Coca Cola: Content Marketing is the Future

Coca-Cola is betting everything on content marketing, which is increasingly becoming a major factor in marketing strategies for companies. And even though it is gaining traction, many companies haven’t yet realized the power of content marketing for their own business. However, with a big name like Coca-Cola starting to shift their marketing strategy toward content, other slow adopters will likely follow.

Content 2020

Over at Content Marketing Institute, Joe Pulizzi explains the importance of this new shift from advertising to content. Coca-Cola released two videos on the importance of content, called Content 2020, and it highlights the new shift and how all companies should look into content creation, instead of focusing solely on advertising.

For the most part, the video summarizes a few key proponents all businesses can learn from:

• Creative drive is no longer the only thing companies can rely on.
• Conversations and story-telling through content should be a company’s focus now.
• Businesses should look at the 70/20/10 model for their content development and marketing strategy.

Having creative advertising and using commercials to draw in an audience has worked for Coca-Cola for many years, however, the landscape has been rapidly changing and consumers want more than just a 30-second advertisement. As the first video explains, Coca-Cola is moving from “creative excellence” to “content excellence.”

Coca-Cola calls this high-quality content “liquid content,” and they explain it as content that is “so contagious, it cannot be controlled.”

To move into content excellence, Coca-Cola wants to use conversations. They want to create stories that are dynamic and can be expressed through “every possible connection.” This relies on quality content, and technology to power highly relevant content delivery to every channel.

The Content Pyramid

A highlight of the two-part video is Coca-Cola’s 70/20/10 plan for content distribution and creation. Here’s the model broken down:

• 70 percent of their investment will be “low risk” content–content that doesn’t take as much time, but, as Coca-Cola says “is their bread and butter.”
• 20 percent of content will be innovative and engaging and will target more specific demographics. Essentially, this is moderate risk content.
• Then, 10 percent is their “high risk” content. 10 percent of the content will be new ideas, new ways of connecting, new ways of engagement. However, this also means Coca-Cola needs to be prepared for any sort of failure.

This lines up perfectly with the Content Pyramid that Andrew discussed in this post. It is vital for brands to create content at many levels, and just investing in the high-profile, small-volume pieces at the top of the pyramid, ignores the necessity of creating frequency and consistency of content for social recommendations, search engines, and multiple user access points.

Content curation is a great way of delivering higher volumes of content, without creating every piece uniquely. It shows the brands is tolerant of multiple perspectives, and amplifies the many voices in the marketplace that are relevant.

Other examples are brought up in the second video, including Nike’s Livestrong campaign.

Research

Nike didn’t do any preliminary research for Livestrong because that would mean it would “solidify” the content too early in the process, propping it up for future failure. Coca-Cola reminds viewers of their liquid content approach and how everything must be fluid in content marketing.

idio’s “Explore” dashboard is a great way to monitor in real-time the content topic trends in your target audience.

In order to keep content liquid, Coca-Cola will also be changing how they do research. Currently, they use 20 percent of their research budget on qualitative research, which they consider outdated. 60 percent is used on link testing and another 20 percent on static testing.

Instead, Coca-Cola will be shifting to 30 percent of research on “inspirational spaces,” an upfront approach to replace qualitative research. 15 percent will be allotted to online interaction and dialogue, and another 30 percent will continue to be link testing, but will be more efficient and cost-effective.

Final thoughts

Near the end of the video, Coca-Cola reminds viewers to not just replicate content, but always keep it fresh, engaging, and new.

Advertising used to be able to rely on short commercials and simple brand messages targeted at certain demographics. Today, with people consuming more content than before, it only makes sense to create a strong and innovative content strategy like Coca-Cola.

Other brands and agencies alike can learn from these videos, no matter their budget. Content marketing should be about engagement and, as Coca-Cola describes, liquid. It’s free-moving, it’s contagious, and can be very cost-effective.