Infinite Path

Coca-Cola have revealed that this year is set to be a big one in terms of their emerging social media presence as part of a larger internet marketing strategy. They are expected to shift their focus from creating sites on a campaign-by-campaign basis towards becoming more involved in online communities, many of which are already inhabited by the consumers targeted by the company’s products.

It is thought that investment in communities on Facebook and YouTube will be a major part of their new strategy and fans of the Coca-Cola brand will be encouraged to build the communities on these social sites from the grass-roots level rather than being directed towards the individual campaign sites.

Coca-Cola’s move is nothing new in the grand scheme of things; the importance of social media to a company’s PR efforts has become all too evident over the past year or so, but it does act as further evidence of how brands are starting to view consumers in this technological age.

Brands such as Coca-Cola may be starting to lose some of the arrogance and nonchalance traditionally associated with them as they realise that it is up to them to become involved with consumers in communities they are familiar with, rather than forcing them to take action by visiting an unfamiliar online environment. It is now up to the brand to interact, rather than the consumer. The brand will now seek out its target market, rather than expecting potential customers to go directly to them.

As well as having a positive long-term effect upon a certain brand’s reputation, adopting such an online marketing strategy can be extremely cost-effective. Developing campaign-specific websites every time a company launches a new product can be an expensive way to spread the word, but the communities that Coca-Cola is starting to target are already set up and active on the internet.