How Coca Cola ‘Outfizzed’ the Competition with Social Media and Personalisation

This is a marketing case study that is about a very interesting personalised campaign that Coca Cola ran over the summer of 2011. The results show the importance of personalisation in marketing. The Coke campaign made people feel special similar to the way promotional products make people feel important.

Backstory:

In an effort to adapt to the changing environment of how people connect with each other, Coke launched a campaign aimed at connecting friends online and offline with the goal of increased branding and sales during the summer when sales are always strongest.

Objectives:

The primary campaign objective was simple: increase consumption of Coca-Cola over the summer period. The secondary objective was to get people talking about Coke again.

Strategy:

  • Coca-Cola wanted to promote the idea of Australians sharing a good time over a Coca-Cola.
  • Jumpstart real conversations and remind people of those they want to connect with.
  • Australians are known for calling each other by their first name, or ‘mate’ for that matter. Conversations would be sparked by personalised name usage.
  • Coca-Cola printed 150 of the country’s most popular names on labels of Coke bottles for the first time in the brand’s history.
  • The multi-platform communications strategy acted as an invitation to ‘Share a Coke’ with someone you know, or want to know and gave people the tools to find, connect and share.
  • Coke constantly listened to what consumers were doing with the campaign in order to be able to surprise, maintain momentum and spark further conversations throughout the campaign period.

Results:

The campaign exceeded expectations with millions of Australians getting together and ‘Sharing a Coke’ either virtually or literally, greatly increasing both sales and brand awareness. The campaign really launched Coca-Cola into the forefront.

  • Young adult consumption increased significantly during the campaign, up by 7%, making 2011 the most successful summer ever.
  • The campaign earned a total of 18,300,000-plus media impressions.
  • Traffic on the Coke Facebook site increased by 870% and the Facebook page grew 39%.
  • In Australia, Coke was the number one most talked about Facebook page and 23rd globally.
  • Seventy-six thousand virtual Coke cans were shared online and 378,000 custom Coke cans were printed at local Westfield malls across the country.

The campaign also changed attitudes: over the campaign, teens claimed it gave them a ‘very positive’ impression of Coke. Scores on ‘always doing new things’,‘is a brand I love’ and ‘for someone like me’ all improved with the young adult audience.


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