Coca-Cola serves liquid content - what else?
Did you know the famous Coca-Cola bottle was the first package that earned a trade mark status? How that evolved is a story on the Coca-Cola website, like there are many others. The Coca-Cola online experience is called "The Coca-Cola Journey" and it is nothing less than a storytelling-centered marketing approach that symbolizes the new strategy of the famous brand.
A couple of years ago Coca-Coal made a big bet that storytelling is the cornerstone of 21st-century communications. "We believed that great, brand-created stories matter, that exceptional writing wins the day, and that building a digital newsroom would lead not only to a transformation in how we engage with our consumers but also how we work." So says Ashley Brown, Group Director of Digital Communications and Social Media at The Coca-Cola Company.
The online platform is an ezine with stories on many topics, but also an engagement platform to induce visitors to tell their part of the stories. User-generated stories outnumber company generated stories on most of the brands of the Coca-Cola company (like Fanta and Sprite).
Part of the strategy is also to move from insights to bigger thinking, and therefore provocations are needed. Coca-Cola wants to create ideas that are so contagious that they can't be controlled. That is what they call 'liquid'', very well suited to the brand.
Stories must be inspirational in order to deliver (as the company calls it) a "big fat fertile space'. Get it? Well, probably not, but watch this video presented by Jonathan Mildenhall, one of the global advertising executives of the company.
All the companies social networks are growing on a 100%+ yearly rate, it claims. Several initatives brought in by fans and users on e.g. ecological themes are started and supported. As Brown states: "We don’t expect you to go to Coca-Cola Journey every day. Rather, we want to make sure a Coke story is part of your daily habit – whether it’s on Google+, Facebook, or Flipboard".