Tallying Coca Cola's social ROI !

For the recent weeks, my posts have rotated around the subject of social media and the way organizations actualize Enterprise 2.0 methods. This week I will be talking about the Return of Investment (ROI) in the case of the popular Coca cola through the use of  social media and technology. Measuring the return of investment (ROI) from social networking advertisers is pretty complicated, yet not impossible! (Wise, 2014). You could track customers to perceive how social networking has an impact on the sales. (Wise, 2014)

 (Coca-Cola, 2014)

Brief Overview of Coca Cola’s Enterprise 2.0 Methods:

Coca Cola was right on time to exploit social media, as it turned out to be an exceptionally brilliant move. According to a striking claim made by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, in a Wall Street Journal, Coke's degree of profitability from Facebook publicizing beat its ROI from TV! (Neff, 2014). The advertisement incorporated a six-minute online Ridley Scott video broken into 30-second ads exhibited on prime-time TV. Coke furthermore utilized Facebook show ads connected to videos that played for 3 days when people logged out. The results, reported by Facebook and affirmed by Coca-Cola, were without a doubt amazing! (Neff, 2014) Take a look at this video which sums up Coca Cola's social media approach. (Coca Cola, France, 2014)

ROI of Coca Cola, Tangible and Intangible Benefits:

CocaCola credits its high ROI to both tangible and intangible benefits. The intangible benefits distinguished by the company incorporate “Social Customer - Corporate pride of Coca Cola”. If Coke becomes popular and gets shared by happy customers across social media channels, it can become a point of pride for the organisation. 

"If Coca-Cola were to lose all of its production-related assets in a disaster, the company would survive. By contrast, if all consumers were to have a sudden lapse of memory and forget everything related to Coca-Cola, the company would go out of business".-Coca-Cola Executive. (Workbrands, 2013)

Other intangible benefits are “Connecting with People”. Engaging consumers is the current brand building exercise which Coke has adopted. Building relationships and credibility with future customers, audiences and clients is one of the greatest tangible benefits of going social. Coke has always been positioned as a thought leader in its industrial sector. Thanks again to social media.

 (Coca Cola on twitter, 2014)

Here we see an example of customer engagement, Coke has done a great job in responding to twitter followers. (Simply Measured, 2014)

When you match social networking efforts to income creation or profit, then tangible benefits get to be much much clearer. Each euro used on Facebook gave back 2.74 euros plus increased Coke sales to a great extent. That was 3.6 times better than the ROI ascribed to TV ads. Altogether, 27% of incremental sales originated from Facebook, at only 2% of the cost! (Facebook for Business, 2014)

(Coca Cola, ROI Facebook, 2014)

Strengths of Coca Cola’s ROI approach:

The biggest strengths of Coca Cola was its deep ROI approach. It was ascertained that Facebook would drive 2.3X more sales than TV. (Facebook for Business, 2014) Any other ordinary ROI approach would have suggested avoiding TV ads looking at the poor ROI numbers, but Coke’s ROI measurement was so strong that their calculations predict the benefits of combining both TV and Facebook. Coke figured 35% of the TV and Facebook impact is due to a synergy effect between the two media and therefore devised that the actual impact of using TV and Facebook in combination is 54% higher than would be expected from their individual impact alone. (Facebook for Business, 2014) 

Weaknesses of Coca Cola’s ROI approach:

Coca cola does have some weaknesses though. Their website does not much content. The website was declared dead, by the Coke marketing team in November 2013. (Social Media Audit | measure for impact - ROI, KPI, 2014) Research has been put in to redesign the new website from 2012, but not much difference has been witnessed as of yet. The content if improved can add to more customers and hence to the ROI. Therefore this must be included in their ROI Approach. The website must also enable the customers to comment, as this feature is disabled in their websites at the moment. (Social Media Audit | measure for impact - ROI, KPI, 2014) When they have enjoyed the benefits of Facebook, its surprising that they have not incorporated facebook's comments strategy on their website. They have just introduced a digital magazine digital magazine which is very good. Similarly if the website is made interesting it can definitely add to the ROI in a much more positive manner.

REFERENCES

Coca Cola on twitter. (2014). Retrieved from http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2014/05/22/lessons-from-coca-colas-social-media-strategy-cohesive-campaigns-and-creative-content/

Coca Cola, ROI Facebook. (2014). Retrieved from https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/success/cocacola

Coca Cola, France,. (2014). Engaging Customers. Retrieved from https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/success/cocacola#

Coca-Cola. (2014). Coca-Cola. Retrieved from https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/success/cocacola

Facebook for Business. (2014). Coca-Cola. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/success/cocacola

Neff, J. (2014). Yes, Facebook Ads Can Be More Effective Than TV. In France.. Adage.com. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-roi-beat-tv-france/292055/

Simply Measured. (2014). Lessons from Coca-Cola’s Social Media Strategy: Cohesive Campaigns and Creative Content | Simply Measured. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2014/05/22/lessons-from-coca-colas-social-media-strategy-cohesive-campaigns-and-creative-content/

Social Media Audit | measure for impact - ROI, KPI. (2014). Buzz marketing fails Coca-Cola. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://commetrics.com/articles/how-to-create-better-engagement-1/

Wise, D. (2014). Cracking the Social Media ROI Measurement Code. Paceco.com. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://www.paceco.com/cracking-social-media-roi-measurement-code/

Workbrands. (2013). What brand success will do for you | Workbrands. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://www.workbrands.co.uk/insight-post/what-brand-success-will-do-for-you/

Chipotle's Dishonest Marketing

Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. is a chain of restaurants in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and France, selling delicious burritos and tacos. We all love Burritos. So it's not surprising that Chipotle’s mexican food has millions of fans on social media. (Twitter.com, 2014) It was truly peculiar when Chipotle all of a sudden started conveying insane tweets through its Twitter account. Lets take a look at the tweets which they sent out:

(Eileen Brown for Social Business | July 23 & Eileen Brown for Social Business | July 23, 2013)

These tweets were passed on from Chipotle's official twitter record and Chipotle clarified and gave off an impression of this being the work of some employee called Joe who was conversing with his Siri empowered phone which presented all that he said on their twitter channel. It brought on a considerable amount of noise for Chipotle, quite a few people clowned about how Chipotle employs maniacs and retards "hunting down avocados". (Williams, 2013) It was a hilarious screw up, and thousands who'd never at any point knew what a burrito was were actually following Chipotle. The probably hacked tweets, which have still not been erased, were retweeted around 12,000 times. (hkamarcom, 2014)

(Eileen Brown for Social Business | July 23 & Eileen Brown for Social Business | July 23, 2013)

At the point when reminded that the brand ought to erase the messages, "Joe" from Chipotle tweeted:

Nah, nobody was hurt, so it's all good – Joe (Twitter.com, 2014)

The surprise came however, after chipotle later conceded that it was all a publicity stunt! (Themarysue.com, 2014)

Consequences and Recommendations

Chipotle has not taken into consideration the risk of losing reputation. Once customers write something inappropriate about the company’s goof up, it can attract unnecessary attention from more users to find out what actually happened. It later highlighted that it was a staff mistake, which can again point out to weaknesses in the company. All this can lead to the customers questioning the reliability of the company. To avoid this in the future, Chipotle can focus on conducting more training among its staff for appropriate behavior in the context of Enterprise 2.0, and also make its policies more stringent so that such acts can be avoided to the fullest extent. They can also conduct usage monitoring from time to time, to check any inappropriate behaviour and prohibit it from occurring.

Also, according to Rogerson’s ethical principles, Honour and Honesty have not been maintained by Chipotle. To avoid this, they should establish and communicate some policies to the staff. In Chipotle’s case, it should have policies about when and how they can use the company name, introduce a guidance behaviour and train to accept personal responsibility.

Legal risks
  

The legal risks that Chipotle could be facing are Misleading and deceptive conduct, Organisation’s liability for employee acts of defamation and Reputation risk. Chipotle are liable for issuing statements on social media, knowingly that they are false. They should rather also remove others comments which are known to be false, or else are liable again.

Chipotle is also liable for the acts of its employees, if the employee was engaged by them to perform social media tasks. In Chipotle’s case, they used their employee’s name deliberately as a marketing gimmick. Furthermore, the Reputation risk of Chipotle would also have to be very carefully looked at. This risk can cause a lot of damage to the company’s brand name, which comes from a lot of dedication and investment, of time and money. This is an intangible impact that is faced by Chipotle, as their hard earned brand name is facing the axe.

Chipotle has always bragged with a tagline “Food with Integrity”. Yet after their deliberate social media screw up, perhaps they must consider changing “integrity” to "deceitful". Does the word dishonest mean anything anymore? Was it a savvy move? Did they really need this disgusting publicity stunt? Possibly yes. Because when I read that Chipotle got hacked, the first thing I considered was "maybe I ought to go get a burrito!"

REFERENCES

Chipotle.com. (2014). Chipotle: Food With Integrity. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/fwi/fwi.aspx

Eileen Brown for Social Business | July 23, 2., & Eileen Brown for Social Business | July 23, 2. (2013).Chipotle's Twitter fail. User error or marketing genius? | ZDNet. ZDNet. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://www.zdnet.com/chipotles-twitter-fail-user-error-or-marketing-genius-7000018425/

hkamarcom. (2014). Was Chipotle’s Own Twitter Hack … Wack?. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://hkamarcom.com/was-chipotles-own-twitter-hack-wack

Themarysue.com. (2014). Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://www.themarysue.com/chipotle-twitter-fake/

Twitter.com. (2014). Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets) | Twitter. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from https://twitter.com/ChipotleTweets

Twitter.com. (2014). Chipotle on Twitter: "@Tekwani Nah, nobody was hurt, so it's all good. - Joe". Retrieved 25 September 2014, from https://twitter.com/ChipotleTweets/status/359156946164658176

Williams, T. (2013). Chipotle Employee Completely Screwed Up Their Twitter Feed. Sick Chirpse. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://www.sickchirpse.com/chipotle-twitter-disaster/

Burberry - Glamour via Social media!

For me and my friends who were not blessed enough to get a red carpet welcome from Burberry to watch the London fashion week (LFW!) live in London, social media acted as the hero! The LFW was undoubtedly stunning, what made it most astonishing was the way that the hype on twitter was substantially much more than the buildup in London itself.

Burberry is frequently highlighted as a brand that is on top of things as far as social media and marketing goes on. Burberry manages to utilise social technologies for digital merchandising, thereby improving their marketing as well as customer service through web chat. Burberry has taken its online fashion marketing to yet another level. Lets take a peek at how Burberry kept turned up the heat at the LFW to sell their fashion!

Marketing and Sales at the LFW:
Burberry has always used a media marketing strategy of posting exceptional welcomes for facebook fans to watch live fashion shows. They actually sent out personal invites handwritten by designers, to watch live Facebook shows!  (Buzzy, 2013)

(Handwritten Invite, Burberry, 2014)

Burberry has always treated its Facebook fans with exclusivity. They have also distributed perfume samples exclusively to its Facebook fans before making it available to the general public. (Mashable, 2011) All this an example of Mc.Kinsey's Marketing and Sales lever to derive customer insights. As we've started to anticipate, Burberry's LFW show was streamed on twitter, Facebook and on its own site, so fans had every reason to be excited. (Econsultancy, 2014) Close to the live stream running on Facebook Burberry also distributed various photograph exhibitions from the design show. Burberry currently has more than 17 million likes and 70000 visits. Each post is shared more than 500 times. Burberry can make use of the comments section on Facebook to start a social engagement with future customers and turn comments into leads, which is yet another way of generating and fostering sales and marketing leads as said in the Mc. Kinsey lever.

(Facebook, 2014)

This proves that Burberry also uses social technologies for marketing communication/interaction, the second Mc. Kinsey's marketing and sales lever. It made utilisation of Vines, Gifs, Hyperlapse and Youtube features to give fans a real taste of the show. This GIF is the latest highlight of Burberry's Twitter channel. 

Capturing the moment – @CaraDelevingne on the front row of the @Burberry Prorsum S/S15 Show #LFW http://t.co/6QKAiUZyiX

— Burberry (@Burberry) September 16, 2014

(Twitter.com, 2014)

The last marketing and sales lever of social commerce, which assists customers in buying products with the help of social media is likewise another of Burberry's new child. Burberry has introduced Twitter's new "buy" button. It fundamentally permits clients to purchase items straightforwardly from the tweets. (Econsultancy, 2014) 

(Econsultancy, 2014)

Customer care:

Burberry has always provided customer care via social technologies, a Mc.kinsey lever. Burberry offers customer service in different feeds, so that marketing messages and customer queries don’t get mixed up with one another.  (Econsultancy, 2014) This is something similar to Caterpillar's case study which we studied in our last blog, where the company maintains different blogs for separate industries. We also wrote a blog on Nike where we saw the same strategy being adopted. Burberry's Blurred Lines another great article on Burberry's integrated customer experience, proving that Burberry is truly doing the best! (Davis, 2014)

References

Buzzy, S. (2013). So Buzzy. So Buzzy. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://sobuzzy.wordpress.com/blog/

Davis, S. (2014). Burberry's Blurred Lines: The Integrated Customer Experience. Forbes. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottdavis/2014/03/27/burberrys-blurred-lines-the-integrated-customer-experience/

Econsultancy,. (2014). How Burberry and Topshop used social to rule at London Fashion Week. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from https://econsultancy.com/blog/65466-how-burberry-and-topshop-used-social-to-rule-at-london-fashion-week#i.f7ojcvj84dlwzg

Facebook,. (2014). Burberry. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from https://www.facebook.com/Burberry

Fashion, B. (2014). Burberry - Iconic British Luxury Brand Est. 1856. Au.burberry.com. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://au.burberry.com

Handwritten Invite, Burberry. (2014). Retrieved from http://sobuzzy.wordpress.com/blog/

Londonfashionweek.co.uk,. (2014). London Fashion Week - Home. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk

Mashable,. (2011). Burberry Brings Fragrance Sampling Campaign Exclusively to Facebook. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from http://mashable.com/2011/08/19/burberry-body-facebook/

Twitter.com,. (2014). Burberry (@Burberry) | Twitter. Retrieved 25 September 2014, from https://twitter.com/Burberry

Caterpillar Climbs up the Blogspace!

I somehow didn't think blogs have a spot in the construction and engineering industry. Found it funny to envision a tin hat blogging in the middle of building something. However, after researching on Caterpillar’s business blogs, I realised that my thoughts are totally passé and I'm stuck in the past. Maybe its not the tin hats who are noobs anymore, maybe its just me.

It seems to me that, all businesses must have blogs today, maybe for the simple reason that business blogging is probably the cheapest promoting strategy that gets your business more online perceivability. I reckon that, Caterpillar, a construction giant thinks the same, because its one of those few corporates that knows not just how to blog right, but also knows how to impress marketers and clearly make it in the list of best corporate blogs. Caterpillar has  separate blogs focused around various industries, construction, electrical and marine with sub-classes under every industry. Blogging to that much of detail shows just how seriously Caterpillar has taken to social media, especially blogging.

I listened to an Itunes Podcast by Brian Stokoe of Caterpillar where he talks about Caterpillar’s global social media strategy works, and found it quite amusing, especially the way in which Caterpillar’s blogging strategies blend into Mckinsey's value levers. Like for example Caterpillar has built an awesome social community by engaging its customers, encourages brand loyalty by rewarding customer ideas, and how at the same time it solves customer problems and issues socially (Spark Boutik - Digital Marketing & Social Media Agency, 2014). So, Mckinsey's marketing and sales value levers as well as customer service value lever is already ticked off in their social media blogging strategy.

CATERPILLAR’S EXTERNAL BLOGGING TACTIC

The external blogging strategy which the “electric industry” blog uses to communicate with it’s clients, is to allow customers interact directly with employees of the company and get to know them (Convinceandconvert.com, 2014). The idea is to let the customers have a conversation starter with the employees, allowing them to comment and kind of really having a conversation by keeping it going. So the company encourages the customers to participate and give their opinions on articles, also if a customer appreciates someone else’s comment, then they give it a “kudos”. The top Kudoed posts and authors are shared on the blog main page which encourages more and more users to participate in this sort of a thing (Weiss-Roessler, 2011). The best part is that the employees share a bio, so that the customers know who they are chatting with and get comfortable with the author.

Brian Stokoe says that that they wanted to make the interaction between the employees and customers so personal that the employees even put their picture to the conversation (Convinceandconvert.com, 2014).

So tin-hats say, go ahead and blog, but first let me take a selfie!

CATERPILLAR’S INTERNAL BLOGGING TACTIC

An example of internal blogging in Caterpillar is the “Safety group” blog which is basically a safety culture blog which is always updated by an employee who writes content on safety all the time. Its truly incredible stuff for employees in the safety culture and is perfect for any of the individuals who need to manage wellbeing concerns on employment locales and all that kind of stuff (Convinceandconvert.com, 2014). This blog gets all the attention internally in the organisation. Consistently, in this way Caterpillar makes it very simple for customers to unite with each other as well as with the employees from the organisation, thereby enhancing its business by going live!

References

Convinceandconvert.com,. (2014). Retrieved 26 August 2014, from http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-pros-podcast/social-media-success-for-global-enterprise/

Spark Boutik - Digital Marketing & Social Media Agency,. (2014). 8 Brands Doing Corporate Blogging Right. Retrieved 26 August 2014, from http://sparkboutik.com/attention-management/8-brands-doing-corporate-blogging-right/

Weiss-Roessler, J. (2011). Corporate Blogging: Caterpillar Builds a Community | The Intechnically Savvy Blog. Intechnic.com. Retrieved 26 August 2014, from http://www.intechnic.com/blog/corporate-blogging-caterpillar-builds-a-community/

Why Nike's Gamification strategy is sexier than Reebok's supermodel Mirander Kerr.

It’s undeniable that Miranda looks sexier than ever in this Reebok advertisement and that the world would love to see more of Mirander Kerr than anything else.

However the new ad starring Mirander Kerr going bare (a little skeptical about uploading it here, we have all seen it on TV anyway!) has definitely failed to impress marketing experts (Clun, 2014). Reebok’s rival - Nike’s soaring sales figures have proved that Mirander Kerr is really not going to help sell sneakers, but it's the brilliant Enterprise 2.0 gamification strategy that’s actually going to make sales.

Nike's classic gamification strategy.

A simple enterprise 2.0 - gamification strategy for Nike helped them to increase their market share by nearly 14% in just four years (Ferriman & Ferriman, 2014). 

For all those arguing that gamification would have been too expensive, its quite obvious that the profits made by Nike are very likely to outweigh the costs of the gamification program (Ferriman & Ferriman, 2014). After all Mirander Kerr doesn't come cheap either!

Increased Marketing and Sales

Nike introduced a high-tech exercise-tracking wristband, the FuelBand which looks like a bracelet when it’s off, yet it changes into a pedometer on steroids, counting steps, calories and the time, and also letting the wearer set day by day goals and following the amount "fuel" earned for the day ('fuel' is a Nike-made estimation focused around the measure of oxygen taken in for every day). This makes running fun and more game, also serving as a constant reminder to be less lazy (Libe Goad for Gamification | April 1 & Libe Goad for Gamification | April 1, 2012).

The device connects wirelessly to a mobile app, giving data and statistics about the runners progress just like a leaderboard when playing games, along with the awesome feature of sharing it on social networks like Facebook and twitter, with friends. Lets take a look at this interesting Nike video:

In 2011 the number of players using Fuelband was 5 million and was estimated to reach 11 million by the end of 2013. (Chou, Chou & →, 2013)

Customer Service via Twitter

Nike is a colossal organization. They have numerous distinctive sorts of products and lines of clothing that make up their brand. While @nike deals with various Twitter handles to oblige customers intrigued by particular sports or store areas, @nikesupport is committed singularly to reacting to clients who need help. It is also one of the best examples of excellent customer service as they always react to customers on Twitter, almost immediately (Sprung & Sprung, 2013). 

As you can see from the images below, Nike Support has tweeted over 320K times, whereas the Nike handle has only tweeted around 16K times.

Looks like Mirander Kerr herself is awed with Nike’s gamification intelligence, possibly that's why she was spotted wearing Nike pants and shoes to her sweaty workouts! Now when gamification can make Mirander Kerr, "Reebok’s brand ambassador" switch from Reebok to Nike, imagine how fast Nike can build more fans!

References

Chou, Y., Chou, Y., & →, V. (2013). Top 10 Marketing Gamification Cases You Won't Forget. Yu-kai Chou & Gamification. Retrieved 26 August 2014, from http://www.yukaichou.com/gamification-examples/top-10-marketing-gamification-cases-remember/

Clun, R. (2014). Miranda Kerr's naked truth: this time sex doesn't sell. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 26 August 2014, from http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/celebrity/miranda-kerrs-naked-truth-this-time-sex-doesnt-sell-20140304-342uh.html

Ferriman, J., & Ferriman, J. (2014). Successful Gamification Case Studies | LearnDash.Learndash.com. Retrieved 26 August 2014, from http://www.learndash.com/successful-gamification-case-studies/

Libe Goad for Gamification | April 1, 2., & Libe Goad for Gamification | April 1, 2. (2012). Nike Fuelband’s quest to 'turn every day into a game' | ZDNet. ZDNet. Retrieved 26 August 2014, from http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gamification/nike-fuelbands-quest-to-turn-every-day-into-a-game/705

Sprung, R., & Sprung, R. (2013). 4 Examples of Excellent Twitter Customer Service |. Social Media Examiner. Retrieved 26 August 2014, from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/exceptional-customer-service-on-twitter/