Coca Cola's impending shift to social media. And their new three tier social media policy - a fine framework to follow
New Media Age are reporting today that Coca Cola UK (and Unilver) are abandoning campaign sites in favour of investment in social media in 2010 - defined (as NMA understands) predominantly as content on Facebook and YouTube. This follows hot on the heels of Pepsi taking the social media PR initiative by announcing the end of their massive Superbowl TV spend just before Christmas.
Interesting times ahead, particularly as Coca-Cola launched their new global social media policy last week which clearly defines how employees can (and can't) participate in social media on the company's behalf. Its an excellent - and gloriously transparent - document.
Three pages of pure sense, underpinned by a tangible understanding of the role that social media plays in modern communications, and how everyone within a company represents that company even when/if they’re not being paid to do so.
Part of the reason Coke have nailed it is that they’ve captured the whole personal/professional involvement with regard to social media in one cracking sentence:
“There’s a big difference in speaking “on behalf of the Company” and speaking “about” the Company.”
On the back of this, Cocal Cola have identified a three-tier approach to social media we’ll be seeing much more of from multinationals (or even much smaller companies) for that matter.
- Establish the guidelines that all employees should follow with regard to their own personal use of social media. (This encompasses everyone who might speak “about” the company)
- Identify, train and “accredit” a [smaller]* number of partly self-selecting social media spokespeople, drawn from across a company (including customer service, corporate comms and marketing). And create an internal system to join up cross-departmental activities so knowledge about who is commenting on what can transfer smoothly across the organisation
- Establish a series of stricter guidelines for this group of “trained and accredited spokespeople”, which gives them authority to respond on behalf of the company
Also worth a watch is the interview with Andy Brown, Coke’s Head of Social Media in which he explains in an equally accessible way what they’re trying to achieve, and how.
(download)
The battle-lines are being drawn by the soft-drinks makers (and by Unilever), both in terms of how they spend their marketing dollars to reach their customers, but also how they let their strongest advocates (staff and existing customers) tell their stories for them online. Where they lead you can bet other consumer-facing brands with previoulsy massive ad-spends will be sure to follow.
*There’s no particular reason why this number has to be smaller. Except the practicalities. For start-ups, and small businesses I’d actually argue that the more people with this authority the better…
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