Unit 17- Digital Marketing
Assignment 1, Task 2
Coca-Cola
In this study, I will explain how the Coca-Cola brand can communicate with its target
audience through a variety of digital strategies. I will also be analyzing their digital
marketing efforts and how they were able to accomplish success in terms of meeting
marketing objectives and implementing strategies.
Coca-Cola is one of the world's top and most popular beverage brands. Dr. Pemberton, a
pharmacist, invented the soft drink in 1886; however, following success, he determined that
the soft drink could be sold in machines, making it available to everyone. Coca-Cola is now
one of the world's most popular beverages, and practically everyone is familiar with the
brand. The brand has achieved huge success because of its successful advertising,
interactive campaigns, and range of drinks.
Coca-Cola engages with its customers using a variety of channels, including interactive
marketing and social media. However, social media is the brand's most popular
communication channel. This is due to the fact that Coca-Cola is not only capable of
effectively advertising through digital platforms, but they are also capable of communicating
with their target demographic through messages. The 'Share a Coke' campaign, for example,
was the most successful in terms of efficiently interacting with customers. This is because
the campaign was promoted on multiple social media channels, including Instagram,
Facebook, and Twitter. The advertisement uploaded on these apps, allowed customers to
interact with it, such as being able to like, comment, share and even create virtually
customised cans by clicking on the post. The brand was able to deliver a simple message to
its target audience and communicated directly with them if they had noticed that there
were questions or concerns left by viewers. Coca Cola has a special team that monitors their
social media activity which also includes communicating with customers. under many of the
brands posts, there are comments that users leave giving their concerns or raising a
question to which the brand responds directly to them, making sure that their issue has
been resolved. The use of social media has allowed Coca Cola to deliver their messages
accordingly to their customer and has been able to engage them with their campaigns to
reach their end-goals such as increase sales or create brand awareness.
Coca Cola has created numerous digital campaigns that have resulted in success due to
being able to meet the objectives that were associated with it.
Objectives set by Coca Cola
Increase brand awareness
Create a liking for Coca Cola’s products over competitors
Above are the objectives that had been set by the brand to which they have been able to
constantly meet these through their effective digital marketing campaigns alongside their
digital strategies that were implemented to achieve this.
,Share a Coke campaign
The share a coke campaign had first launched in Australia, 2011. This interactive campaign
allowed people to create virtual cans to which they ca personalise with their person or
friends/families names. Further to this, the campaign had also allowed people to order
personalised Coke bottles with their names printed on the red logo. As, it had become
popular throughout Australia, the brand had decided to introduce the campaign to many
other countries, including the UK. Coca Cola had strictly used digital strategies such as social
media (Twitter and Facebook) to deliver content to its target segment.
The use of both Twitter and Facebook allowed the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign to meet its
objectives of increasing brand awareness and increase the liking for the brands products
over competitors.
The increase of brand awareness was the biggest achievement through the campaign. This is
because the social media platforms that the brand had used was commonly used by
everyone at the time, both Facebook and Twitter had over 1 billion users. As a result, the
brand took advantage of it in order to get awareness for its products. Furthermore, social
media allows viewers to share the content they see, as well as like, comment, and interact
with it. This aided in the achievement of the goal because many people who came across
the campaign wanted to share it with their friends and families because they were able to
make virtual cans by clicking on it. The campaign had seen over 1 million shares on
Facebook which had increased sales massively for the brand. Furthermore, the objective of
creating a likeness for the Coca Cola products over competitors was also achieved. This is
because the brand’s main competitors which is Pepsi, were also trying to become better
than them. However, Pepsi were not going that extra length to satisfy their customers like
Coca Cola and were just simply offering their products on the shelves. Pepsi were creating
advertisements, but they weren’t interactive like the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign and had only
involved content marketing which very much did not excite their customers. Due to this
reason many of Pepsi’s customers had decided to shop with Coca-Cola. Also, many of Coca-
Cola’s customers have said that the reason why they stay with the brand is because the
campaigns they launch have made individuals feel valued. For example, the personalisation
of the coke bottles made many people feel special to the brand as the had custom designer
their requests onto the products. This led to numerous people across the globe to remain
loyal to Coca-Cola due to the interactive and exciting campaigns and commercials that were
constantly launched. The brand focuses on how to connect with its target segment through
digital marketing strategies and they have made numerous statements on how they would
want their products to be associated with their customers memories. Hence, people prefer
Coke products over competitors since there is a story with every launch that the brand
creates.
London 2012
During the Olympics 2012, Coca Cola had decided to launch the ‘London 2012’ campaign to
target younger audience members to consume their products. The brand had decided to use
popular celebrities which included music artists Mark Ronson and Katie B to create a song
, relating to sports. This then was implemented through video marketing which were mainly
advertised on YouTube. This use of digital strategy was able to contribute to Coca Cola’s
objective of increasing brand awareness since their target segment were using platforms
such as YouTube a lot. This made it easier to communicate the campaign to a younger
audience. Because these prominent celebrities who endorsed Coca-Cola through video
marketing had their own fan base, they were also aware of the campaign in which they
were involved. This prompted many of the fans to purchase Coca-Cola products.
Video marketing can contribute to brand awareness largely because any form of
advertisement is able to be visible to anyone across the world. With YouTube having over 1
billion users, the possibility of a campaign reaching the correct audience is more likely.
Further to this, if an advertisement can be executed in an interesting way which make it
visibly appealing to viewers, then it can cause more people to want to find out more about
the brand.
Overall, Coca Cola can meet both objectives of build brand awareness and creating a liking
for their products over their competitors through their digital marketing campaigns.
Whenever, Coca Cola has launched an advertisement, they have always ensured to make it
interesting for viewers so that they are able to be encouraged to find out more which can
lead it an increase in sale. Further to this, the use of demographics has helped the brand
achieve its objectives. For example, the main goal of ‘Share a Coke’ campaign was to
encourage the younger audiences to consume their products. This was achieved as the
brand had used several strategies to meet this. Such as the implementation of social media
marketing. This method was the most successful for the campaign in relation to brand
awareness as the brand were not the only ones trying to build recognition but also the
target segment had conducted this. They had done this by using the hashtag of #shareacoke
to which would be used in every photo that a consumer would share on social media. This
caused many other people to see it to which encouraged them to interact with the
campaign.
P4-
Cost per mile is a compensation model where advertisers pay a fee for reaching 1000
impressions on their advertisements online.
CPM can help brands successfully increase brand recognition among new and
current customers. It is a low-cost method of advertising. When a brand or product is shown
on a reputable website, the viewers are left with an impression. Many brands elect to
employ CPM to efficiently promote brand exposure and loyalty through various digital
platforms such as social media, websites, and YouTube.
For example, Coca Cola uses CPM constantly to promote its brand to many people as
possible by displaying itself on users websites such as on the top of the YouTube page. By
having Coca Cola present its banner on the top of YouTube’s search page, they can be in the
publics eye across the globe. The ‘Share a Coke’ campaign was displayed across many
websites when it had first launched to deliver the simple message to people of sharing a
coke with a loved one. The cost per mile for the campaign had costed Coca Cola £1.47 per
