The Happiness Engagement Taylor Hoerr May 15, 2015 Elon, North Carolina 27244
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Abstract This report analyzes Coca-Cola’s engagement on their Facebook and Twitter social media pages. From data collected about its posts, interaction from Coke’s fans and expert sources, the types of engagement that Coca-Cola uses will be analyzed in this report. The types of engagement recorded are likes/favorites, number of comments, shares, and Coca-Cola’s @ replies. The data collected on the brand’s different types of engagement rates is used to show Coke’s overall-branding social media strategy.
Introduction Coca-Cola is one the largest brands world wide, which enables the company to have one of the largest social media presences as well. As a leading global social media presence, the topic of how Coca-Cola uses their Facebook and Twitter can give insights into their overall branding strategy. This report will analyze Coca-Cola’s engagement on their Facebook and Twitter. From the data collected about engagement posts and interaction from their fans, an analysis will be conducted on the different types of engagement that Coca-Cola conducts. The different types of engagement analyzed are likes/favorites, comments, sharing, and Coca-Cola’s replies. This report looks into their social media engagement across the two different platforms in order to determine what their cohesive strategy is and how the company engages with a diverse audience. This report analyzes Coke’s United States social media. Once data is collected on the different types of engagement rates, an analysis is used to find which is the most common type of engagement for Coca-Cola and how Coke utilizes each social media platform to express their primary branding strategy: “happiness.”
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Social Media 101 In order to understand how Coca-Cola uses social media, one must first understand the several types of media that are used on social media platforms: paid media, owned media, earned media, and shared media. First, paid media is online display advertising, paid searches, and site sponsorship. These can be advertisements on television or banners on the top of websites. Second, owned media is any type of packaging, delivery trucks, and websites that are owned a controlled by the company. These would be the Coca-Cola semi-trucks with pictures of their product featured. Third, earned media is content whose intrinsic appeal to consumers has earned it the ability to be passed among consumers by word-ofmouth or online peer-to-peer message boards, and viral advertising that was passed along between consumers. An example of this would be people talking about Super Bowl advertisements that CocaCola runs the day after the game or posting the advertisement on their personal social media. Finally, Coca-Cola is individualistic in the fact that it uses the term shared media to “refer to media shared with its retailer customers—for example, store advertising and point of sale material” (Deighton, Kornfeld, 2012). Coca-Cola uses shared media through the brand community they are able to create on their Facebook and Twitter pages.
Brand Community Muniz and O’Guinn explain that brand community is based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand (2001). The authors define brand community as “a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relationships among admirers of a brand. It is specialized because at its center is a branded good or service.” An important aspect of a brand community is its “storytelling” aspect that the community can relate to. These stories based on common experiences with the brand “serve to invest the brand with meaning, and meaningfully link community member to community member” (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001). An example of this would be the “Share a Coke” campaign.
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Share A Coke In this campaign, Coca-Cola traveled around the country to set up machines that would allow customers to personalize their Coca-Cola beverages by having customers’ names printed on the can. According to The Wall Street Journal, in a blog posted by Lucy Hitz on Simply Measured, there were more than 125,000 posts about the campaign across all social channels from June 2 through July 14 of 2014, “with 96% of consumer sentiment toward the campaign being either positive or neutral.” And that’s quite a feat. On Coca-Cola’s Twitter page between May 20 and September 16, there were 340,000 mentions of #ShareaCoke on Twitter. Figure 1 shows two serious spikes of hashtag usage on July 29. Figure 1
On Coke’s Facebook page, its #ShareaCoke campaign dominated with videos and tons of fan engagement. For example, the winning post received 50,964 in total engagement. The “Share a Coke” campaign has several implications of Coca-Cola’s branding, specifically the social nature of its brand. Brands are social objects and socially constructed
Hoerr 5 because “consumers are actively involved in that creation” (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001). Mark Pendegrast, who is credited for writing a history of Coca-Cola, says that “the most powerful Coca-Cola appeal has not, ultimately been sexual or physiological, but communal: if you drink Coke, the ads suggest, you will belong to a warm, loving, accepting family, singing in perfect harmony. If we can’t quite succeed in finding that stress-free society today, never mind—we’ll find it tomorrow. We’ll build a better world for you and me, and everyone.” (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001). It’s a beautifully seductive message, because it’s what we all want. Figure 2 (2014)
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Online Community Coca-Cola’s online community also provides functional, social, and experiential values that they are able to create with their social media. These values are stimulated through consumer interaction that “may be stimulated by the company proposing different contents or topics around which the relationships between members are growth” (Sicilia, Palazon, 2008). By creating dialogue between their consumers on Coca-Cola’s social media and blogging platforms, their brand-based online communities benefit by creating relationships between these customers. This is due to both the relationships fostered and the “gratification paradigm, media help consumers in satisfying their social and psychological needs. Individuals often seek out media in a goaldirected fashion to fulfill a core set of motivations” (Sicilia, Palazon, 2008). This can also be related back to the “Share a Coke” campaign. See Figure 3 below. Figure 3
Consumers enjoyed the fact that they were able to personalize their relationship with Coca-Cola by having their name printed on the can. This was able to fulfill their gratification paradigm as well as giving consumers a common experience that could be shared and talked about. The campaign led to a sharp increase in Coca-Cola’s shared media, with consumers around the country posting pictures of their cans and utilizing the hashtags that Coca-Cola had designed for the campaign.
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Social Storytelling The shared media that Coca-Cola utilizes in their social media efforts is a combination of storytelling and talking about this posts, which can be best seen on their Facebook page. The “talking about this” posts are when Facebook users create a story from a post by sharing/liking/commenting on the post, answering a question, responding to an event, claiming an offer, and overall engaging with the post. These are direct engagement type of posts. Another leading social media tactic for Coca-Cola is their ability to use storytelling techniques in their posts. Storytelling is more than just telling stories about a brand, and more than just creating Facebook, Twitter, and blog posts promoting that brand. Effective brand stories must embody the brand, and in Coca-Cola’s case, this is happiness. See Figure 4 below. Figure 4
The posts must be unique and noticeable enough to inspire people to engage, share, and eventually buy the product. Coca-Cola’s storytelling posts are most meaningful to audiences because “happiness” is a relatable message that everyone can strive towards. With the brand’s combination of storytelling shared media, “Coca-Cola was the most talked about brand on Facebook, according to real-time data that showed more than 1 million people talking about the company” (Lee, 2013). And as one of the largest, global brands, Coca-Cola is bound to have an impactful presence on social media.
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Twitter Coca-Cola’s Twitter page is centered all around “sharing a coke”. See Figure 5. Figure 5
In the cover photo for Coca-Cola’s Twitter page, there are two bottles and two bottle caps. This theme of two represents sharing, such as sharing a Coke with friends as featured in the left picture. This is due to the fact that getting people to retweet is more likely to happen than consumers sharing a Facebook post. After assessing Coca-Cola’s replies sent to consumers, or direct engagement tweets, for April of 2015, it can be shown that all of these tweets received a response from the consumers in the form of favorites and retweets. See Figure 6. Figure 6
Figure 7
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In Figure 7, it can be seen that while the distribution between favorites and retweets was fairly even, the likeliness of a response being retweeted was greater than being favorited. The use of Twitter hashtags is also an important component of Coca-Cola’s Twitter engagement analysis. From Figure 8, we can see the top hashtags from April 2015.
Figure 8
The top hashtag relates to happiness, their overall branding message. Out of the 10 top hashtags for the 20 days in April 2015 accounted for, 3 had direct message of happiness. Another notable fact is that another 3 out of these 10 directly stated share. Both of these facts support the theory that Coca-Cola’s Twitter page is all about sharing happiness.
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Facebook Coca-Cola’s other top social media platform, Facebook, is all about personal happiness. This difference can be seen just by looking at the cover photo in comparison to the Twitter cover. Unlike the Twitter page, which featured two of everything, the Facebook header features a single bottle of coke, as seen below. Figure 9
The cover photo for Coca-Cola’s Facebook explicitly shows their overall campaign of personal happiness. With one bottle of coke, happiness can be branched of it. As mentioned earlier, it is more likely that consumers will like a Facebook post rather than share it. This is due to the fact that liking a post is all about a personal relationship with the content. Personal happiness and focusing on one’s self can be seen throughout their posting habits.
Figure 10
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Audience Reach When working with an established brand, such as Coca-Cola, the issue of building an audience isn’t there. The challenge comes from understanding how each of the company’s social channels work with one another, and the way that fans interact with different content on different networks. “Coca-Cola has over 86 million followers and Fans across their main brand channels,
Hoerr 12 complimenting them with local pages for different regions and countries, or brand pages for subsidiary products like Diet Coke that fall under the Coca-Cola umbrella” (Shively, 2014). Coca-Cola is able to maintain these relationships on both social media networks by best utilizing the intention of each platform. “[Coke] uses different tactics on each of channel, but maintains a cohesive brand message,” which is happiness (Shively, 2014). Coca-Cola runs campaigns to engage its audience and generate content they can share. Not only are they engaging their current audience and making them a part of the brand experience, but Coca-Cola is creating a collection of advocates for their product. “On Twitter, Coca-Cola has 2.4 million followers worldwide, and they’re paying close attention. Over the last month, @cocacola has Tweeted 1,994 times. That’s over 60 Tweets a day, which has generated 81,925 engagements that created over 1 billion potential impressions during the last 30 days” (Shively, 2014). The impact of these numbers can be seen in Figure 11 below. Figure 11
However, “one of the biggest challenges for any large brand is keeping up with the volume of mentions. Coca-Cola is one of the best I’ve seen at this” (Shively, 2014). Coca-Cola manages to keep up with their volume messages sent to them on social media. In April of 2014, 83% of Coca-Cola’s tweets were direct replies to customers tweeting at their social media. Coca-Cola employs this tactic as both a customer-service method, as well as to show some love for the fans that show love to the brand. People will keep tweeting, following, sharing, and liking content if they feel that their input is valued. This tactic has proven successful for the brand even with the
Hoerr 13 enormous audience size that Coca-Cola has. With audience the size that they have, “this attention to detail is a big responsibility, and one of the reasons for its success on Twitter” (Shively, 2014). But Coca-Cola doesn’t only employ these tactics on their Twitter; they can also be seen on their Facebook page. This is where Coca-Cola’s biggest fan-base lies, with 82 million fans as of May 2014. A combination of promotional tactics used across their other social media platforms can be seen as “Coca-Cola uses this space to promote the same brand initiatives and campaigns as it does on other channels” (Shively, 2014). Coca-Cola’s dedication to seamless content is apparent when you visit its Facebook page, Instagram photos, images seen on Tumblr, and influencer videos like this that are also shared in their Twitter feed because they all relate to happiness.
Social Media Savvy Not only is Coca-Cola’s social media cohesive, but they are also the most innovative and flexible with incorporating new ideas. Deighton and Kornfeld were able to analyze how CocaCola handled an incident with other fan pages in this Harvard case study. This demonstrates the amount of engagement that Coca-Cola’s social media gets. It also is able to portray how innovative Coca Cola is with their social media. When the fad of exploding Mentos in Diet Coke came about, Coca-Cola was initially cautious to the video. A company spokesperson stated “We would hope people want to drink (Diet Coke) more than try experiments with it.” However, whether Coca-Cola liked it or not, within nine days of the video’s posting, it had been viewed a million times, and Mentos estimated that the company had received $10 million worth of publicity as a result. The buzz around the video continued to grow, and spawned thousands of copycat videos featuring mints and carbonated drinks. Realizing that this was an upcoming trend, Coca-Cola jumped on board. In July, Coke launched a new user-generated content strategy, which had been in the making for many months.
Figure 12
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Coke changed its corporate website to one inviting consumers to upload videos of their own making in response to challenges designed by Coke. Another example of Coca-Cola’s social media innovation is their response to fan pages. Facebook and Twitter both have endorsed pages that allow for consumers to recognize which accounts are run by the actual company. This allows for a streamline of messaging and the ability for companies to remove pages created by users that might interfere with their marketing. However, there was an occurrence with one fan page made by two men, Sorg and Jedrzejewski. Their page had an astonishing rate of growth with “very active and expressive “social graphs,” their network of Facebook friends, who became the core of their fan base” (Deighton, Kornfeld, 2012). Facebook took notice and contacted Coca-Cola of Sorg and Jedrzejewski’s violation of policy governing pages that bore brand names and images. Coca-Cola had a series of options. According to the guidelines, “they could tell Facebook to take down the page, or have Facebook transfer control of the page to the copyright owner. Alternatively, the brand could approach the
Hoerr 15 page owners and negotiate a transfer. Finally, the brand could consent to have an unaffiliated third party host and administer a page in its name, and if the brand wished it could start an “official” page in its own name and hope to migrate new fans there” (Deighton, Kornfeld, 2012).
While controlling a product’s messaging is always preferable, a straight takeover would be considered as an invasion into this brand community. On the other hand, hundreds of millions of marketing dollars could be potentially undermined if brand control was ceded. Rather than shutting the page down, Coca-Cola invited the two men to their headquarters to work with them on brand messaging for their site. Seizing these opportunities allows for Coca-Cola to work with their community and integrate it into their social media campaign while learning from others to keep their social media innovative.
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Coca-Cola Conclusions According to Forbes, Coca-Cola is the fourth most powerful brand in the world, behind only three technology brands. With a brand value of $56.1 billion dollars and with spending 3,266 million dollars on advertising in the last year, it’s no wonder that Coca-Cola is one of the top brands in the world. And why wouldn’t they be? Not only does the company sell beverages, but they also sell happiness. In order to sell this brand image to their consumers, Coca-Cola utilizes their Twitter and Facebook to engage with their customers and build upon their brand. By creating a brand community on their social media platforms with engagement posts, Coca-Cola is able to build relationships between their customers and their brand, as well on a customer to customer level as well. This shows the social capability that brands have to create relationships, even with inanimate objects, such as brands or products. But even as the top beverage industry brand, Coca-Cola cannot afford to discount their social media efforts. The type of content that Coca-Cola is posting will effect their engagement rate. People want to interact and engage, which is why marketing an unique message on each platform is so beneficial for Coca-Cola’s marketing. Twitter is all about sharing one’s thoughts with the world. With Twitter, Coca-Cola pushes for sharing and creating happiness and interaction with others because they know users on Twitter have the goal of sharing in the first place. On the other hand, Facebook is more personal and detailed about individual lives. The interaction between the Coca-Cola brand and Facebook consumers is personal happiness and creating that intimate relationship that the social media site can foster. Through these different tactics throughout Coke’s social media and marketing strategies, the brand has maintained a cohesive message: happiness.
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Sources Deighton, J., Kornfeld, L. (2012, December 5). Coca-Cola on Facebook. Harvard Business School [Case Study]. Hitz, L. (2014, September 19). Simply Summer Social Awards Contestant #3: @CocaCola’s #ShareACoke Campaign l Simply Measured. Retrieved May 8, 2015, from http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2014/09/19/simply-summer-social-awards-contestant-3cocacolas-shareacoke-campaign/#i.1h8oe8wegbdkd1. Lee, J. (2013, August 21). Average Facebook Engagement Metrics: How Does Your Brand Stack Up? Retrieved March 13, 2015, from http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2290342/average-facebook-engagementmetrics-how-does-your-brand-stack-up. Muniz, Jr., A., & O’Guinn, T. (2001, March 1). Brand Community. Retrieved March 13, 2015, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/319618. Shively, K. (2014, May 22). Lessons from Coca-Cola’s Social Media Strategy: Cohesive Campaigns and Creative Content | Simply Measured. Retrieved March 13, 2015, from http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2014/05/22/lessons-from-coca-colas-social-mediastrategy-cohesive-campaigns-and-creative-content/. Sicilia, M., Palazon, M. Brand communities on the internet. (2008). Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 13(3), 255-270. The World’s Most Valuable Brands. (n.d.). Retrieved May 8, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/.