There’s been quite a bit of discussion about Coca Cola’s evolution of its content strategy. For many years, the company dominated the advertising space – globally – but the Internet has forced a change in its strategy. Rather than ‘Creative Excellence’, they’re now after ‘Content Excellence’. One commentator, Jeff Bullas, believes there are 5 lessons to be learned from Coke’s new approach.
Lesson 1: Create Liquid Content
As Jeff Bullas notes, the purpose of content excellence is to create ideas that are so contagious, they can’t be controlled. Coke calls this “liquid content”. It means creating content that begs to be shared whether that be an image, a video or an article. You probably know yourself which videos you watch and share. Have that in mind when crafting your campaigns.
Lesson 2: Ensure your Content is Linked
The next part of the equation, adds Bullas, is to ensure you create content that’s relevant to the business objectives of your company, your brand, and your customer interests. This is linked content – content that’s relevant and connected to the company’s goals and brand. Ensure the content communicates your message that is congruent with your mission and values.
Lesson 3: Create Conversations
The new distribution technologies including Twitter, YouTube and Facebook allow greater connectivity and consumer empowerment than ever before, continues Bullas. In the new landscape, don’t just publish content but interact with your audience and tribe. Your role is to provoke conversations rather than talk at them.
Lesson 4: Move Onto Dynamic Storytelling
With traditional media, storytelling is static and one-way. Television and newspapers shouted at you with no interaction. Coca Cola believes in order to grow its business on the social web, it needs to move on from “One Way Storytelling” to “Dynamic Storytelling“. This means allowing the story to evolve as you interact and converse with your customers. You need to converse with your customers in many media formats and social networks. Storytelling has moved on from static and synchronous to multifaceted, engaged and spreadable.
Lesson 5: Be Brave and Creative with Your Content Creation
Part of the new Coca Cola content strategy is applying a 70/20/10 Investment principle to creating “Liquid content“.
- 70% of your content should be low risk. It pays the rent and is your bread and butter marketing. (It should be easy to do and only consumes 50% of your time).
- 20% of your content creation should be innovative.
- 10% of your content marketing are high risk ideas that will be tomorrow’s 70% or 20%. (Be prepared to fail).
Learning how to fuel conversations and interact has never been more important. Consumer ideas, creativity and conversations have been set free with the evolution of social networks. Learning to leverage and wrangle those conversations to increase your brand visibility is now a vital part of marketing.
Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/713235