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Archive for November 2009

Coca-Cola Lays Out Its Vision for the Future at 2010 Meeting

Posted Friday, November 27th, 2009

AdAge.com, November 22 2009

Amid some 200 analysts, investors and media last week, Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent made a confession.

“There was a period when our company did lose its way,” he said. “We were too internally focused and not focused enough on the changes taking place with our consumers and customers. In essence, we were too busy looking at the dashboard and were not sufficiently paying attention to the world outside of our windshield.”

We live in an ‘ADD economy,’ said Joe Tripodi, chief marketing and commercial officer, Coca-Cola, at a 2020Vision meeting last week. While Coca-Cola remains the dominant beverage company in the world, and controls nearly 51% of the global carbonated soft-drink business compared to Pepsi‘s 22%, according to Beverage Digest figures, it had, perhaps, been too focused on soft drinks at a time when other beverage categories were on the rise, said Bill Pecoriello, CEO at ConsumerEdge Research. “They were too inward thinking and missed a lot of trends that were happening,” he said. “There was a shift away from certain beverages and needs being filled by alternative beverages.”

Certainly, soft drinks remain a key focus for the company, but now it has also established dairy beverages as a global platform, with brands such as Vio and Minute Maid Pulpy Super Milky, and has set juice as its top priority after sparkling beverages. It’s also put more emphasis on innovation, with its venturing and emerging brands group, of which brands such as Zico, Honest Tea and Illy are a part.

Globally, Coca-Cola says it leads in sparkling, juice and juice drinks, ready-to-drink coffee, tea and active lifestyle, or enhanced waters. It is No. 2 in sports drinks and No. 3 in packaged water, which includes plain bottled water and bulk water, categories where there is stiff competition from the likes of Gatorade and Nestle Waters.

John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, also points out that between 2000 and 2004, when former CEO Neville Isdell arrived, the company struggled with management changes and simply wasn’t functioning well. “Today, in my view, Coke is really back to functioning at a high level again,” he said. “Relations with bottlers are good. There’s good morale inside the company. They’re recruiting good people and not losing people anymore. They’re really now focusing on the business and the brands.”

Multicultural plans
But the most significant changes appear to be in the multicultural space, which Ms. Bayne said will be a core focus for the company in the U.S. by 2020. Already, multicultural consumers account for 33% of all of Coca-Cola‘s U.S. volume, and given the population growth occurring in this country, by 2020, those consumers will make up 40% of U.S. volume.

“Our multicultural plans are now 12-month plans. It is no longer Hispanic heritage month followed by Cinco de Mayo,” Ms. Bayne said. “We have a deep connection through the World Cup with Hispanic males and through the novelas with Hispanic females.”

The company is also embracing a 12-month strategy for African-American consumers. “We’re really focusing on moms. Moms lead the decisions in this segment of the population, even more than others, so we’re really focusing on her,” Ms. Bayne said. “Also, [we’re] celebrating the historically black colleges and universities, Black History Month and connecting over music.”

The brand is also recognizing the power of consumer-generated content and social media. “Among Coca-Cola‘s most powerful differentiators are the stories only our brand can tell,” said Ms. Clark. “But we’re not the only ones that can tell our story. Much of our content comes from our consumers. It’s the phenomenon of social media. Consumers remind us daily that Coca-Cola is actually their brand, not our brand.” To that end, the company is launching Expedition 206, an ambitious global social-media push.

While it’s not entirely clear what the return on the program will be, Adam Brown, director-digital communications and social media, said the company will be monitoring fan participation and online share of voice, as well as increases in friends or followers. “One of the great things about digital and social-media programs is the ability to measure just about everything. This is critical for us to demonstrate ROI on an exciting and, in a way, experimental project like this,” he said. “I also think content sharing is a critical metric to watch. … That third-party credibility is magic.”


40% of People “Friend” Brands on Facebook

Posted Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

readwriteweb.com, November 10, 2009

see link to view charts: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/survey_brands_making_big_impact_on_facebook_twitter.php

Digital marketing company Razorfish has just launched its third annual FEED survey of 1,000 “connected consumers.” The survey is focused on online consumer behavior. This year Facebook and Twitter feature prominently. 40% of respondents “friended” brands on Facebook, while 25% reported following brands on Twitter. What’s more, Razorfish found that consumers access brands on Twitter and Facebook mainly for deals and promotions.

Of those who follow a brand on Twitter, nearly 44% reported that access to exclusive deals is the main reason. On Facebook or MySpace, 37% said that access to exclusive deals or offers was their main reason for friending brands.

Over 1/4 of respondents reported having followed a brand on Twitter, which is encouraging news for companies wanting to use Twitter to promote themselves.

 43.5% reported following a brand to get “exclusive deals or offerings,” which again is a statistic that companies should take note of.

 An even higher percentage of respondents have “friended” a brand on Facebook – a whopping 40%. Considering that Facebook is a social network that started out as a way for college kids to network, this is a statistic that will make companies and organizations take note. If you want brand recognition on the Web, according to these statistics there’s a very good chance that Facebook is a place you want to be.

 A smaller percentage follow a brand on Facebook for exclusive deals or offers (36.9%) – but still a majority.

 Is this “connected consumer” crowd mainstream? Well, about 62% of the respondents still use Internet Explorer as their browser, with 30% on Firefox. So yes, they are.

It’s interesting then to look at what are the homepages of these people.

 While Google is unsurprisingly number 1 with 32.6%, Yahoo is close behind at 29.7%. MSN is still well used at 11.9%. We were most surprised that AOL is now only 7.9%. These statistics show that Yahoo remains a force among mainstream consumers, whereas AOL is slipping further behind.

We reported last week that smartphones have almost overtaken ‘feature phones’ as the cellphones of choice for consumers. Razorfish‘s survey shows that 56% of connected consumers now use a smartphone – i.e. one that has email and web capabilities.

 As with the ChangeWave Research survey recently, Razorfish puts Blackberry (29.5%) ahead of Apple’s iPhone (20.1%).

 Another illuminating statistic is the number of people who now get their news from Twitter and Facebook. While nearly 80% of respondents still access “traditional news web sites,” 33% get news from Facebook and 19.5% from Twitter. Only 27.3% get news from “alternative news web sites” – by which we presume they mean blogs.

 Overall, these figures from Razorfish show that Facebook and Twitter are now major places for brands to be; as well as online sites where consumers get at least some of their news.


The Rise and Fall of Online Advertising in 2009

Posted Thursday, November 5th, 2009

It will be the best of times and the worst of times.

cmswire.com, Dec 18 2008

Amidst the 2009 predictions for e-new year, there is a consensus that it will bring both financial ruin and success. Chances are that both will come true.

eMarketer released insights of the Internet‘s plight into the aught nines — and well, they’re kind of what you’d expect. Their senior analysts offered up their best guesses. Let’s take a look.

Online Advertising
David Hallerman opines that online spending will remain steady. Not only will video ad spending run “counter to overall economic developments, rising by 45% in 2009 to reach US$ 850 million,” but search marketing spending will grow by 14.9% in 2009, to US$ 12.3 billion also. He bases his speculation upon a sharp escalation of professional video content on the Web as a way for brand marketers to build their base and that search marketing is a measurable tool “so it will maintain its place in many budgets and increase in some others, as advertisers look for secure and effective methods to combat fear in an economic meltdown.”

Yet, despite all the online advertising, Jeffrey Grau predicts that online retail sales will start to feel the impact of the economic crisis and will only see minor increases in online sales. It’s not such a dramatic prediction given the current economic climate. Any e-commerce sales growth will be a result of “increased spending by consumers who have long been online buyers.”

While the increased revenue of online advertising is questionable, Lisa E. Phillips is confident that we’ll see an increase in multicultural marketing. With more and more African-American and Hispanic users out there, marketers will begin to cater to a wider market of consumers via “language- and culture-specific messages that evolve from their general market campaigns.”

Social Media
E-commerce will be a growing revenue stream for social network sites. Debra Aho Williamson says to “expect both MySpace and Facebook to enhance their self-serve advertising systems to allow consumers and businesses to buy and sell real-world goods and services.” The general online advertising decline will be social networking‘s gain, as smaller and niche social networks will go looking for bailouts and mergers from the bigger ones. Mergers and acquisitions are no longer for Wall Street only.

Traditional Media
Unfortunately, while traditional media will still linger into 2009, it will remain on the decline. Carol Krol maintains that “newspaper advertising will continue to decline in the new year more than any other medium.” With eMarketer estimating that US TV ad spending will decline 4.2% to US$ 66.9 billion in 2009, the economy’s impact will be at its greatest.

So there it is. Will 2009 be the year of a miraculous economic comeback or will it be a Darwinian model of survival of the fittest?


 
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