Ahhhh...Refreshing Content from Coca-Cola

     With 117,000,000 Google results using the search word “coke”, the Coca-Cola company is a prime example of shining web content delivered via search engine marketing. For over a century, Coca-Cola has led many successful marketing campaigns boasting exceptional content using both traditional and non-traditional media. This great grandfather of a company has evolved its marketing strategy to include various social networking sites to include an online newsletter, The Optimist, and their blog, Unbottled, which positions the company as an activist in environmentalism, humanitarianism, and thought leadership to name a few. Then there’s the Food & Recipes page with recipes such as “Coke Fried Chicken” and “Cherry Coke Pie”...hmmm, interesting…  (Coca Cola, 2014)    

Cherry Coke Pie (a la mode)

Picture from Coca-Cola's RAIN campaign website to replenish water in Africa

      Coca-Cola has multiple social networking sites to include YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, LinkedIn, and Google+. On it’s Facebook site, Coca-Cola has over 94 million likes. On Twitter, Coca-Cola has over 2.8 million followers (to include Mark Schaefer) and 125 thousand tweets, posted several times a week. On their YouTube site, Coca-Cola publishes weekly content that reaches their global target market with a focus on enjoying life’s best moments. Over all social media sites, content is family-and-friends-in-social-setting-focused with a few strategically placed posts that touch on activism (social and community responsibility) and what’s trending at that moment. While Coca-Cola is a global brand, it has managed to connect to people on a local level. Coca-Cola has been able to create content that connects to its buyer personas while communicating value touching on all of Scott’s (2013) Elements of a Buyer-Centric Website: Buyer Preferred Media and Learning Styles, Site Personality, Interactive Content Tools, Feedback Loop Availability, Customer-to-Customer Interaction, Current Content, Social Media Share Buttons, and Pass-Along Value Content that Could Go Viral. Examples of recent social media campaigns that have gone viral are Share a Coke (personalized coke’s), Unlock the 007 In You (over 11M views), and Diet Coke-Taylor Swift kittens (3.5M views).  

     On his topic, “Carve Out Your Own Search Engine Real Estate”, Scott (2013) states, “if you want to be found on the web, you need a unique identity for yourself, your product, and your company to stand out from the crowd and rise to prominence on search engines.” He was clearly referencing the example of Coca-Cola! As previously mentioned on Google, Coca-Cola appears first when searching for the word “coke” and has over 117M hits. This is the same on Bing and Yahoo with over 8M hits. For the term “cola”, Coca-Cola appears as #6 on the first page of the search while its top competitor, Pepsi, doesn’t appear until page 4 (this holds true on all 3 search engines mentioned above).  Some marketers think Coke could do better in SEO for other key terms that are relevant to the brand. Bryson Meunier (2012) from Mobile SEO Insights states that out of key six words for the product: soda, cola, beverages, soft drinks, soda pop, and sodas, Coca Cola is only ranked for the keywords “cola” (#7) and “soft drinks” (#3). While this article is from 2012, it is not entirely inaccurate even today. When I searched for “soda” for instance, Coca-Cola did not appear (granted I gave up the search after page 20) but neither did Pepsi or any other major competitor of the brand. For the keyword “cola” however, Coca-Cola has moved up one spot since 2012, from #7 to #6. I think for a brand that is synonymous with an entire product class, I’m not sure if this particular perceived weakness is really an opportunity for the brand or not. When people order a “coke” from a restaurant and the waiter asks, “is Pepsi okay?” and the person replies without hesitation, “sure”...that’s an indication that any cola flavored carbonated beverage (red canned generic included) could be referred to as a “coke”. With this amount of market leadership I’m not convinced the missing SEO keywords are a true weakness especially when their competitors do not lead in these same keywords either. But Meunier (2012) has a good argument; those keywords are searched annually over 5 million times globally with 3 million alone occurring on Google US. Who would have thought?  

What do you think about Coca-Cola’s lack of SEO in certain keywords that would describe their product? Do you see this as a weakness?  

References:

Coca-Cola Official Website. (2014). Retrieved from http://us.coca-cola.com/home/

Meunier, Bryson. (2012, March 1). Yes, People Search For Cola Online. But Coca Cola Wouldn't Know It. Retrieved from http://www.brysonmeunier.com/yes-people-search-for-cola-online-but-coca-cola-wouldnt-know-it/

Scott, D.M. (2013). The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, & Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons

Hey, can you tweet this for me...pretty please #copyandpaste

     There are some very interesting examples of bad social media etiquette on the web, including racist and sexually inappropriate posts by athletes. However, the example I’m using in response to Kara Alheim’s discussion topic for this week will be PG rated since my mother (or Eric Qualman) may be watching…

     For all of the Marketing Communications professionals in the class, I’m sure you will appreciate this failed tactic:

     While this wasn't a particularly offensive tweet, it exposed the underbelly of marketing tactics to the general public which hurt the reputation of both brands (the celebrity athlete and the Nokia brand).  Desean Jackson (currently a wide receiver for the Washington Redskins), inadvertently copy and pasted a prepackaged tweet from Nokia without personalizing the tweet himself or at least removing the quotations! According to Kerpen, “Actors, musicians, athletes…all have excellent opportunities to grow their fan bases, shape public perception…by harnessing social networking. Authenticity must be a key part of their plan, though.” Jackson’s tweet is an example of a lack of authenticity for his brand. Michael Katz (2012) of USA Today wrote, “Still, this writer wonders: Will we ever truly know how Desean Jackson felt about the ESPYS Nokia pre-party?” Jackson did delete the tweet after he realized the mistake. Kerpen (2011) suggests when making a mistake, “if you make a typo in an update on Facebook or accidentally share a broken link on Twitter, just delete it, fix it, and then share it again along with a simple apology”. Jackson later retweeted:

     Jackson did not acknowledge the error, which may have been the reason the online social community exploited his mistake the way they did. 

     The Nokia brand also suffered similar consequences. The lack of authenticity on Nokia’s part was exposed since Nokia prepackaged a feeling or opinion with “Chillin” and “It’s awesome” for the athlete to tweet rather than have the athlete tweet their own opinion of the party. Jackson’s initial tweet also brought attention to comments from other NFL players who also tweeted about the Nokia party, all with similar comments. Takeo Spikes and Vince Young tweeted exact replicas of Jackson’s tweet after the colon; in fact, they even left the quotations on the tweet  giving the public perception that Nokia prepackaged the message for all athletes that posted #NokiaPreParty that evening (Floyd, 2012).    

     While Jackson deleted his original tweet and reposted another tweet that appeared to be more individualized, I think it would have been better for Jackson to acknowledge the mistake. I don’t think he would have been able to resolve the error entirely, but he could have made a joke about it which could have turned a negative perception to a positive one at least on his end (not necessarily for Nokia). An example retweet could have been, “Chillin’ at the @ESPYS #NokiaPreParty with my #copyandpaste function OFF. #oops.”  And then he could have taken some pictures and made some authentic comments about who he saw or what he was doing at the event.

 

     The last question Kara asked in this week’s discussion was whether we thought it was fair to ban social media for entire athletic teams or if using companies such as Varsity Monitor or UDiligence was suitable. This is a very debatable topic, especially for businesses and other organizations. It raises some questions about ethics and unfair hiring and firing practices as well. On the topic of ethics and social media monitoring, Malby (2014) states “Experience shows that employers fire employees for reasons having nothing to do with work” (Maltby, 2014). Maltby (2014) goes on to note that there are certain situations in which the employees’ Internet activity may be of legitimate concern; the example used was if the employee belonged to an online racist group. Maltby (2014) suggests that the employer should hire a third party to conduct the search under the specific guidelines relevant to the organization. The search firm would only report on information within these established guidelines rather than an “HR professional indiscriminately trawling through social media” (Maltby, 2014). I think schools that use UDiligence and VarsityMonitor are approaching social media monitoring the right way. I think this method is more suitable and fair than a coach searching social media accounts of his/her athletes.  If the school establishes set guidelines for inappropriate behavior or comments on social media and they make public their use of these search firms targeting all students (not just suspected students per say) then it would seem to be the most fair way to monitor social media accounts if such a need is determined necessary.

References:

Floyd, Brian. (2012, Jul 11). Everybody's Chillin' At The Nokia Pre-Party (It's Awesome). Retrieved from http://www.sbnation.com/2012/7/11/3152495/espys-nokia-party-tweets

Katz, Michael. (2012, Jul 11). This deleted DeSean Jackson tweet is hilarious. Retrieved from http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2012/07/desean-jackson-twitter-nokia-espys-tweet/1#.VO4yKNLF--8

Kerpen, D. (2011).  Likeable Social Media. How to Delight your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (and other Social Networks). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Maltby, Lewis. (2014, Oct 22). Should Companies Monitor Their Employees' Social Media? Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/should-companies-monitor-their-employees-social-media-1399648685

Developing Buyer Personas

     As a nonprofit, government organization, the Education and Incentives Office is structured under Recruiting and Retention Command of the Texas Army National Guard (TXARNG). Education and Incentives offers a service [as oppose to a product] to potential, existing, and former military members and their families. As a recruiting and retention tool for our parent organization, our overarching goal is to enable access to benefits and incentive entitlements and promote higher learning to enhance our forces. We want all 20,000 members of our organization to have the opportunity to receive entitlements they are eligible for (incentives) and also to pursue higher learning in the civilian sector whether it be a degree, certificate, license, or apprenticeship program (education). What we are selling (so to speak) is financial assistance, in many cases up to 100% of program costs.

   

  “A buyer persona is essentially a representative of a type of buyer that you have identified as having a specific interest in your organization or product or having marketing problem that your product or service solves” (Scott, 2013). To learn about our buyers in order to develop specific personas, we would simply interview current and potential customers. When we visit units to conduct information briefings, we would ask the audience to fill out a survey. This method would allow us to reach potential customers. When we have customers visit the office, we would also ask them questions in order to gather this information. Two popular examples of buyer personas for the TXARNG Education & Incentive Office would be:

GI Joe (aka "Mr. Undecided"). Mission first, education later...

GI Joe: a Soldier, between the ages of 18-24 in any Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) that joined the TXARNG out of high school. He joined the military to serve his country but chose the TXARNG because he has aspirations of going to college full-time to pursue a civilian career that would require at least a Bachelor’s level degree. He knows college is important to be competitive in most career paths, but has a hard time choosing which college to apply for admission. He has an idea of some major areas of concentration he is interested in, but is generally undecided. Because of his indecisiveness, coupled with employment and service in the TXARNG, he stalls on applying for school. While there are many education benefits available, navigating through each one to figure out what he is eligible for is confusing. He may get deployed overseas or even within the state. He may be required to attend other training for his MOS that is in another state. “I’ll just wait to go to school until after I finish this mission/training”. In addition to degree paths and determining financials, he needs help figuring out how to balance work, school, and military service. He is active on various social media sites but most active in Facebook and Instagram. He communicates solely via text. He relies on the internet for information and finds paper “so 2010”.    

GI Jane on her way to the Education & Incentives Office...she's mission focused.

GI Jane: a Veteran, between the ages of 35-40 who has served for at least 10 years in the TXARNG. She has been deployed at least once since 9/11. She is now married and has children. She’s used some of her education benefits in the past and has obtained a Bachelor’s degree. She has no desire to pursue a graduate level degree.  Her oldest child is at least middle school age. She has chosen a career in the military and intends to continue to serve until she is eligible to retire. She has a good job and makes a middle range salary but hasn’t saved a lot of money for her children’s college. She is concerned about how she and her husband are going to be able to pay for their children to go to college in the near future. She knows that there are some options out there that her kids are qualified for due to her service and deployment time but she has no idea where to begin to find out the details. She is extremely busy balancing family, work, and military service. She plans ahead and relies on her calendar for all of her tasks and appointments. She prefers to speak with a “live” person. She is active on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. She subscribes to Women’s Health magazine. She opts in for push notifications for coupons from Target and breaking news from CNN.

     According to Scott, “You should develop an editorial plan to reach your buyers with focused content in the media they prefer” (2013). Both GI Jane and GI Joe are active users of social media, however they prefer different communication mediums. GI Joe may prefer to communicate digitally, while GI Jane prefers a mixed messaging of traditional and new media. Additionally, GI Joe’s needs are personal in nature while GI Jane is planning for her children’s future. In order to focus the content, we would leverage social media that appeals to GI Joe to reach his buyer persona. Our website might encourage him to “follow us” and we may dialogue with his buyer persona digitally at first to develop a rapport, then in person much later in the process if necessary. For GI Jane, we may focus on web content to steer her buyer persona to call or visit our office in person because we have guidance counselors standing by to give her personalized and individual attention to meet her needs.

Thanks Mike Arcigal for a great discussion topic for Week 4. I look forwarding to reading yours, Kelly, and Brian’s comments on this topic!

References:

Scott, D.M. (2013). The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video, & viral marketing to reach buyers directly. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons