Soft Drinks Unleashed: Global Social Media Strategies and Competition

Running Head: SOFT DRINKS IN THE GLOBAL SOCIAL MEDIA SPACE
Soft Drinks in the Global Social Media Space
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2SOFT DRINKS IN THE GLOBAL SOCIAL MEDIA SPACE
Introduction:
Social media has become an almost essential part of the people’s lives in the modern
age. Without the social media, it would not be possible for individuals to get the information
which is most important for them or connect with their near and dear ones on Facebook.
Many internationally well-known organizations are also using social media as part of their
marketing strategies to attract more customers and to make sure that they stay ahead of their
competitors in the marketplace. This helps the companies to make sure that both the
customers get ro know about the type of products and services they sells as well as to try their
products and prefer their products in comparison to their competitors. Many soft drinks
companies such as Coca Cola, Pepsi, Mountain Dew and Starbucks have also been
implementing these strategies to attract more customers in the marketplace. They do so by
forming various marketing strategies through the social media so that they can gain followers
would would be loyal to the company as well as its products.
Thesis Statement:
The purpose of this essay is to find out which of the four soft drinks companies among Coca
Cola, Pepsi, Mountain Dew and Starbucks apply the most appropriate international social
media marketing strategies to gain customers and stay ahead of the competitors in the
marketplace. It will also make sure to discuss about the type of campaigns that have been
followed by each of the companies.
Discussion:
According to Zheng (2016), social media is one of the most important phenomena in
the modern age. It is through the use of social media that various companies post their
advertisements and other information regarding the sales of their products and services. In the
recent times, soft drinks companies use their social media sites to advertise about their

3SOFT DRINKS IN THE GLOBAL SOCIAL MEDIA SPACE
products so that people in their own countries as well as in the world get to know about the
products and can try to see if they like the products or not. In fact Soft drink companies like
Coca Cola have been extensively using the social media services to promote for their
products and services in various countries. Various other soft drinks companies like
Mountain Dew, PepsiCo and Starbucks also follow this strategy to establish their
advertisements in various countries of the countries. These companies mainly use marketing
channels like Facebook (800 million global users) and Twitter (200 million global users) to
promote their soft drinks and beverages in the countries of the world. Apart from these two
marketing channels, they also seem to use LinkedIn which is mainly a B2B sector social
network marketing channel with a worldwide follower of around 120 million users.
It has been found in a research that among all three social media channels, Facebook
is the one that is mostly used as a marketing channel by various companies with a total
revenue of $3.7 million at the end of 2011.
The Coca Cola Company on Facebook
Coca Cola Company is said to be one of the largest soft drink and Beverages
Company in the world. It is said that in 2011, the company has sold and served around 1.7
billion non-alcoholic soft drinks and beverages per day. According to Goodman (2017), Coca
Cola’s presence on Facebook was started by an accident when two friends in 2008 had started
the idea of creating a Coke brand page on Facebook. Among the other pagers created by
other fans, the ones created by Dusty Sorg and Michael Jederzejewski was the most viewed
with a followership of 1.2 within three months of posting the brand page on Facebook. In the
recent times, Coca Cola has been creating a lot of marketing strategies by promoting their
brand on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites so that the customer can get to know
about the products and services and try them themselves to understand whether they like the
products or not. Coke had designed a virtual marketing campaign called “The Happiness

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Machine” aimed at the younger generation. This campaign is used to connect with the young
generation who would feel happy when drinking a bottle of Coke. According to Zheng
(2018), this campaign proved to be popular not only on Facebook but also on other social
media such as My Space, Twitter, Instagram, Orkut and other popular social media channels
as the campaign really connected with the younger generation of the times. Using this
campaign for promoting their soft drinks, it is said that Coca Cola has managed to sell large
amounts of their soft drinks and beverages in around 205 countries within a year. This
campaign named “Expedition 206” gained a large number of following on Facebook, Twitter
and other popular social media sites where the campaign gained a large number of followers
who liked the campaign. According to Zheng (2016), one of the important events that the
campaign took part in included FIFA World Cup Football 2010. The campaign gained a huge
popularity owing to the fact that Coca Cola toured around 206 countries in the world in just a
year which increased the sales of their soft drinks. In the recent times, Coca Cola is very
active in social media channels and their media campaigns can be widely found across
various social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and other
popular social media channels where they regularly promote their soft drinks campaign and
other beverages.
The Pepsi Refresh Campaign
Pepsi is a soft drink owned by the company PepsiCo has made their social media
presence largely as part of the company’s advertising campaign. According to Fulgoni
(2017), Pepsi started their social media campaigns by launch the “Refresh Everything”
campaign which enabled the company to start a new method of promoting their soft drinks
which were targeted at a more modern generation. The campaign proved to be popular in
2008 despite that the fact that Americans had economic problems that same year. According
to Goodman (2016), the company did not participate with their “Refresh” campaign in the