Comments for A Smart Social Media Play From... Coca-Cola?

A Smart Social Media Play From... Coca-Cola?

2008-06-10T20:00:01Z

Coca-Cola quietly launched one of their first social media applications last weekend, a bookmarking widget for Facebook called CokeTag. (Coke Singapore also has a Facebook application out, promoting a tie-in with UEFA EURO 2008.) CokeTag is not only a smart play from the company, but also a fairly useful app as far as profile widgets go. The app allows users to create customizable Flash bookmark widgets linking to link collections on any topic they're passionate about.

]]> Coke is using their social media widget initially to promote their we8 project, which is a "cultural exchange" of top artists and designers from China, paired with Western musicians. we8 is part of Coca-Cola's sponsorship of the upcoming Beijing Olympics. Coke has been a sponsor of the Olympics since 1928 -- the games' longest running sponsor.

While some of the press pack that was delivered to us along with CokeTag is a little over the top (i.e., "The Coca-Cola Company aligns itself with delivering the promise of a cross-platform Web experience, consistent with Coke's brand value of bringing people together for social connections across cultures."), launching a social media application is a smart move. If there's one thing that Coca-Cola understands, it's branding -- they didn't become Millward Brown's #4 brand in the world by accident. And CokeTag is all a about branding.

Though the branding on CokeTag is subtle -- "We made a distinct decision not to overly brand this application," according to Michael Donnelly, Director of Worldwide Interactive Marketing, at Coca-Cola -- this is an exercise in smart branding. Coca-Cola has created something that is useful, simple, and easily spread. Even though it has nothing to do with Coke's core beverage business, all roads lead back to the brand.

CokeTag currently only works on Facebook, but an OpenSocial version is planned, to be followed by standalone versions for bloggers and other web publishers. The beauty of building a social networking application for branding purposes is that if it fails to catch on, you're very likely only out a minimal sum. There is nothing about CokeTag that suggests that it cost very much to create (in fact, it was built on top of an already existing Flash advertising format from Linkstorms). Coke is also smart to create an widget that users should actually find useful, and not something that feels like advertising.

Comment from Michael Tighe on 2008-06-10

2008-06-10T22:22:50Z

I've been playing around with it for the last hour or so. Up front it is very slick, although it is running a bit slow within facebook.

Moving a bit deeper into it, I'm failing to see how it might be useful. At the very least there seems to be some key concepts which elude me.

1) Adding other friends who have coke tags. It is not very clear that you can click "Grab this coketag!" and have that person added to your profiles tag.

2) User interface clutter. Once you figure out how to add friends, the UI is a bit crazy. From what I can see it stacks your friends tags below yours one at a time. This is going to take up a lot of vertical height.

3) How do I discover other users? Beyond my friends getting the app and adding one another how can I find new friends or send my links out to the masses?

4) Ho can I find new and unique content? I have to individually click my friends coke tags to see important links - there does not appear to be a summary.

Again I could be missing a few things, and I do like the app - but it seems 1/2 finished.

~mike

Comment from Devlin on 2008-06-10

2008-06-10T22:34:53Z

Seeing as how the app is about sharing the things that you are interested in, it certainly doesn't make it easy to do that. Why can't I search stuff added by my friends? Why can't I search and find other people that have similar CokeTags? Having to manually go to a friends page to add their CokeTags is definitely a bit counterintuitive, it really seems like some simple functionality that should have been there right from the get go.

It would be nice also if there was some functionality to add RSS feeds since the redirect process is a bit slow and takes you away from the page.

I agree that it is definitely a great idea put forth to further branded social marketing initiatives but it definitely needs some work to increase the usefulness factor.

Comment from Jason Peck on 2008-06-10

2008-06-10T23:21:46Z

The branding is subtle? There's a giant CokeTag graphic at the bottom. What would have been cool is if they had left it completely unbranded. Then people would be saying, "who put out this cool app? Really? Coke? Wow..." and then would tell their friends that Coke did something cool and didn't brand it at all. As it is now, it's all right, but it could have been better.

Comment from Dmitry on 2008-06-11

2008-06-11T11:56:52Z

to Jason:

People would only talk about it in tech circles. Majority of users wouldn't know or care it's made by Coke, so I think it's as subtle as they could get considering their goals..

Comment from Kelly Feller on 2008-06-12

2008-06-12T22:37:39Z

Yet another example of a company using social media as a gimic and not as a tool for listening. If Coca-Cola was really using social media correctly, they'd know that people are talking about them all over the web...and not so favorably at that. See this blog post that was just written yesterday challenging Coke's ability to use social media effectively.

http://www.conversationsmatter.org/2008/06/11/diet-cokes-pr-hell/

Comment from dan on 2008-06-14

2008-06-15T06:16:40Z

It is always a subtle play trying to brand without invading. When it comes down to it, we know that they are trying to brand themselves - do it in a way that is useful to me and I recognize that the value I get is paid for by the logo in the corner. I'm ok with it, I guess.

Comment from TJCNYC on 2008-06-15

2008-06-15T22:14:54Z

This is a fine idea as far as it goes, and IMHO very appropriately branded. Any less and you wouldn't know it was from Coke, any more and users would run off find a similar unbranded tool. So, great job by Michael Donnelly and his team. Still, the connection to the brand is thinner than a can of Diet Coke diluted in an ocean. A "bringing people together" app would be equally appropriate from an ISP, a phone company, trains, planes, automobiles, beer, wine, liquor, bars, restaurants, online dating services and a few dozen other categories and the hundreds brands within them. All in all, though, I guess you gotta give Coke credit for getting there first.