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Archives for 2011

Coca-Cola Finds Success With Its Social Media Project

Coca-Cola.

Say the name, and almost everyone around you has either heard the name before, or they’ve had the product perhaps a few times. Coca-Cola has been around for quite some time, with its first drink having been sold in Atlanta, GA in 1888. Since that time, the company has grown substantially with their product presence in several major countries across the globe.

However, even with its strong global presence, Coca-Cola still embraces social media and recently decided to escalate their efforts to another level. The company introduced a project called Expedition 206, which focused on instilling their brand of “happiness” in their customers all over the world. To that end, the company organized a team of young people, dubbed The Happiness Ambassadors, who in 365 days visited over 186 countries where the product is sold. What was their goal? To find happiness.

Ideas of Social Networking

Social networking is much more than just parading a long list of friends, or being able to show how many people re-posted one of your best articles. If only our success were measured by how many times our business site received a star, a ping, a re-post, tweet or nod, then there wouldn’t be any room for improvement. Or creativity.

Social networking stretches a bit more than the traditional methods and delves into actually reaching out and communicating with people on different platforms. One of the best ways to quantify any social media project is to engage the audience by talking to them, listening to them, asking their opinions, getting genuine feedback and making your communications count. Coca-Cola took full advantage of this and made great use of their resources by dealing directly with the people and in the places where their product is consumed. The feedback was overwhelming, as was  the media exposure and the attention that this project received world-wide.

Sharing Moments

The crew’s interest was in finding and recording social opportunities to share everything about Coca-Cola. They networked, shared, talked with and photographed hundreds if not thousands of people who were interested in and/or wanted to learn more about the company Coca-Cola. The crew documented their journey directly on the project’s site at Expedition206.com and on the other popular social networking platforms, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

The project has been a creative process for Coca-Cola, primarily to increase brand awareness, but mostly to stretch the idea of social networking to another plane. Many times, businesses are under the impression that the bulk of social media efforts should be done mainly online. After all, the online audience is incredibly vast, and the opportunity to reach such diverse segments of the population is endless. But Coca-Cola approached the Expedition 206 project in a completely different manner.

It has been the company’s largest social media project to date. So can they really gauge their success through this project? Would it be accurate to say that people now have a better understanding of the brand, more appreciation of the company’s efforts and even more, do they enjoy Coke better than they did before?

What do you think? Was the company creative in their social media approach? Is this true success, or simply another way to brand a name? Please share your thoughts.

Cynicism or Reality in Australia? | CSR Around The World

GoPro SurfingAustralia is something of an anomaly. Pitched in the south western corner of the Pacific Ocean it’s about as geographically distant from Europe as you can get, yet culturally it’s much closer than many Aussies would care to admit.

For sure there’s the classic image of an ocker Aussie slinging a couple of shrimps on the barbie in between surfing expeditions to Bondi Beach on Christmas Day.  But is there really that much difference between Australia and the UK?

After all, said chap will probably also be found in a bar, beer in hand, cheering on his favourite sporting team with passion and fervour, in between throwing casually light sexist comments to his mates.  Sounds like a typical Sun reader to me (for non-Brits, The Sun is the most popular paper in the UK).

This is by no means to typify all our antipodean cousins as ocker, nor to typify all Sun readers as casually sexist (ahem!).  However, when you consider that the Australian economy relies more on its close neighbours such as China, Japan and Thailand .. you can start to see where I’m coming from.

If there is one characteristic which does make Australia stand out from the New World, it’s confidence.  Those darned Aussies are just so darned competitive.  We’ve had the Ashes going on over the last few weeks and recently England actually managed to beat the Wallabies on the rugby field.  We’ll be given hell in return, you bet!

The Aussies are natural leaders in just about anything they care to lay their hands on, so has this competitive, confident, almost aggressive take on European culture translated into CSR?

Well, apparently not. [Read more…] about Cynicism or Reality in Australia? | CSR Around The World

2011 List of Banished Words

Are you using any of the words and phrases in the 2011 list of banished words from Lake Superior State University in your branding and marketing materials?  You might want to stop.

Every year since 1976, Lake Superior State University compiles a list of words and phrases that are so overused, misused, or useless that they should be banished from the English language entirely.  In fact, the concept was copyrighted by the University in 1987.  The list is compiled through nominations and interviews.

The 2011 list of banished words includes 14 words and phrases but the top honor — the number one word to be banished in 2011 — goes to “viral.”

Check out the complete list of 2011 banished words from Lake Superior State University:

  1. Viral
  2. Epic
  3. Fail
  4. Wow factor
  5. A-ha moment
  6. Back story
  7. BFF
  8. Man up
  9. Refudiate
  10. Mama grizzlies
  11. The American people
  12. I’m just sayin’
  13. Facebook / Google (when used as verbs)
  14. Live life to the fullest

Do any of these words and phrases stand out to you as overused, misused or useless for marketing and branding purposes?  Does using these words in a marketing or branding campaign equate to an epic fail?

The trick for marketers is keying in on words that resonate with target audiences.  A word that is deemed overused or misused by one market segment might be the “it” phrase for another segment.  The Lake Superior State University list of banished words is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but the results shouldn’t be ignored entirely.  Clearly, there is a segment of people who detest the use of “Google” as a verb, but there are undoubtedly other segments that expect the act of conducting an online keyword search to be referred to as “Googling” something.

Again, you need to match your words to your audience as much as you match your message.  Ongoing research is essential to ensuring you use the best words for each audience segment.  Thanks to the global online conversations that happen on the social Web, it’s easier than ever to listen to your target audience, learn how they communicate and the words they use, and match your marketing copy to those preferences and behaviors.

Bottom-line, just because specific words and phrases irritate some people doesn’t mean those words and phrases are dead.  You just need to tread more carefully when using them.  Just as you wouldn’t use words like “hip” and “groovy” to a teen audience, you shouldn’t use words like “fail” and “BFF” to an audience of seniors if you want to achieve maximum response rates.  It’s common sense, but it can make or break a marketing message.

What word or phrase do you think should be banished in 2011?  Leave a comment and share the words that drive you crazy.