C11DK - Coca-Cola's International Social Media Marketing Strategy

This case study examines Coca-Cola's international social media marketing strategy, comparing it with competitors like PepsiCo, Mountain Dew, and Starbucks. It highlights Coca-Cola's effective use of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to engage customers and promote its brand globally. The analysis includes campaigns like "Share a Coke" and the "Happiness Machine," demonstrating how Coca-Cola leverages emotional connections and innovative approaches to increase brand awareness and sales. The study also discusses the theoretical frameworks of customer engagement and cross-cultural communication, illustrating how Coca-Cola adapts its strategies to different cultural contexts and maintains customer loyalty through consistent feedback and change management. Ultimately, the case study showcases Coca-Cola's success in using social media to build a strong global presence and connect with consumers on a personal level.

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International Social Media Marketing Strategy

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
About Case Study............................................................................................................................3
About company................................................................................................................................4
Appropriate strategy: Coca Cola’s Campaign.................................................................................5
The happiness machine................................................................................................................5
Comparison of other brands.........................................................................................................8
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
This assignment is based on the case study of “Social drinks in the global Social Media Space”.
It is vital for the companies to keep consideration of social media while promoting the products
as it is the approach by which one company can promote its product globally. It can be seen in
today’s world that the emergence of social media networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
and many blogs. An appropriate social media strategy is the useful tool for the business to attain
the desired outcome within timeframe (Godey, Manthiou, Pederzoli, Rokka, Aiello, Donvito and
Singh, 2016). This essay will entail the background of the company to the most popular on social
media network. Along with an appropriate strategy will be demonstrated under this essay with an
appropriate strategy.
About Case Study
The case study is based on the soft drinks in the global social media space in which the
discussion has been made on various companies of social drinks. The rise of social media in the
case study has been demonstrated as Facebook has more than 800 million users globally and
Twitter has 200 million users were the uppermost social media marketing channels. The case
study has entailed information of various companies such as coca-cola, Pepsico, Mountain dew
and Starbucks. It has been found that the Coca-Cola Company is well known American beverage
corporation. Coca-cola is invented in Georgia in 1886. It has been found through the case study
that the company has significant value in the soft drink industry. The discussion has been made
under the case study about each company in an efficient manner for which the strategy of social
media used by that companies are demonstrated. The campaign strategy has been taken into

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consideration by this case study in order to increase the demand of the products in the view of
their customers. The comparison has been made between pepsico and coca cola in which the
discussion entailed regarding used social media marketing theory.
About company
According to the case study, it can be seen that Coca-Cola Company is well known company in
the world that has taken use of appropriate strategy of social media marketing in order to attain
the desired outcome within time frame. The mission of Coca-Cola Company is to refresh the
world, to develop value and make a difference. The coca-cola has done in a perfectly manner in
which the social media campaigns and ad campaigns have significant role in social media
marketing. Along with the company had a couple of applications of Facebook such as “when will
happiness strike” and “aah giver”. The total brands of coca-cola are around 3000 in which the
company sold fewer than 500 brand names in over 200 countries (Greenhalgh, 2019). It has been
found as per the current information that coca-cola is well known brand and the Facebook page
has attracted 93 million fans which is not a surprise focusing on how big and effective the brand
is. Coca-Cola has not its own store and that is why the company is not focused on driving people
to its shops. There is a campaign of Coca-Cola named “share a coke” campaign was a super hit
and put an upper level of impression on the social media (Gill, 2009). It has been found that this
campaign is innovative where the company changes the iconic log with names as it is helpful in
amplifying their sales. Under this campaign, the company has around thousands names on the
bottle, more than 990 million impression on twitter, around 150 personalized bottles were sold
out and around 17,000 virtual name bottles shared across Europe (Chaffey, 2016). In the context
of geographic reach, the company is able o exports their product into 200 countries which could

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be possible due to adaption of latest technology. The important international market of coca-cola
company is Latin America, Asia and Europe that accounts for 33% of revenue. It has been found
that the company has distribution in sales such as 43% in US, 37% in Mexico and 20% all
around the world. There is a long list and history of acquisitions of the coca-cola company as the
first acquisition of the company was Minute Maid in 1960 (Sisson and Bowen, 2017).
Theoretical Framework
Customer engagement
The marketing of the customer engagement is referred as the effort of the company in the context
of motivating, empowering and measuring the contribution of the customer in the marketing
functions. The customer engagement is about motivating the customers in order to communicate
and distribute the experiences the company develop for them as a brand and business. A strong
customer engagement strategy will motivate brand loyalty and development in the competitive
market. As per the customer engagement model, it has five stages to satisfy the customers such
as unawareness, discovery, consideration, and conversion and growth through value creation.

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With respect to Coca-Cola, it has been analyzed that the chart of the company represents the
worldwide sales volume and the net income of the company is raised by 4% in the 3rd quarter of
2012. The brand got benefitted from the wrong steps taken by Pepsico in the same industry. By
expanding in to health foods, the company of Pepsi has taken its eye off its zone of major
competence and the fundamental message that the company pretends to be giving out is a
repentant one. Coca-Cola Company has focused on the change management that is why to attain
the customer loyalty, the company established a robust change management plan and they
occupied agents of their company from all groups and developed a cross-functional committee to
analyze communications and offer insights from the perspective of frontline. With this activity,
the company is able to improve the customer engagement in order to maintain relationship with
them for a long period. The company spent most of their valuable time going through customer
reference calls and getting feedback so that the customer could not get irritated from the services
and get help whenever they want.
Source: https://www.statista.com/topics/1392/coca-cola-company/
Cross cultural framework

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The phenomena of globalization carried out the development and internationalization of
businesses, therefore resulting in requirement and realism of studying cross-cultural
communication. It is the frame work that helps the company to get effective understanding
regarding the different cultures and traditions so that the company set their target market. Due to
globalization, there are many organizations that get opportunities to go beyond national borders
frequently without considering the potential financial prosperity can get developed into
disastrous situations. Cross cultural framework dimension theory entails the Hofstede’s cultural
dimension theory that is developed by Greet Hofstede. It is the dimension that elaborates the
culture of the society on the values of its employees along with the relation of this theory in the
context of behaviour. This dimension covers six aspects through which the company can analyse
the condition of different countries. Coca-cola Company has different promotion strategy
through which the company is successful in sponsoring sports in different nation. The company
knows the value of the culture in different countries that is why the love for people of different
nation for coca-cola is same. The company develops its product after analysing the demand of
the customer so that the relationship with them can be maintained by the company for a long
time. In 2013, the company aired a warm commercial in which the advertisement spot
characterized actors singing the Patriotic tune “America the Beautiful” in various languages. It
helps to get spread all over America in quick manner. Along with that the company has
approached various strategies to penetrate the South Korean market, the company did not quit
and started to explore the taste of people towards beverage products. The company has been
decided to use what they recognized regarding the culture to enlarge their market of South
Korean market share and revenue.
Appropriate strategy: Coca Cola’s Campaign

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It has been found that the company has an appropriate strategy of the social media to grab
opportunities in an adequate manner. It has been found that coca cola and Pepsi had similar
product portfolio but the implemented campaign by Coca-Cola is different from other Pepsi
(Felix, Rauschnabel and Hinsch, 2017). It has been found that the first campaign initiated by the
company was “Jo Chaaho ho Jaaye, Coca Cola Enjoy. It was outstanding campaign initiated by
Coca-Cola. The main feature of the campaign of Coca-Cola is that it involves celebrities to get
attention of many people towards the products. It is remarkable strategy of the social media that
facilitates in drawing attention of fans of these celebrities. There is a current campaign of Coca-
cola of “open happiness”, the company seems to have completed both, an emotional mix along
with an enormous appeal. The main motive behind this campaign of the company to bring actual
and natural connection of people to each other and celebrating small moments of happiness with
their loved ones.
The happiness machine
It has been found that the company has introduced the happiness machine campaign in order to
reach maximum people of the young generation; the company has formed digital marketing
campaign on the basis of the transmitting “happiness”. The company is more focused towards
increasing sales that is why it includes various kinds of media such as Orkut, Facebook, My
Space and many more. Among of these the spectacular physical manifestation was the
“Happiness Machine”. The structure of this machine was ordinary beverage distributor but when
unwary students pushed the coke selector, they got something different from their expectations
such as a bunch of flowers, balloon animals, large quantity of bottles and balloon animals. It is
quite different experience for the student for capturing this; the company had decided to set the
camera above of the machine so that the reaction of the student can be captured. Through this

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strategy, it has been found that the student is not happy but also they are enthused about the
surprises and share their experience with their friends in a different manner (Gaither and Austin,
2016).
As everyone knows that the social media is the platform of spreading news in a one go to the
large population without any hurdles (Serôdio, McKee and Stuckler, 2018). It has become easier
for the company to post their deeds on social media which attracts people to buy their products
and chase them as they can as possible. The example of it can be seen in the case study as on 12
January, the company post video on YouTube by a Facebook update. By May 2010 the view of
people had increased day by day and reached till 2.3 million views. It has been found that the
viewers of this video were from outside of USA for which the video had been posted in different
languages. In 2010, the company has embarked on another mission to find out the meaning of
happiness around the globe. Throughout the case study, it has been found that the company was
eager to get reaction of people towards the implemented approach by the company. The
company had decided to conduct survey for which the company had sent three persons team to
visit all countries where the demand of Coca-Cola had been increased (Deal, 2018). For this the
company had started the campaign in 2009, where the online voting system was set up to pick
the chosen members of the team from those they were able to send applications. It has been
found that the customers are seeking out uplifting and an effective content in social. The group
director of Coca-Cola Company said that “our fans are more focused towards those things that
make them smile, which is huge impending for the company because it brings into line to our
values of optimism and getting people together to share moments of happiness. The company has
started to give different view to its design for the purpose of presenting visual language for coca-

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cola. This working attitude of the company helps to reach the fan following around 500,000 fans
everyday across the platform of social media (Faria, Barros and Sauerbronn, 2017).
According to the case study, it has been found that there is a huge risk of increased of fans, the
page also get attracted towards obscene and span content which hamper the information of the
page. Due to this issue, Facebook has started the policy in which it is necessary for the company
to promote the brand after being associated with the brand. Along with that the Facebook has
allowed the fans to develop pages, but it is necessary for them to remain “fan clubs” and
“groups”. It has been found through the case study that the company should develop various
vents and involve in the corporate social responsibility in order to get attention of the customers
towards the services. For this, coca-cola has taken various steps and engaged with local citizens
to find out and document their source of happiness (Ashley and Tuten, 2015). The team of the
company is succeeded in bringing interest of their fans in the campaigns so that they can ask
question regarding the campaign. It has been found that the coca-cola company has upper level
of functional social media plan as the company employ four social media channels that are
encouraging a high volume of fan include that is productively developing a brand image and
community. The account of Facebook allows the users of the company to become fans of coca-
cola, thus developing them part of a very huge and animated online community. Along with that
Fan can also take part in the discussion forums that permit them to put comment on projects of
coke’s advertising and of course the product itself and its dissimilarities across cultures
(Hootsuite, 2018). The company is not able to provide sufficient content to develop discussion
across all four platforms. The company is lost the opportunity to share depth information
regarding their current projects, most remarkably the Live Positively Campaign.

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Comparison of other brands
Other brands of the social drink brands are also active in participating social media in order to
get attention of their customers. The discussion has been made on different companies such as
PepsiCo, mountain dew, star bucks. The social media of Pepsi was not started by fans. It has
been found that Pepsi has adopted social media marketing strategy but it could not get succeeded
as much as coca-cola. The Pepsi brand has started a Pepsi Refresh Project which was the
marketing initiative that cultivated innovation in social responsibility with the help of the
customer generated ideas. It has been analyzed through various reports that the scope of the
coca-cola in attaining the objectives of the social media is huge as the average posts per week of
this company are 3. As per current information, it has been found that the followers of coca-cola
on social media are 1,871,917. The important aspect is to note that the company of coca-cola has
bigger audience; on the other hand, the content of Pepsi seems to be vibrating a little more with
their followers, on the basis of their average engagement rates (Chávez, Bernal, Menéndez and
Velázquez, 2017). During the campaign, the term of pepsi is quite low in relation of direct
product promotion. For this campaign, the company has started to put labelled on their products
and cartons. The sales of Pepsi were not increased as per the expectation due to strong position
of the coca-cola company in USA. It increases the doubt for campaign and they started to look
forward for new approach in order to beat the competition.
The approaching strategy of coca-cola is entirely different from other brands as well. It has been
found in the context of Starbucks that the consumer of this company is more active in promotion
instead of putting more information in the social media. In comparison of coca-cola company, it
has been found that Starbucks has started the social media website in order to share, vote, discuss
and see. This activity of the company has given an opportunity to the customer to share their

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view regarding the coffee in an efficient manner without any issue. Along with it has been found
that this site involved a blog “Starbucks Ideas in Action” written by employees regarding the
execution of and reactions to the innovations (Logan, 2016). In comparison of coca-cola,
Starbucks posted coupons online so that the customer of it can download or print out to their
phones with their twitter picture of application. In the context of the competitor of Mountain’s
Dew, it has been found that it has developed a campaign named “DEWmocracy”, which has
challenged the fans of the brand to develop and create the upcoming product of the company. It
has been decided by Mountain Dew to prolong the successful campaign with a much broader on-
line presence and heavier social media support.
It has been recommended to the companies to keep focus on the different strategy of the social
media in order to increase the productivity of the employees. The companies should focus on
proper planning of international social media marketing strategy in order to get attention of the
customer towards the product (Fulgoni, 2015). The companies should set goals that address the
huge confronts for the purpose of increasing the brand awareness, attain a higher quality of sales,
and drive in person sales. The companies should focus on researching the audiences because
assumptions are a dangerous game for marketers. There are some ideas for social media
campaign which should be applied by the top brands in order to increase attention of people
towards the product and services of the companies. It is necessary for the companies to keep
focus on different strategy which should beyond the thoughts. The company should develop
well-designed ad creative to focus on professionalism. There should be proper setting of the
goals and strategy to measure the outcomes (Austin and Gaither, 2016). The value of the
qualitative should be more in comparison of the quantitative data. The procedure of posting ads
and addressing the issues of the customers should be easy so that one can approach in an