Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Coca-Cola Company and Social Media Engagement

The topic for this post is going to be something that almost everybody have tried in their life and many of us loved it. It's one and only 
First of all lets observe all of Coca-Cola Company brands, because there are quite a few!
Just look at that! You wouldn't probably think that Coca-Cola owns that many, would you?
It must be really hard to keep an eye on all of them in terms of developing right marketing strategies and campaigns.
All companies struggle answering the question - what does the customer want? And sometimes they chose to do something that would satisfy every customer out there. That's what Coca-Cola Company did.
I hope everybody has tried or at least seen this marvel of science and technology! 
Meet Coca-Cola Freestyle!
Never seen it before? Don't you worry! I will tell what it is. It's a Coca-Cola fountain where you basically can add any kind of flavour to any of Coca-cola drinks. Sounds like fun, right? You can get more than 100 drink combinations of some regular and low-calorie brands, this includes varieties of waters, sports drinks, lemonades and sparkling waters.
But even having this miracle of miracles Coca-Cola uses crowdsourcing and maintains a visible appearance on Facebook and other social networking sites. With millions of fans Coca-Cola uses the power of social networking to spread its word and to here what its customers are willing to say. Using social networking helps it to stay young and fresh. The brand always wants Coca-Cola products to be associated  with positive feelings. 
Coca-Cola likes its social media engagement to be transparent and even shows its Social Media Principles on company's website.
The majority of companies use social networking sites to get feedback, and most of the feedback is usually positive. Knowing that you’re doing right surely can be helpful, but positive feedback isn't enough to drive progress. Instead of spending an enormous amount of time and money on market research companies can successfully maintain their relationships with customers in social media. Companies should simply ask customers in their posts and tweets. "[...] customers don't take long to tell you what they want. They use your product and interact with your company; they know what's wrong and how things can be fixed." (183) However companies shouldn't expect that customers would tell them what to do - "they just make suggestions [...] companies are listening to and acting on many of these suggestions." (194)
Coca-Cola Company is one of the biggest companies in the global marketplace. It constantly launching new campaigns. Here are some of the huge and recent ones: 
- Coke Zero campaign on eyeka.com - a contest for the best Video/Animation which captures a tagline ”It’s possible!”;
- Coca-cola Design+ Award campaign in Germany - a contest for developing concept ideas for the bottle crate of future.
And there are many more others that were done and yet more to come!
Whether it's a big or a small campaign it encourages company's customers to use social media and help promote the brand.
The good news about social media is that it’s very good for trying out something new and talking to customers and all at once.
Let me know whether you like the idea of Coca-Cola Freestyle or not? And if you tried it, tell me know what your favourite flavour is!



Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Cats and the Groundswell


Let's face it, everybody loves to watch good cat videos every once in a while! I do! And YouTube is one of the best places to do it. There are quite a few famous internet cats such as Snoopy Cat, Maru, Grumpy Cat, Nala Cat, Lil BUB, Hamilton, Oskar&Klaus and even a cartoon Simon's Cat! Each of them is unique in a certain way and has a vivid personality.

I'm sure you recognize at least some of them unless you've been living under a rock!

Besides entertaining videos these lovely creatures participate in commercials and cooperate with famous brands. Right before Christmas 2013 Friskies aired a music video called "Hard To Be a Cat at Christmas" on its YouTube channel starring some internet-famous cats - Oskar the blind cat, Nala Cat, Colonel Meow, Hamilton the hipster cat and Grumpy Cat. The commercial claimed that Friskies will donate a can of wet food to cats in need for every video view starting after 500,000 views.  The video has over 3 million views. BTW Grumpy Cat is featured in at least 13 videos on this channel and has a separate playlist Grumpy Cat & Friskies®! And this isn't a coincidence - Grumpy Cat got Lifetime Achievment Award at The Friskies in 2013 for the best cat video. Since then Friskies and Grumpy Cat started their partnership. She was also named 2012's most influential cat by MSNBC.

Hands down Grumpy Cat is probably the most popular and richest cats in the world. Grumpy cat - a.k.a Tardar Sauce - known for her grumpy facial expression, has a fortune worth $120 million which is more than some Hollywood's biggest celebrity humans have. Tardar Sauce became Grumpy cat over two years ago when her picture was posted to the social news website Reddit on September 22, 2012. Since that time her popularity hasn't stop growing. Internet is full of memes with her pictures and funny sayings. She is everywhere!

Of course there is an owner behind each of these cats whom we not necessarily know by sight, but who started all of THESE and boosted the popularity of their beloved pets. They started their involvement in the groundswell and it looks like there is no way back.

These felines prove that the groundswell is not only for humans.

With this kind of involvement in the groundswell with millions of views and thousands of followers there is a whole market waiting for the buyers. You can find any kind of things featuring famous internet cats from wall calendars and look-a-like plush toys on out to books and films.
Maybe someday these cats will have stars on Hollywood Boulevard or monuments to perpetuate their names.

We can draw a conclusion that owners can use their cats to help other animals via the groundswell. Cats are a good tool to attract and engage people.

Even a cat can swim like a fish in the groundswell so why can't anybody?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumpy_Cat
https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/new-idea/real-life/a/25713506/grumpy-cat-worth-a-whopping-120-million/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2864212/Not-grumpy-Cat-internet-star-owner-64million.html

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Online clothing shops and the groundswell

So the reason why I chose this topic is simple...recently I ran out of new videos in my YouTube subscriptions feed so I dared to find new channels to watch and subscribe to. The first thing that came to my thirsty for shopping mind was my favorite online clothing shop - ASOS. I was very much surprised by a small number of subscribers (comparing to some entertainment YouTube channels that I watch) so I decided to check out a few other popular online retailers' channels such as Topshop, Macy's, Nordstrom and Urban Outfitters. And I found that non of them were any close to pitiful 100,000 subscribers! How come? Do these companies even participate in the groundswell?!

Let's first take a dive into the theory! Shall we?

In Groundswell, the authors mention the marketing funnel that shows the way people become buyers (101 Groundswell).
Where do online clothing shops meet the groundswell? Well, everywhere! But I would like to turn your attention to the part where communication happens.
The Social Technographics ladder
The authors of the book point out that marketers have little control over what happens in the middle of the funnel as it is heavily influenced by the groundswell, which means that customers here are engaged in conversations on different social networks (101 Groundswell). The conversation includes customers of all Social Technographics Profile groups, however the dialogue itself is made by Creators and Critics (posts, blogs, comments, etc.) and never goes unseen by Spectators(43, 102 Groundswell).

In the modern economy companies should not only keep their eye on this activities - they should participate in the communication! And the better they participate the more buyers they will get.


Nowadays this kind of company-buyer communication happens on social networks. What are the most popular social networks that are used by the modern companies? Some of them may vary, but the most common and widespread are Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube.


Now we are turning back to the first page. Let's compare social network involvement of those popular online retailers mentioned in the beginning of this blog:

as of 2 February 2015


Facebook
Twitter
Google +
Pinterest
Instagram
YouTube
ASOS
3,596,057



798K

 2,260,567


402,111
2.6M
38,962


Topshop
4,130,773
1.06M
2,255,927

97,805
3.7M
50,128
Macy's
14,718,980
734K
-
104,258
254K
16,643
Nordstrom
3,096,476
548K
-
4,418,975
744K
20,650
Urban Outfitters
2,127,314
967K
-
155,125
2.4M
20,282


As you can see it's just YouTube that isn't quite popular, there are more participants on other social networks. And you can see that ASOS and others are doing quite alright after all!

But we all know that having a big number of followers or subscribers doesn't necessarily mean that the company is keeping up in the groundswell, but it still gives the general idea. I doubt that unsatisfied costumers would not unsubscribe from those social networks, and by "unsatisfied costumer" I also mean those whose issues and concerns got no answer from the company.

Have you ever had a good/bad experience communicating with a company via social networking website? What would you like it to improve?


Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Airlines and their Instagram

It is commonly known that Instagram is an established social media that is the most popular one of a kind (online mobile photo and video sharing). 
In this post I would like to review a few airlines I like and see how they use Instagram to attract audience and encourage new customers. These airlines are Turkish Airlines, Delta and JetBlue. So lets take a look at their Instagram accounts.


As you can see, all of them have similar content as for pictures, but it only seams to be that way. For example on Turkish Airlines Instagram page you will find a lot (and I mean a lot) of posts with football players (for example Drogba and Messi) who are involved in its marketing campaign. Delta likes to draw attention to its heritage and history by posting plenty of retro pictures with #TrowbackThuesday. JetBlue likes to give tips to its customers using #TravelTip and offer new locations to travel to with #DestinationFriday.
The first airline I found interacting with people via social media was Turkish Airlines. One day I've been scrolling my news-feed in vk and my eye caught one of my friends's posts that was about a contest the company had at a time and a prize was two round-way tickets. That was a long time ago, so I couldn't find it now. Fortunately the girl works at the Turkish Airline office in Astrakhan airport that I used to work at and apparently promoting the airline on Instagram is a part of her job.
link
As it turned out it is not the only contest the company have been helding on Instagram.
link
link
Delta has no contests on its Instargam page (at least any recent ones) but there is something I really like it has. It's #Nerifly which is simply a random scientific fact related to aviation, but apparently is does the job.
link
link
JetBlue which is my favourite airline for its JetPaws is also using contests in its marketing campaign.
link
As is seen from above different airlines use various strategies and tools to draw customers and one of the best tricks is to held a contest because there is nothing more appealing as something for free!
Tell me what is your favourite airline and why you like it?