The use of social media technologies has revolutionized the ways businesses interact with customers. Social media presents companies with an opportunity to reach out in ways which were simply not possible before. I will be examining two iconic American soft drinks to look at how they are adapting to the social media paradigm.
I chose Coca-Cola and Pepsi as the companies to research due in part to the rivalry, but also because comparing two similar products allows us to compare and contrast to see how two competing companies utilize social media. I want to look at Coca-Cola and Pepsi’s use of Twitter and Facebook and try to find the main purpose behind their use of these platforms.
The questions I seek to answer are as follows, who are they primarily interacting with? How are they interacting? What strategies are they employing to achieve and maintain relationships with their audience and do the strategies and content differ according to the platform utilized. And of course to see if by analyzing each company’s social media strategy we might determine the better Cola.
Cola’s Facebook page to conduct my research I was struck by their great use of the profile and cover photo. It’s simple, but graphically it showcases their understanding of the potential for the profile and cover photo to interact, which I personally think is a clever use of Facebook’s profile and cover photo.
Coca-Cola posts frequently generally every other day and the majority of their posts consist of video marketing. Garnering 93,171,691 likes on Facebook,Coca-Cola does a great job of creating content for all occasions on both Facebook and Twitter. Coke does a good job of creating content according to what is trending. For instance recently on September 26th the internet was abuzz with news of the super blood moon. If you found yourself on Facebook and Twitter between the hours of 8 and 11pm you likely saw photos of the rare astronomical event taken by friends and family. Coke made a clever video featuring an eclipse of the Coca-Cola bottle cap instead of the moon and used the hashtag #SuperBloodMoon to share the video.
This is a recent example, but browsing Coca-Cola’s timeline and Twitter feed the brand presents many videos for all sorts of events from seasonal changes, awards shows, sporting events as well as lesser known events such as national dog day or national video game day. Coca-Cola does a great job of integrating their brand messaging into these different events. For national video game day they created a video using Coca-Cola bottles as buttons presenting the famous Contra cheat code sequence.
As I browsed through Coke’s Facebook timeline I was struck by how many different targeted ad-campaigns Coca-Cola was able to run, where in the past it might not have been feasible to reach out to every niche group, today social media technology makes it possible to reach many specific audience, which for a brand like Coke is key because of how diverse the makeup of Coke’s audience is. This is one of the big shifts that I believe Social Media has allowed corporations to make.
Coca-Cola is such a great example to show the shift in targeted marketing due to the size of their audience in the past Coca-Cola’s presence in advertising was still targeted but often times it carried a message to a broad audience.
Let’s shift focus and contrast the iconic Polar Bear Ad shown above to The last major Ad campaign Coca-Cola conducted which was Share a Coke. This campaign which features 1000's of different customized Coke Cans featuring names and phrases instead of the words Coca- Cola, showcases the effect of Social Media on contemporary advertising.
This is an Ad Campaign that was clearly specifically designed for the Social Media paradigm. The idea of sharing a coke and printing names on Coke cans is ingenious in the way that it promotes individuals to find their name on a can of coke and not only share it with another individual but to share it on social networks. It is a great example of how today’s advertising must contain a social element to capture the largest audience and reach the most people. In this case Coke is literally reaching out to each and every specific individual by printing their customer’s name on the can.
Comparing Coca-Cola’s Twitter presence to their Facebook presence I found some interesting differences. First compared to the 90 million likes on Facebook Coke’s Twitter followers number 3.1 million. Coke has tweeted 120,000 times. I found that in general Coke tweeted more often than they posted on Facebook and that in general Coke’s Twitter presence focused more on events. Coke on Twitter showcased a good use of hashtags both creating their own hashtags and participating in trending hashtags. For example Coke was very active around the World Cup.
Another interesting difference I found was that on Twitter Coca-Cola’s posts were geared toward a younger audience featuring contemporary music and memes. This focus makes sense due to the younger demographic makeup of Twitter. Also interestingly Coca-Cola’s posts on Twitter seemed to skew toward more of an international audience. Coke tended to use Twitter to link to their website where-as their posts on Facebook often times didn’t.
In general Coke seems to spend more resources on their Facebook page in terms of (video production and interacting through comments) most likely due to the fact that they are reaching the most people there.
In terms of likes Pepsi has 33,805,468, just a third of the followers that Coke has. Switching over to Pepsi’s Facebook page the first thing you will notice is that Pepsi’s logo and cover photo features a logo advertising Pepsi perfect which is a tie in to the film Back to the Future 2, because we are rapidly approaching the future date portrayed in the film which is October 21’st. Being a fan of the films I enjoyed the reference.
Further researching Pepsi’s facebook page I found that Pepsi rarely comments on any of their posts. Of course I don’t necessarily fault them for it though as most of the comment sections are filled with sincere and ironic pleas to bring back crystal pepsi. Pepsi’s marketing via Facebook is much more focused on promotional offers and giveaways often times partnering with brands such as Papa John’s, Buffalo Wild Wings and Target. Pepsi’s Facebook also features a lot of sports related content especially NFL content.
Pepsi’s Twitter presence clocks in at 2.91 million followers. They have sent 28,000 tweets. Their use of Twitter is similar to the way Coca-Cola uses it, tweeting during events such as MTV’s Video Music Awards, NFL games and the show Empire. I find this to be a very effective use of Twitter as it mirrors the way most of us use Twitter. I found Pepsi’s use of Twitter to be more effective than Coke’s in terms of interactivity. They were really involved in the events they were live-tweeting and apart from just commenting on these events they often times offered more related content to the experience.
In concluding the Social Media battle of the Cola’s I have to give my vote to Coke. I felt that they utilized video more often and in ways which appealed to larger audiences through their participation in trending events and topics. While I thought Pepsi did a good job of informing their followers on upcoming promotions and offers I thought they failed to interact with their followers
