with $3.7 billion in revenues, Facebook took the lion’s share of the social media spent. Among the food and beverage companies that have a presence on Facebook, Coca Cola has the most likes at just about 58 million by January 20, 2013, with an approximate daily and weekly growth of 75,000 and 685,000 respectively. There are over 700,000 people who are talking about the company on Facebook. Recognising the importance of participating in the online conversations over social media, the company’s vision is to achieve sustainable growth both offline and online. Interestingly, the company was not involved in the setting up of the first Coke fan page. It was the idea of two friends, Dusty Sorg and Michael Jedrzejeweski, to open a Coca Cola fan page in 2008, to express their love of Coca Cola (Klaassen 2009, p.53). At the same time, over 250 pages had been created by other Coke fans, but theirs stood out due to its engagement with the fans and also in terms of activity. Some of the activities included polls conducted on Coke, fun discussions and encouraging fans to share photos and videos. In just three months, the page had reached 1.2 million followers. From the page’s growing prominence, Facebook executives noticed the page and contacted Coca Cola Company. When contacted, the worldwide interactive marketing team wondered how the two friends had created a page without their knowledge and at the same time, attracting millions of customers to interact actively. They could clearly see the distinction between the page and the other pages that had been created. On Facebook’s advice, the team decided to meet the two friends and come up with a detailed plan on ways through which they could work together in administering and managing the brand’s Facebook page. Halesz (2012) says that though the social media approach was new to Coke, it fell in line with their new strategy that sought to engage with individuals and local communities instead of a customised global message. Michael Donnelly, the head of this team, said that they were looking at a ‘Fans first’ approach, where they would be everywhere their customers were, talking to them and not at them. On Twitter, the company has two accounts; one (@CocaColaCo) with 58,370 followers and the other (@CocaCola) with over 660,000 followers and more than 69,000 tweets. It has over 2.5 million views on YouTube, 154 items on Google+, over 165,000 followers on LinkedIn and 25,000 photos on Flickr. Coca Cola effectively using social media A check at the Coca Cola fan page shows calls for interaction by the company. For example, on 29 November 2012, Coca Cola asked its fans whether they had tried out the Crabs & Penguins Coca-Cola game, available in Android, Ipad, Iphones, PCs and Macs. Crabs & Penguins is a free mobile game released by the company in collaboration with McDonald’s and aimed at players of ages 13 and above (O’Neil 2012). The game endears Coke to the young generation. And to increase its interactions with the fans, Coca Cola in its post of 28 November 2012 asked people to get their friends in on the fun by sharing Coca-Cola happiness on the Page’s wall. The ‘Open Happiness’ campaign is one of the most prominent one over the last one year to be conducted via the Facebook page. Spreading Happiness Coke had designed the happiness project to be a viral campaign in terms of transmitting happiness. The essence of viral marketing campaigns is to increase market brand awareness (Mayes 2011, p.17). Outside the digital world, Coca Cola set up a happiness machine physically at St. John’s University, a private school in New York. It resembled an ordinary beverage distributor. But when the students pressed on the Coke selector, out came various surprises, and not soda as they were expecting. The surprises included pizza, a bunch of flowers or balloon animals. Coke had placed hidden cameras around that place to capture the students’ reaction and then sharing with their friends this surprise by asking them to try it out. The video showing the students ‘spreading happiness was uploaded on YouTube and updates made on Facebook. In four months of uploading the video, it had exceeded 2.3 million views, enabling the company reach a huge audience all over the world. An approximate of 50% of the viewers were from outside the US, with 70% of the video posts being in foreign languages (Halesz 2012, sec.4). A research conducted by the company indicated that the campaign had made a deep impression on people since it affected their emotions. It had an unforgettable effect on its consumers. In 2009, Coca Cola sent three ambassadors on a mission to discover the meaning of happiness by visiting all the 206 countries that the company has a presence in. The journey ‘Expedition 206’ was documented on social sites Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Followed by Coke consumers across the globe, the team even got online travel advice from the fans, on the places they had to visit once they got to a particular country (Halesz 2012). The expedition once again engaged Coke’s consumers from across the world, generating happiness all through. Coca Cola music In 2011, the company embarked on a new program, ‘Coca-Cola Music’ that was aimed at giving the young consumers (teens), a behind the scene feel of the music industry. The program was in conjunction with the band Maroon 5, where the band members asked fans to join them in writing a song in 24 hours over social media (Mayes 2011, p.31). During the session, fans send in words, pictures and comments, as well as voting for various options for the song. The session was carried out via Facebook, Twitter and blogs. As seen on Mayes (2011), Coca Cola had posted on their Facebook timeline “What do you get when you put Coca-Cola and Maroon 5 in the studio, invite the world to join and try to write a new song in 24 hours? We do not know but it is going to be fun. RSVP here...” The post received 4,741 likes and 430 comments. After 24 hours in the studio, and with the help of Coca Cola fans on Twitter and Facebook, Maroon 5 recorded ‘Is anybody out there’, available for free download on Coca Cola’s music website. At the end of it all, there were 350,000 views on the live stream, 25,000 fans tweeted on the event, using hash tag #withMaroon5. Introduction of new products Coca Cola has also taken to social media when they are launching new products or making major announcements about a particular product. The company has used this interaction to gauge the reception of the product and what they need to improve on or reduce for the success of the particular product. Product innovation is now partly guided by the feedback the company receives from social media. Case in point is Coke’s introduction of the white can in the American market. In a 2011 project where the company collaborated with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in raising awareness and donations to the plight of polar bears, Coke changed the colour of the Classic Coca-Cola can from the traditional red to white. As seen on Attensity (2012), the announcement was made on Facebook as “Happiness is now served in limited edition white Coca-Cola cans. Who ‘Likes’ polar bears?” The post received numerous positive responses. 28,305 people liked the post, 1,423 commented and there were 1,112 shares. However, the new packaging did not last long. Five weeks into the white can branding, Coke reverted to red, though maintaining the design of the polar bears. What prompted this change, considering that majority of the reviews on the new can were positive? A story posted on Yahoo! Finance done by Wall Street Journal elicited negative comments on the new can (Attensity 2012). Some people alluded their dislike to confusing the new can to another Coke Diet variety. Others said that that the taste had changed, while others just did not want to move from the traditional red. This prompted Coke to back to Facebook and announce that it would be bringing back the red can. The comments generated this time round were not as many as had been with the white can introduction. On Facebook, about half of the comments expressed their desire to retain the white can. Eventually, Coke reverted to the red can. In its report, Attensity (2012) wondered whether the decision to revert to the red can was market brilliance or a knee-jerk reaction to social media. From these social media activations, Attensity (2012) suggest that by having a control on social media, the company could choose the kind of feedback they wanted by posting ideas on Facebook or Twitter. That is why though the article by Wall Street Journal elicited a lot of negative comments, the Facebook feedback was largely positive. By creating these buzz events on social media; the company was able to drive traffic to its website and social sites, generating the feeling of connection between the company and its consumers (Mayes 2011, p.39). Societal marketing involvement Coca Cola’s push into social media to reach out to its consumers is understandable. In the recent past, the soft drinks industry has come under great pressure due to its perceived negative effects of the health of its consumers eg obesity and pressure from the increased popularity in teas and mineral water (Halesz 2012). With the introduction of Coke Zero, the company has had an ad running on its YouTube account ‘Be Ok’ that is geared towards the health conscious people. Although under the ‘Open Happiness’ campaign, the ad encourages people to engage in various physical activities to burn a few calories and ‘Be OK’. The ad shows that a can of Coke contains 140 calories. The company is also addressing the issue of obesity in the USA with a new two-minute ad posted on its YouTube account and running on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. The ad tries to diffuse the notion that drinking too much Coke leads to obesity (Ghigliotty, 2012). Rather, they note that weight gain is as a result of taking in too many calories of any kind. Though some see this as a damage control measure due to the negative links of soda to obesity, there is a huge outcry in the US over the contribution of soda to growing obesity in the country. Soft drinks have been identified as being the leading source of added sugars in the diet, and they have the potential of leading to obesity because of curtailed compensation for energy consumed as fluids (Ludwig, Peterson, Gortmaker 2001, p.508). This is due to the fact that the consumption of nutritious foods will still lead to gain in weight when an excess of high sugar low density foods are consumed (Yule 2002, p.2). Going by the name ‘Come Together’, the advert notes that obesity concerns all of us people can make a change when they ‘come together’ {Ghigliotty, 2012). The company further states that the main aim of the campaign is to explain to the public Coca Cola’s commitment to delivering a wider choice of drinks. These include low and no-calorie beverages The company also ran on Facebook ‘America is Your Park’ campaign. The campaign encouraged Americans to outdoors and vote for their favourite park. The campaign was collaboration between Coca Cola and the National Park Foundation and the America State Parks and National Recreation and Park Association. The winning park walked away with $100,000, money aimed at restoring, rebuilding or improving activity areas in the parks. The School Fitness Centres and Governor’s Physical Fitness Challenge is yet another project Coca Cola was involved in, this time it joined hands with the American College of Sports Medicine and National Foundation for Governors Fitness Councils and. Coca Cola on its part gave out $5 million for the establishment of 100 fitness centres in schools in the United States. This project was to take five years. Obesity is especially high in children in the US. Children account for some of the highest consumptions of Coke (Yule 2002, p.2). The company also says that it will now not be directly advertising to audiences that consist of more than 35% children who are under 12 years old. Conclusion It is evident that social media has changed how Coca Cola interacts with its audience. Their fans continue to express their likes and dislikes on the various brands, providing marketing insights for the company. The company’s social media engagement can be used as a sample for other organisations to make use of (Mayes 2011, p.40). They are nonetheless not about to sit on their laurels. The company seeks to get the maximum benefits from social media. This has seen the company look for advertising agencies in the US that will help in social media monitoring. The agency will be charged with developing a reliable means of keeping track what consumers are saying on the social sites. They then report back to Coke to enable them gain insights into ways to improve marketing and get the consumer sentiments of the various products (Bruell 2011, p.753). Coca Cola’s engagement in societal marketing places the company in a prime position over its competition as more and more information on nutritious living is availed to the people. References Abratt, R, & Sacks, D 1988, ‘The marketing challenge: towards being profitable and socially responsible’, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 7, no. 7, pp. 497-507, viewed 19 January 2013, SpringerLink, DOI 10.1007/BF00382596 Attensity 2012, Social media analysis: Coca Cola’s white turn around, viewed 19 January 2013, http://www.attensity.com/wp-content/uploads/cocacola-U-turn.pdf Bruell, A, Zmuda, N 2011, Coca-Cola Seeks Shop to Mine Social Web, AdAge agency news, 30 August, viewed 19 January 2013, http://adage.com/article/agency-news/coca-cola-seeks-shop-mine-social-web/229542/ Campbell, TT, & Cordoba, J 2010, The need to reconsider societal marketing, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Germany. El-Ansary, AI, 1974, ‘Towards a definition of social and societal marketing’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 316-321, viewed 19 January 2013, SpringerLink, DOI 10.1007/BF02722334 Evans, D, & McKee, J 2010, Social media marketing: the next generation of business engagement, Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indiana. Ford, W Dr, Stephens, R Dr, & Cooper, L Dr 2007, Coca-Cola case study: an ethics incident, Marketing Power, viewed 19 January 2013, http://www.marketingpower.com/Community/ARC/gated/Documents/Teaching/AME/AME_Teaching_Materials_2007_08_Ford_Stephens_Cooper.pdf Ghigliotty, D 2013, ‘Coca-Cola tries to tackle obesity for first time in damage control TV ad campaign touting drinks 140 happy calories’, Daily Mail Online, 14 January, viewed 19 January 2013, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2262190/Coca-Cola-tackle-obesity-time-major-TV-ad-campaign-touting-drinks-140-happy-calories.html Klaassen, A 2009, How Two Coke Fans Brought the Brand to Facebook Fame, AdAge agency news, 16 March, viewed 19 January 2013, http://adage.com/article/digital/coke-fans-brought-brand-facebook-fame/135238/ Ludwig D, Peterson K, & Gortmaker S 2001, Relation between consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks and childhood obesity: a prospective, observational analysis, The Lancet, vol.357, pp. 505-508, viewed 19 January 2013 Mayes, L 2011, Effectively incorporating social media: a case study on Coca-Cola, thesis, American University, viewed 19 January 2013, http://www.american.edu/soc/communication/upload/Laura-Mayes.pdf Nordqvist, C 2013, ‘Coca-Cola admits sugary drinks make you put on weight’, Medical News Today, viewed 19 January 2013, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/254966.php Saad, F 2011, ‘Reality about criticism on marketing practices’, Global Journal of Management and Business Research, vol. 11, no. 8, ver. 1.0 Sviokla, J 2010, How Coke and Pepsi are using social media to build their trust banks, Harvard Business Review blog, 28 May, viewed 19 January 2013, http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/05/how_coke_and_pepsi_are_using_s.html Yule, A 2002, ‘Increased soft drink consumption is contributing to an increased incidence of obesity’, Nutrition Bytes, vol.8, no. 1, eScholarship University of California, viewed 19 January 2013, http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/7c30t39m Zarella, D 2010, The social media marketing book, O’Reilly Media, Inc., Canada. Read More