Coca-Cola vs Orangina: same Social Medias’ strategy?

        Internet is for a long time included in the communications strategy of brands. But with the web 2.0 raise, a new way of using internet is born: direct connecting with your consumer. The idea is co-creation through games, missions, events, spread from a customer to another through the social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube… but also building a closer relationship with individuals. The aim of this kind of strategy? Not only an increase in your sales or the boom of your fans/followers’ number, but above all, the basements of your image.

        Coca-Cola and Orangina are quite active on these social media. Let’s do a comparison between two different ways of using communities.

        Thanks to Michal Donnely, the Coca Cola’s Group Director of Worldwide Interactive Marketing, “the home page of Coca-Cola is not coke.com but google.com”. And Facebook, FlickR, Twitter… as well. During his presentation at the iStrategy 2.0 conference in 2010, the director clearly showed the new web strategy of Coca-Cola: be everywhere through the trendiest social networks of our days.

Coca-Cola social communicaites (source: Mr. Donnely presentation)

        Today, the company fanpage counts 35,8 millions of likes (on November the 15^th )and is open so that customer may post information, comments, “happiness moments” with their coke bottle, suggestions and opinion. This is a co-storytelling strategy: the brand is owned not only by the company but also by its buyers who take part of the brand development. 

Customers' Quotations takken from the Coca Cola fan page in 2009

       This participative way of communication is also on Youtube (with the link to be followed shared on Facebook of course) where Coca Cola has its own channel (as music superstars do like Rihanna or Beyonce). Launched last year during the World Soccer cup, the aim of this page is to “share moments of happiness” (worldwide slogan of the brand since 2009), in the World Soccer Cup case: “celebrate each goal”.

         

Last summer, Coca-Cola continued to celebrate life and spread happiness through its Summer theme. Today, 538 videos are available on the channel, where it is some official videos or fans video.

        Interactivity, shares, links, ultra presence on social websites and building sustainable relationship with their consumers are the main words to describe Coca Cola web 2.0 strategy. But what about Orangina??

Orangina’s social media

Like Coca Cola, Orangina has a strong activity within the social media with its Facebook group, its tweeter account and YouTube channel. In France, Orangina is famous for its viral activity based on strong commitment within social media. Hugues Pietrini, CEO of Orangina-Schweppes Company -which hold Orangina, Schweppes and Oasis- realised the potential of social media as Oasis’s Facebook page quickly attracted more than 600 000 fans, few months after its creation. Thus, they decided to exploit social media’s communication in order to reinforce proximity with the customer and brand image.

An important Facebook activity:

Among Orangina’s social media, Facebook is the most important; indeed, it has become a strategic tool with the goal of creating a high proximity with the customer. For this, they publish at least 3 messages per week about different topics: last movies, match results of the French rugby team, or funny YouTube videos. All in all, they act like a real friend on Facebook, in order to be part of costumers everyday life.

Today, Orangina’s Facebook page is fully part of the strategy of the brand and it is used to launch new products. Indeed, Facebook fans are privileged as they see new products months before normal customers.

 Orangina’s Youtube channel, a great maketing intelligence tool:

As we treated in another article, Orangina’s last communication campaign using sexy animals was made to  to trigger people reaction, in a word, to create “buzz”. If you want to whatch the full video you can do it at Orangina’s Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/orangina.  There, it is possible to "like" or "dislike" the video and post a comment. Thus Orangina’s Youtube videos already has numerous comments, mostly negative, where people express there misunderstanding of the TV ad, or say  they just found it funny. In fact, beside those negative comments, public reaction  on youtube appears like a great marketing intelligence of Orangina and a way to mesure TV ads popularity, (videos have been seen more than 4 million times).

Sources:

https://www.facebook.com/cocacola

http://www.youtube.com/user/cocacola?blend=1&ob=4

http://www.slideshare.net/iStrategy/coca-colas-social-media-strategy