Close your eyes and think of Coca-Cola. What do you see in your mind’s eye? I’d be very surprised if polar bears, Santa Claus and festively glowing Christmas trucks weren’t somewhere there. Coke has been, throughout its 125-year history, a remarkably visual brand, telling stories through its iconic posters and television ads, particularly its Christmas campaigns.
This year however, Coca Cola announced a radical shift in marketing terms from ‘creative excellence’ towards ‘content excellence’.
Using an animated video posted to YouTube, Coca-Cola detailed Content 2020, a pretty monumental shift in the direction and emphasis of its marketing strategy on its key brands.
In the video, Jonathan Mildenhall, Coca Cola’s VP, Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence, explains how Coke will develop a ‘conversation model’ using brand stories to provoke conversations throughout the year. Having come to the conclusion that the 30-second TV spot is no longer king, Coke aims to leverage new media to transform one-way storytelling into dynamic storytelling.
Coke’s strategy is composed of 5 key components:
1. Create ‘liquid’ content, or ideas so contagious that they have to be shared.
2. Ensure content is ‘linked’ ie. that it is relevant to overall business objectives, to the brand and to consumer interests.
3. With an awareness that consumers now create and share more ideas than they do, Coca Cola wants to provoke conversations with a promise to not just publish but interact with its audience.
4. Use dynamic storytelling – to grow its business on the social web, Coca Cola has recognised a need to move on from one-way storytelling to allow stories to evolve and become ‘multifaceted’ and ‘shareable’.
5. Be brave with content creation and move beyond the white paper to share content that is more visual and courageous, possibly involving more multimedia and interactive content.
This is not just wishy-washy talk, pandering as some brands do to the social generation with half-hearted promises to spend more time listening to them rather than talking at them. Coke actually intends to double the size of its business by 2020 – no mean feat for a company worth $158.79 billion (Forbes Global 2000, April 2012).
Some of Coca-Cola’s goals sound a tad overambitious – can a company that peddles flavoured fizzy water really “make the world a better place” or earn a “disproportionate share of popular culture”?
But then I close my eyes and think of Coca-Cola again and the wave of nostalgic images once more hits me at full force. If Coke truly delivers on its dynamic content promise, just maybe it can achieve its goals.
